Who's who of Whos in Parliament House

Take, for example, the usually mild-mannered federal member for Dawson, George Christensen, who brought his favourite blow-up Dalek to work with him in the big house on Monday.

Mr Christensen, so his story goes, was using the blow-up doll to raise the consciousness of Parliament over a bipartisan bid to bring Dr Who Down Under. His electorate includes the Whitsundays and he is very keen to have the show's producers put northern Queensland on their itinerary as they begin filming for the Australian 50th anniversary of the show in 2015.

Dr Who, for the record, is a serial whose anniversaries are a moveable feast depending on where in the world you happened to be living.

It first went to air in Britain in 1963, before being screened in New Zealand the following year.

After this experience at the beta test sites proved it was safe for human consumption The Doctor made it to Australia in 1965.

Mr Christensen is one of a number of parliamentary geeks still held in thrall by childhood memories of diving behind the couch every time the Daleks came to visit.

The Nationals member was joined by the ALP's Graham Perrett and Dr Andrew Leigh and Liberal Alex Hawke in calling for the BBC to arrange to have at least one episode (if not the entire series) filmed in The Whitsundays.

Dr Who, as one of Mr Christensen's loyal minions observed to Gang-gang, has so many Australian connections it could pass muster as local content.

That haunting theme music was composed by Ron Grainer, an Australian. Another Aussie, Dudley Simpson, knocked up the incidental music and yet another refugee from the cultural cringe of the 1950s and 1960s, Anthony Coburn, penned the libretto - oops, I mean script - for the first episode.

And actors Janet Fielding, Kevin Lindsay and Ray Barrett are just some of the talented antipodeans to have appeared on the show.

To segue back to the Daleks, which is where we first came in, apparently the first Dalek ''operators'', Robert Jewell and Ken Manser, were Aussies as well.

This, admittedly by a roundabout route, brings us back to the question of just why a respectable conservative MP elected to represent a little patch of paradise would walk into Parliament on Monday morning with a flat-packed Dalek in his briefcase and a hand pump on his person.

The short answer is that real Daleks, packed as they are with bad attitudes, gadgets, electronics and sophisticated weaponry, aren't allowed past the security office.

A source within Mr Christensen's office has assured us that there are Daleks in Canberra and that as late as last Friday attempts were being made to bring one into Parliament in support of the bipartisan push for Dr Who to be filmed in Queensland.

Canberra's Daleks, once again on the authority of the Ensovaari embassy, were created and animated by Andrew Corson and Stephen Bennett. Six were made, along with a model of Davros, their evil creator.

Many of these featured in the now defunct Canberra Festival twilight parade and one Dalek and the model of Davros went up in smoke in 2003, victims of the firestorm that destroyed so much else of this city's past.

The other five survive and, as long as certain stringent transport and fiscal conditions are met, do make public appearances.

Gang-gang's mole in Mr Christensen's office said while Daleks, contrary to popular belief, can negotiate stairs, it had proved just too hard to work out how to get one past security.

''Apparently, because it is too big to be scanned, we would have needed to have arranged for a sniffer dog,'' we were told. ''The dogs are quite busy and there just wasn't the time.''

As a result, Mr Christensen's inflatable companion became the fall-back position. Just how he happened to have such an object in his possession is a mystery that remains unresolved.

While Gang-gang supports the parliamentary push to bring Doctor Who (and the Daleks) down under, Canberra and not The Whitsundays is the obvious destination.

We stand firmly behind ACT Labor MP Dr Andrew Leigh on this point.

After all, if you are importing a horde of robotic, mechanical, inflexible and brain-sucking aliens into this country, where are they going to feel more at home than Parliament House?

The architecture is right (except for a couple of flights of stairs), the company would be congenial to the point of being collegiate and some of our landmarks such as the Shine Dome (aka The Martian Embassy), Black Mountain Tower and The University of Canberra's Futuro Building would make excellent backdrops for a wide range of story angles and developments.

I say bring Doctor Who here!