Joseph Lyons

Joseph Aloysius Lyons (15 September 1879 – 7 April 1939) was the tenth prime minister of Australia, serving from 1932 until his death in 1939. He held office as the inaugural leader of the United Australia Party (UAP), having previously led the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) 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 (1914–1916) 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...