History of Democracy

If Britain is the "mother of parliaments", then NSW is clearly the mother of Australian parliaments. The first colony, the first parliament, occupying both the oldest building in the city centre and the oldest continuously used legislative chamber in Australia, the Parliament of NSW and Parliament House are vital parts of the living democratic heritage of NSW and Australia.

This section looks at that heritage, both in terms of the historical evolution of democracy and Parliament in NSW and Australia, and of Parliament House as it is at present.

The colony of NSW at various times occupied all of continental Australia except Western Australia, as well as New Zealand. From their beginning as a convict colony under autocratic military, the Australasian colonies came to lead the world in the development of democracy in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, particularly in relation to the rights of women. While New Zealand chose to develop separately, the five mainland colonies and Tasmania managed to put aside their intercolonial rivalries sufficiently to come together as a single Federated nation as the twentieth century began on 1 January, 1901.

A time-line of democracy in NSW: