NRS-19612 | Proceedings in Committee of the Whole [Legislative Assembly]

These are not State archives rather they are Parliamentary archives in the custody of Museums of History NSW.These volumes are comprised of all the bills considered by the Legislative Assembly in Committee of the Whole. If a Member wishes to amend a bill, the House forms itself into a "Committee of the Whole" to deal with the bill in detail (of a Select Committee, which has only a selected few of the Members). During this stage the Speaker leaves the Chair and the Mace is placed under the Table. The Chairman of Committees presides over the Committee and, at the end of this stage, reports the bill to the Speaker with or without amendments.Although the papers are commonly known as the 'Committee Bills', they are not all Bills. They are divided into Public Bills, Private Bills, Finance Papers and Others. Public bills deal with matters of general public interest and are usually introduced by the Government; some public bills may be introduced by private Members. Private bills deal only with specific private matters which affect a private person or body. Finance papers have been called Money Bills since the reforms of the late twentieth century; in the nineteenth century they were dealt with by Committees of Supply and Committees of Ways and Means, which were both Committees of the Whole. The 'Other' matters dealt with by the Committee of the Whole were Resolutions to introduce bills or for the House to consider a particular issue; or for the House to consider an Address or a Report. These matters were questions on which a decision was made; they did not have papers relating to them in the records.The series was created to record the decisions of the Committee of the Whole, specifically to record the amendments made to the bills considered by the Committee of the Whole.The series is arranged in two parts. The first was from 1856 to 1898, where the papers are arranged in sessional bundles chronologically by order of commitment; and secondly from 1899, where they are bound into sessional volumes, alphabetically by the Bill's short title. The volumes give an index to the bills, and show whether it originated in the Council or the Assembly; and also show any amendments made to the bills during committal. The volumes from 1899 to date will be transferred at a later date.