​The New South Wales Legislative Assembly during the half-century from 1941 to 1991 would seem to have had a number of principal functions: an arena for party political conflict; a means of enacting the government of the day's legislative programme; the traditional role under the Westminster system of a body of elected representatives responsible to the people oversighting the actions of the executive; a forum where Members could promote and protect the interests of their constituents. While each of these functions is legitimate and defensible, the former two roles were usually, though not inevitably, dominant at the expense of the latter. The story of the Assembly from 1941 to 1991 can, indeed, largely be seen as a struggle by the last two functions to make some headway, or to find a more equal balance, against Government and Party dominance.