Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to pay tribute to Tasmania's Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and the first woman to serve in a federal Australian cabinet—75 years ago this week. It is worth noting that, at the same election, Western Australia's Dorothy Tangney became the first woman elected to the Senate. My electorate is named jointly after Dame Enid and her husband, Joe Lyons, who to date—and I stress 'to date'—remains the only Tasmanian to hold the office of Prime Minister.

Dame Enid was, however, a formidable politician long before she was elected in 1943 to the federal seat of Darwin, which is now known as Braddon. That seat is held by my colleague Ms Keay, who will speak after me. For many years Dame Enid accompanied her career politician husband on the campaign trail, not just as a devoted wife but as a key confidant. In the days before politicians were gifted with paid staff and advisers, Enid played the role perfectly.

Dame Enid was born Enid Burnell in 1897 in a remote north-west Tasmanian timber camp. She grew up in Smithton, a nearby town. In her mid-teens she became a trained teacher. In 1912, while visiting the state parliament in Hobart, which back then was some distance away by train, Enid was introduced by her mother to Joseph Aloysius Lyons, who at the time was a state Labor MP for the seat of Wilmot. In 1915, following what has been described as 'decorous correspondence' between Enid and Joe, who was now state Labor Treasurer and education minister, the pair wed. Joe was 35 and Enid 17.

By 1922 Enid was mother to six children, but she took a leading part in election campaigning by talking to women about pots and pans, and children's shoes—what we call these days grassroots politics. While I hesitate these days to mention a working woman's family life, it's important to reference it in this context because the times were so different. There would have been an expectation and understanding in 1920s Australia that a woman's place was in the home and that her primary role was as a caregiver. Still in her mid-20s Enid was mother to six children and yet was also a significant party campaigner and key adviser to her husband. This was trailblazing stuff. Enid would go on to have 12 children by 1933.

In 1923 Joe became the Labor Premier and in 1925 Enid stood as a Labor candidate for the state seat of Denison, a Hobart based seat. She lost by just 60 votes. A whooping cough epidemic during the campaign attacked five of the Lyons' children and their 10-month-old baby died of pneumonia. In 1929 Joe Lyons was elected as the federal Labor MP for Wilmot, now Lyons, and Enid's political focus shifted to the national stage. She is reported to have played a critical role in Joe's decision to break with the Labor Party. We've got a term for that in the Labor Party, but, given the valedictory nature of this speech, I won't reference it. Enid had never been a true believer in Labor but she did retain a lifelong commitment to equality, security and social justice. These are traits we all share.

Ambitious for her husband, she was a political pragmatist by nature and she had been concerned by Labor's response to the financial crisis caused by the Great Depression. She had no problem urging Joe to jump ship. In 1931 Joe left Labor and he helped form a new party—the United Australia Party—which included in its number former Labor and Nationalist Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who was even then as old as Methuselah, and future Prime Minister Bob Menzies. Joe was the party's first leader. Of course, as we all know, the UAP later rebadged itself as the Liberal Party. I think after its formation it went on to win two or three elections, so it was very successful in its formative years. If Enid hadn't whispered to her husband, the first leader of that party, who knows where Australian politics would be today? She was a very significant figure.

Enid was an enthusiastic campaigner for the UAP, so much so that Menzies is said to have complained that she was stealing the men's limelight. She's reported to have later said, 'Together on a platform, Joe and I worked like partners in a game of bridge.' Everything that Joe and Enid did was done together. Upon winning the December 1931 federal election in a landslide, defeating the Scullin Labor government after just one term, Joe's first act was to write to Enid, 'Whatever honours or distinctions come are ours, not mine.'

I could go on about her life before her parliamentary career and talk about some of the issues that she cared about, but I want to say this. In 1938, and with the drums of war beating in Europe, Enid gave speech after speech on the subject of peace and disarmament. She was a staunch defender of Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement towards Europe's fascists, and she was not alone in that. At the time a lot of people thought the best way to avoid war was to appease the fascists. But after Hitler's treachery with Poland, she said, in her first speech, that she could 'never again advocate such a policy'. She became very much an ardent supporter of Australia being able to support itself militarily.

She suffered deep depression following her beloved husband's death in office. He remains, to date, the only Prime Minister to have died in office. For 24 years they'd been virtually inseparable. But she continued to be politically active. Enid stood for election for the federal seat of Darwin, which covered the Lyons's home in and around Devonport, and was elected in August 1943—the same year she was made a Dame by the King. In her first speech she spoke about the issues she'd always sought to advance: the need for a robust social security system, Australia's declining birth rate, housing, family, the need to extend child endowment and the importance of planning for a postwar future where hundreds of thousands of men would be returning from the front.

In the matter of social security, one thing stands out clearly in my mind:

Such things are necessary in order that the weak shall not go to the wall, that the strong may be supported, that all may have justice.

These were the words of Dame Enid Lyons in her first speech. She also said:

We go along, thinking always that we progress, but sometimes we have to pause and take stock. I think that every Australian should pause now and again and say to himself, "Only 150 years ago this land was wilderness. Now we have great cities, wonderful feats of engineering and beautiful buildings everywhere. And this is still a land of promise".

In 1949, Dame Enid was elevated to sit in Bob Menzies's cabinet, though without portfolio, which she was very unhappy about. She retired from parliament in 1951, but certainly not from public life. She was an active newspaper columnist. She chaired the Jubilee Women's Convention in 1951 and was a member of the ABC from 1951 to 1962. She was a longstanding member of the Victoria League, the Housewives Association and the CWA. And it must be said: she was a beloved lifelong member of the Liberal Party in Tasmania, where she continues to be revered.

She also wrote articles and autobiographical volumes, and I think one title referenced Billy Hughes once saying of her that she was like a 'nightingale amongst the carrion crows'.

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