Joseph Lyons
Joseph Aloysius Lyons was an Australian politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Australia, from 1932 until his death in 1939. He held office as the inaugural leader of the United Australia Party, having previously led the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Labor Party before the Australian Labor Party split of 1931. He served as the 26th premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928.
Lyons was born in Stanley, Tasmania, and before entering politics worked as a schoolteacher. He was active in the Labor Party from a young age and won election to the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1909. He was Treasurer of Tasmania under John Earle, before replacing Earle as party leader in 1916. After two elections that ended in hung parliaments, Lyons was appointed premier in 1923 at the head of a minority government. He pursued moderate reforms and successfully negotiated a constitutional crisis over the powers of the Legislative Council. At the 1925 election he led Labor to its first majority government in Tasmania, but the party lost office three years later.
In 1929, Lyons resigned from state parliament to enter federal politics, winning the seat of Wilmot in Labor's landslide victory at the 1929 election. He was immediately appointed to cabinet by the new prime minister James Scullin, becoming Postmaster-General of Australia and Minister for Works and Railways. In 1930, he was acting treasurer while Scullin was overseas, and came into conflict with the Labor caucus over the government's response to the Great Depression; he preferred orthodox financial policies. In early 1931, Lyons and his followers left Labor to sit as independents. His exact motivations for leaving the party have been subject to debate. A few months later his group merged with other opposition parties to form the United Australia Party; he was elected Leader of the Opposition.
Lyons led the UAP to a landslide victory at the 1931 election. Nicknamed "Honest Joe", he was known as a masterful political campaigner and became popular with the general public. His personal popularity was a major factor in the government's re-election in 1934 and 1937; he was the first prime minister to win three federal elections. The UAP initially governed alone but after 1934 formed a coalition with the Country Party. Lyons was his own treasurer until 1935 and oversaw Australia's recovery from the Great Depression. He faced a number of foreign-policy challenges, but accelerated Australia's transition towards an independent foreign policy. In the lead-up to World War II his government pursued a policy of appeasement and rearmament.
Lyons died of a heart attack in April 1939, becoming the first Australian prime minister to die in office. He is the only prime minister from Tasmania and one of two state premiers who have become prime minister, along with George Reid. Several years after his death, his widow Enid Lyons became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.
Early life
Birth and family background
Lyons was born in Stanley, Tasmania, on 15 September 1879. He was the fifth of eight children born to Ellen and Michael Henry Lyons, both of Irish descent. His mother was born in County Kildare and arrived in Australia in 1857, aged eleven, while his father was born in Tasmania to immigrants from County Galway. Lyons was the first prime minister to have an Australian-born parent. His paternal grandfather, Michael Lyons Sr., had arrived in Tasmania in 1843 with his wife and an infant daughter. Initially an indentured labourer, he became a tenant farmer after completing his term of service, and eventually saved enough to purchase land at Stanley, on the north-west coast. He had a reputation as a shrewd businessman, frequently buying and selling tracts of land and also dabbling in the hotel trade for a period. His sons followed him into farming, and the Lyons family was prominent in the small local community.Childhood
When Lyons was four years old, his father moved the family from Stanley to Ulverstone, where he opened a combined bakery and butcher's shop. In 1887, he lost the family's savings betting on the Melbourne Cup, driving them into poverty. He had to sell the shop and resort to working as an unskilled labourer; his oldest children took part-time jobs to support the family. Lyons began working at the age of nine, as a printer's messenger boy. By the age of twelve, he was "cutting scrub" for local farmers. Lyons had begun his education at the Ulverstone State School in 1885, before switching to the local Catholic school in 1887. His early years of schooling were interrupted by his family's financial difficulties, and his attendance was sometimes irregular, though this was not uncommon in small rural schools at the time. In 1891, he moved back to Stanley to live with his aunts, Etty and Mary Carroll, and was enrolled at the Stanley State School.Teaching career
