NRS-20394 | Legislative Assembly Select Committee Files prior to 1938

Parliamentary Committees are groups of members of Parliament appointed by the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales to undertake a particular task, such as investigating legislative proposals or the operation of government policies and programs. Committees consider an issue in detail and report to the House with their findings and recommendations. Committees can call for submissions from the public and hold public hearings and meetings that provide opportunities for interest groups, experts and individual citizens to inform the committee of their views on particular topics.Select Committees are temporary committees appointed to inquire into specific issues. Many of the Select Committees in this series did not report to Parliament and thus the reports, proceedings and evidence were not tabled or printed. These files are comprised of the records of various Legislative Assembly Select Committees from 1857 to 1938 and include reports, proceedings, minutes of evidence, correspondence, accounts and other related papers, such as publications, maps, plans and photographs. Only a proportion of the Legislative Assembly Select Committees that sat during this period are represented here. These records were brought together during an office reorganisation around 1905 and from then until 1938, Select Committee files were kept together. From 1938 onwards when more and more records began to be created by Select Committees, records were split into separate series for each Committee.This series is comprised of paper files, photographs, maps and plans.