Joseph Lyons - Prime Minister

Prime Minister

The UAP fought the election in the traditional non-Labor Coalition with the Country Party (then led by Sir Earle Page). However, the massive swing to the UAP left it only four seats short of a majority in its own right, and Lyons' position was strong enough that he was able to govern alone during his first term. After the 1934 election resulted in the government's loss of eight seats, Lyons was forced to invite the Country Party into his government. Until 1935 Lyons served as Treasurer as well as Prime Minister. In office, Lyons followed the same conservative financial policy he had advocated during the Scullin government, cutting public spending and debt. He benefited politically from the gradual worldwide recovery that took place after 1932.

As far as foreign policy was concerned, Lyons was a firm though by no means servile ally of Britain, and also supported the League of Nations. His government tended to support the conciliation of the dictatorships of Germany, Italy, and Japan to avoid another world war, but he still increased military spending. As a result he ensured an expansion of the armed forces, the opening of an aircraft factory, and the planning of new munitions factories and shipyards.

At the 1934 election the ambitious and talented Robert Menzies entered Parliament, and was immediately seen as Lyons's successor, although he denied that he was seeking to displace Lyons.

The government won a third term at the 1937 election, with 44 of 74 seats and 50.6 percent of the two-party preferred vote against a reunited Labor Party led by John Curtin. As the international situation darkened in the late 1930s, Lyons became increasingly despondent. Most politicians expected that he would soon be replaced by Menzies, who resigned from Cabinet in protest at the government's inaction on the national insurance scheme.

On 7 April 1939, in Sydney, Lyons died suddenly of a heart attack – the first Australian Prime Minister to die in office. He was 59 years old.

Lyons was one of the most genuinely popular men to hold the office of Prime Minister, and his death caused widespread grief. His genial, laid-back appearance often led to cartoon portrayal as a sleepy koala. A devout Catholic, he was the second Catholic to become Prime Minister, after his immediate predecessor Scullin, and the only non-Labor Catholic Prime Minister to date.

He is the only person in Australian history to have been Prime Minister, Premier of a State, and Leader of the Opposition in both the Federal Parliament and a State Parliament (although George Reid had served as Premier of a colony before Federation). Lyons is also Australia's only Prime Minister to come from Tasmania.

He was the only Australian Prime Minister to be in office during the reigns of three monarchs (George V, Edward VIII, and George VI), and the only Australian Prime Minister who was in office continuously throughout a monarch's entire reign (albeit a very short one, the 11 month-reign of Edward VIII).

Dame Enid Lyons later went into politics in her own right, in 1943 becoming the first woman to sit in the House of Representatives, and later the first woman Cabinet Minister in the Menzies' Liberal government. Two of their sons later became involved in Tasmanian state politics in the Liberal Party: Kevin Lyons was Deputy Premier between 1969 and 1972 and Brendan Lyons served in the ministry of Robin Gray during the 1980s.