Enid Lyons

The Honourable Dame Enid Lyons AD, GBE
Enid and Joseph Lyons in the 1930s
Spouse of the Prime Minister of Australia
In office 6 January 1932 – 7 April 1939
Preceded by	Sarah Scullin
Succeeded by	Lady Page
Member of the Australian Parliament for Darwin
In office 21 August 1943 – 19 March 1951
Preceded by	George Bell
Succeeded by	Aubrey Luck
Personal details
Born	Enid Muriel Burnell (1897-07-09)9 July 1897 Smithton, Tasmania
Died	2 September 1981(1981-09-02) (aged 84)
Nationality	Australian
Political party	UAP (1943–44) Liberal (1944–51)
Spouse(s)	Joseph Lyons
Children	12
Occupation	Teacher
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Dame Enid Muriel Lyons AD, GBE (née Burnell; 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 achievements, she was best known as the wife of the Premier of Tasmania and later Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Lyons.

Early life and career

Lyons was born Enid Muriel Burnell in Smithton, Tasmania, one of three daughters of William and Eliza (née Taggett) Burnell, and educated at the Teacher's Training College, Hobart and later became a school teacher. Her mother was an activist in Labor and community groups in Tasmania. She was one of the first women appointed as a Justice of the Peace in Tasmania. Eliza Burnell apparently introduced her teenaged daughter to Joseph Lyons, a rising Tasmanian Labor politician. The two married two years later. Enid had been brought up a Methodist but became, at Lyons' request, a Roman Catholic.^[1]

On 28 April 1915, when she was 17 and Lyons was 35, the couple wed, at Wynyard, Tasmania; they would have twelve children, one of whom died in infancy.^[2][3]

Enid Lyons

Lyons was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the Coronation Honours of 1937.^[4][5] Joseph Lyons 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 had, she believed, betrayed her husband by resigning from the Cabinet, shortly before Joseph's death.^[1]

The Lyons family in the 1930s on the lawns of The Lodge.

At the 1943 election Dame Enid Lyons narrowly won the Division of Darwin in north-western Tasmania for the UAP, becoming the first woman in the House of Representatives. Her Labor opponent, who received more primary votes than she did, was the future Tasmanian Premier Eric Reece. At the same election, Dorothy Tangney was elected as a Labor Senator for Western Australia, the nation's first woman Senator.^[6] In 1945 the UAP became the Liberal Party of Australia.

On 23 August 1944 Enid Lyons was one of four speakers in a debate on population which became the Australian Broadcasting Commission's "largest controversy during the war years"^[7] Lyons devoted a chapter to this Australian Broadcasting Corporation debate in her 1972 autobiography, calling it 'one of the most disturbing experiences I was to know as a member of parliament'. Her fellow debaters were Norman Haire, Jessie Street and the economist Colin Clark.^[1]

By the time she was elected to Parliament in her own right, there was very little left of her Labor ties. 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. The frosty personal relations between Menzies and Dame Enid thawed slightly when Menzies gave her the role of Vice-President of the Executive Council. This was a largely honorary post which gave her a seat in Cabinet but no departmental duties. Nevertheless, her health declined under the strain of regular travel between Canberra and Tasmania, and she retired from parliament prior to the 1951 election.^[1]

Later life and legacy

Sir Robert Menzies, Dame Enid, Sir Eric Harrison, Harold Holt and Sir Thomas White in 1946.

In retirement, Dame Enid's health recovered. She was a newspaper columnist (1951–54), a commissioner of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1951–62), and remained active in public life promoting family and women's issues. She published three volumes of memoirs, which embarrassed the Liberal Party by reviving her complaints about Menzies' 1939 behaviour towards her husband.^[1]

She was nevertheless made a Dame of the Order of Australia (AD) on Australia Day 1980,^[8] the second woman to receive this honour. She was the first Australian woman to receive damehoods in different orders. She died the following year and was accorded a state funeral in Devonport, Tasmania, before being buried next to her husband at Mersey Vale Lawn Cemetery.^[1]

An informal political faction of the Liberal/National opposition parties called the Lyons Forum was formed in 1992. The group's name alluded to Lyons' maiden speech to the House of Representatives. The faction was considered to be defunct in 2004.^[9]

Notes

Further reading

• Enid Lyons, So We Take Comfort (1965)
• Enid Lyons, The Old Haggis (1969)
• Enid Lyons, Among the Carrion Crows (1972)
• Anne Henderson, Dame Enid Lyons: Leading Lady to a Nation (2008)
• Kate White, Political Love Story: Joe and Enid Lyons (1987)

External links

• Enid Muriel Lyons in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in the Twentieth Century
• Listen to a recorded version of Enid Lyon's maiden speech in Parliament and read more about it on australianscreen online. This recording was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry in 2011.

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