Enid Lyons

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Dame Enid Muriel Lyons, AD, GBE (9 July 1897 - 2 September 1981) was an Australian politician and the first woman to be elected to the Australian House of Representatives as well as the first woman appointed to the federal Cabinet. Prior to these significant achievements, she was best known as the wife of the Premier of Tasmania and later Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Lyons.

Lyons was born Enid Muriel Burnell in Smithton, Tasmania, and educated at the Teacher's Training College, Hobart and later became a school teacher. In 1913, when she was 15, she met Joseph Lyons, then a young Labor politician, and married him in 1915. They had twelve children, one of whom died in infancy.^[1][2]

In 1929 Joseph, who had been Labor Premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928, entered federal politics as member for the Division of Wilmot. In 1931 he left the Labor Party and became leader of the United Australia Party (UAP) and at the beginning of 1932 became Prime Minister. Enid and her children moved into The Lodge in Canberra, and she became an extremely popular political spouse.

She was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the Coronation Honours of 1936.^[3][4] Joseph died in 1939, aged 59, the first Australian Prime Minister to die in office, and Dame Enid returned to Tasmania. She bitterly resented Joseph Lyons's successor as leader of the UAP, Robert Menzies, who she believed had betrayed her husband by resigning from the Cabinet, shortly before Joseph's death.

At the 1943 election Dame Enid Lyons won the Division of Darwin in north-western Tasmania for the UAP, becoming the first woman in the House of Representatives. At the same election, Dorothy Tangney (later Dame Dorothy) was elected as a Labor Senator for Western Australia, the nation's first woman Senator. In 1945 the UAP became the Liberal Party of Australia.

As a Roman Catholic from Australia's most provincial state, Enid Lyons was quite conservative (despite her husband's Labor roots) and her speeches in Parliament generally espoused traditional views on the family and other social issues.

In 1949 the Liberals came to power under Menzies' leadership. Their frosty personal relations thawed very slightly when Menzies appointed Lyons Vice-President of the Executive Council, a largely honorary post which gave her a seat in Cabinet but no departmental duties. But her health, always delicate, declined under the strain of regular travel between Canberra and Tasmania, and she retired at the 1951 election.

In retirement, Dame Enid Lyons's health recovered. She was a newspaper columnist (1951-1954), a commissioner of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1951-1962), and remained active in public life promoting family and women's issues. She published two volumes of memoirs, which embarrassed the Liberal Party by reviving her allegations that Menzies had been disloyal to Joseph Lyons in 1939.

Lyons was made a Dame of the Order of Australia (AD) on Australia Day 1980,^[5] the second of only two women to receive this honour. She died in 1981 and was accorded a state funeral in Devonport, before being buried next to her husband at the Mersey Vale Lawn Cemetery.

A socially conservative, Christian-based faction of the Liberal/National opposition parties was formed in 1992, and was named the Lyons Forum, after Dame Enid Lyons' maiden speech to the House of Representatives. Membership of the forum was always uncertain, and it seems to be currently inactive. ^[6]

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Enid Lyons, So We Take Comfort (1965)
• Enid Lyons, Among the Carrion Crows (1977)
• Kate White, Political Love Story: Joe and Enid Lyons (1987)

Political offices
Preceded by William Scully	Vice-President of the Executive Council 1949 – 1951	Succeeded by Robert Menzies
Parliament of Australia
Preceded by George Bell	Member for Darwin 1943 – 1951	Succeeded by Aubrey Luck