In 1895, aged fifteen, Lyons began working as a pupil-teacher under the monitorial system. This allowed him to continue his own education while being paid to teach younger students, and eventually qualify as a full-time teacher himself. Apart from a three-month stint as a relief teacher at Irishtown, he remained at Stanley until early 1901, when he was given charge of two small "half-time" schools on the east coast, Apslawn and Apsley Meadows. During that period, he lived at "Apsley House", the family estate of Sir William Lyne, Premier of New South Wales. In March 1902, Lyons transferred to the Midlands, taking charge of the schools at Conara and Llewellyn. He was transferred again in July 1905 to Tullah, then a few months later to Smithton, and then in April 1906 to Pioneer. In 1907, Lyons moved to Hobart to attend the newly opened Hobart Teachers' College for a year. He was then posted to Launceston, teaching at the Glen Dhu and Wellington Square State Schools, as well as briefly acting as headmaster at Perth. He came into conflict with the Department of Education on a number of occasions, often complaining about poor working conditions. His superiors also disapproved of his political activities, which together with his complaints probably contributed to his frequent transfers and failure to win desirable postings.State politics
Lyons came from a family that was broadly sympathetic to the Australian labour movement, but without any formal political involvement. Though widely read, he did not actively participate in politics until after leaving Stanley. Lyons helped found a branch of the Workers' Political League during his time in Smithton, but was forced to resign his membership due to restrictions on the involvement of public servants in political activities. Those rules were later relaxed, and by 1908 he was spending most of his free time campaigning for the Labor Party; he had a reputation as a first-rate orator. Lyons was elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly at the 1909 state election, standing in the six-member Division of Wilmot. This required him to resign from the Education Department and give up his teaching career, which reduced his annual salary from £125 to £100. He was comfortably re-elected in 1912, although he was attacked with a horsewhip during one of his campaign speeches. The son of one of his political opponents was convicted of assault, and the incident received widespread media attention.Labor came to power in Tasmania in 1914, after the existing Liberal government of Albert Solomon was defeated on a confidence motion. The new premier was John Earle, who had previously held office for one week in October 1909. In the new government, Lyons was made Treasurer, Minister for Education, and Minister for Railways; it was common for ministers to hold more than one portfolio. He was somewhat inexperienced with economic matters, and often turned to his friend and colleague Lyndhurst Giblin for advice; they eventually renewed their relationship at federal level during the 1930s. Less than a month after taking office, Lyons announced that the government was moving its accounts from the Commercial Bank of Tasmania to the Commonwealth Bank, which had only been established a few years earlier. In return he was able to secure a substantial loan and an overdraft of £100,000. The government faced a number of challenges during its two years in office, including a statewide drought, a series of bushfires in early 1915, and labour shortages due to the ongoing war. As Labor was in minority, many of its legislative initiatives were thwarted by the opposition. The party lost the 1916 state election by two seats, despite increasing its share of the vote.
When the ALP split over conscription during the First World War in 1916, Earle, a pro-conscriptionist, followed Prime Minister Billy Hughes out of the Labor party. Like most Australians of Irish Catholic background, Lyons was an anti-conscriptionist and stayed in the Labor Party, becoming its new leader in Tasmania.
Premier of Tasmania
Lyons led the Labor opposition in the Tasmanian Parliament until 1923 when he became Premier of Tasmania, leading a minority ALP government. He held office until 1928, also serving as Treasurer during the whole period of his premiership. Lyons's government was cautious and pragmatic, establishing good relations with business and the conservative government in Canberra, but attracting some criticism from unionists within his own party. Labor narrowly lost the 1928 state election to the Nationalist Party.As premier, Lyons faced a constitutional crisis relating to the powers of the Tasmanian Legislative Council. The Legislative Council had a limited franchise and was occupied mostly by conservative landowners, and was consequently opposed to much of the government's platform. Historically, it had claimed for itself the power to amend money bills, despite having no express constitutional authority to do so. In November 1924, the council returned the government's budget to the Legislative Assembly with a series of proposed reductions in spending. Lyons chose to ignore the amendments, instead sending the bill directly to the Administrator, Herbert Nicholls, who approved it. In 1926, the government amended the state constitution to codify the Legislative Council's powers over money bills, bringing them into line with the other states.
On 15 July 1926, Lyons suffered severe leg injuries when his car—driven by a chauffeur—collided with a goods train near Perth. He came close to death, and stood down from public duties for four months to recover; Allan Guy was acting premier in his absence. Michael O'Keefe, the Speaker of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, was also a passenger in the car, and lingered for several months before dying of his injuries.