Did you know?
The table in the Legislative Assembly is the width of two gentleman’s swords.
This reflects the tradition in the Westminster Parliament in the United Kingdom where there are red lines on the floor of the House of Commons in front of the member’s benches known as sword lines.
The distance between the two lines was apparently designed to keep members two sword lengths apart to avoid physical altercations in the chamber.
The NSW Parliament Legislative Assembly chamber, the equivalent chamber to Britain’s House of Commons, does not have two red lines but we do adhere to the description of the table as being two sword lengths apart in width.
However, this is likely a myth because swords, and any other weapons, have always been banned from parliamentary chambers.
Historic image of the NSW Legislative Assembly, 1946
So, why does this myth persist in Commonwealth parliaments across the world and in NSW?
Perhaps the symbolism of swords, with their connotation of violence as a method of resolving problems, reminds us that societies didn’t always make decisions through rule-based discussion in a parliamentary chamber. Before democratic parliaments were established, decision-making was the privilege of kings, emperors and autocratic leaders who used the strength of armies to dominate their opponents and win the right to rule. One of the most famous of these despots being King John of England. In the process they subjugated their people, taxing them harshly to fund these wars, without giving them a vote about who governed them. These subjects had no representation at the decision-making table. But eventually even King John had to come to terms with the will of the people when he was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. This has since become the basis of the rule-based decision-making process we call the Westminster system of democracy.
King John signing the Magna Carta
However, the story of the table in the Lower House being two swords’ lengths apart also evokes the now defunct practice of duelling. Historically gentlemen could issue a challenge to duel if they felt an offence had been committed against them or their honour. By the 18th century, although illegal, duelling, had developed formal rules of conduct but the fatality rate meant that in NSW the practice declined.
The last recorded duel in Australia occurred in 1851, in Sydney’s Centennial Park, between Surveyor-General Sir Thomas Mitchell and the future first Premier of NSW Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson as they stood on their marks, pistols in their grips and shot three times towards each other. Both duellists missed and thankfully, the only injury sustained was to Donaldson’s hat.
Sir Thomas Mitchell and Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson, 1851
Read the story here.
Perhaps too, the duelling imagery presented to us by a tour guide in a parliamentary chamber allows us to accept that lower houses are places of robust debate. And that this type of debate is essential if everyone’s point of view is to be discussed and each member’s constituent groups and issues are to be represented. And it is also the role of the parliament, and both houses to scrutinise Government which is formed in the Legislative Assembly after an election. This process occurs at Question Time and through Parliamentary Inquiries. Question Time in the NSW Legislative Assembly is often described as robust earning this Chamber its nick name of the ‘Bear Pit.’
A no longer used Bear Pit in the Botanic Gardens, Sheffield, England
