MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Dame Enid Lyons was a mother of 12, but that wasn't enough for her. She was also the first woman to enter the House of Representatives when she was elected in 1943. During the federal election of that year, she was elected to the United Australia Party's candidate seat of Darwin in Tasmania. Dame Enid Lyons's maiden speech is so memorable because of the way it dips into her domestic life and it's woven in with her opinions on social justice and what she actually stood for.
MARGOT FOSTER:
I believe, very sincerely, that any woman entering the public arena must be prepared to work as men work. She must justify herself not as a woman but as a citizen. She must attack the same problems and be prepared to shoulder the same burdens. But because I am a woman, and cannot divest myself of those qualities that are inherent in my sex, and because every one of us speaks broadly in the terms of one's own experience, honourable members will have to become accustomed to the application of the homely metaphors of the kitchen rather than those of the operating theatre, the workshop, or the farm. They must also become accustomed to the application to all kinds of measures of the touchstone of their effect upon the home and the family life.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Dame Enid Lyons as part of her maiden speech to the House of Representatives when she was elected in 1943. We're going to hear more of that speech in more excerpts in just a moment re-enacted for us by Bush Telegraph's Margot Foster. But right now, to talk about the woman that is Dame Enid Lyons, I'd like to welcome to the studio, in fact, to the telephone, Kate Darian-Smith, who's a professor of History and Australian Studies at the University of Melbourne. Kate, welcome.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Yes, good morning.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
A lovely start to a fascinating life from Dame Enid Lyons. I would have thought that having 12 children was enough, but no, she had to go on to a political life. Does having 12 children prepare you for a political life, Kate?
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Well, look, I'm not the mother of 12. I have only 2 and I think it certainly does. But she's an extraordinary woman, Enid Lyons. She married very young, Joseph Lyons, her husband, who was considerably older than her. And, in fact, their relationship is often seen in letters between them. Their courting days show that as one of great respect, great love, sometimes referred to as one of the great public love stories in Australian politics. And she quickly went on to start having children, as I said, 12, over really quite a relatively small space of time. But always engaged with the ideas and the public life of her husband.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Indeed. And she's from a rural background. Hence, I guess, her representation in the seat of Darwin for Tasmania. From what I was reading of Enid Lyons's life, she often felt most at home in the wooden cottage that Joe Lyons and herself had in Tasmania.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Yes, Tasmania has a very, very deep place in Enid Lyons' writings about her home. She was born in a remote timber camp and always saw herself as a Tasmanian. And during the period when Joe Lyons was prime minister throughout the 1930s, she maintained a household that moved between Tasmania and the home that they had there, a rather simple home, the lodge in Canberra… And the Lyons were the first family to really use that as a family home. ..and the children went to school for a number of years in Melbourne. So I think it would have been an extraordinary feat of organisation running, basically, three households, 12 children and being the prime minister's wife, there was a lot of public duties, as well.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
It beggars belief. I don't know how she did it. But we might come back to more about the life of this amazing woman in just a moment, because let's go back again now to this infamous, or I should say, famous speech that she made as she gained that seat in the House of Representatives.
MARGOT FOSTER:
I would insist that every person in the community in receipt of any income whatsoever must make some contribution to the fund for social security. I want it to be an act of conscious citizenship. I want every child to be taught that when he begins to earn, then, for the first time, he will have the first privilege and right of citizenship to begin to contribute to the great scheme that has been designed to serve him when he is no longer able to work and to help all of those who at any period of their lives may meet with distress or trouble.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Kate Darian-Smith, how advanced is that kind of thinking in any politician at that time, of 1943?
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Well, I think what we have to remember is that Enid Lyons is no progressive feminist, in that she's representing a conservative party — the non-Labor Party, United Australia Party, when she's in parliament.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Nevertheless, she came from pretty good Labor stock, didn't she?
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Well, she came from Labor stock. And, indeed, her husband Joe Lyons was a member of the Labor Party but moved to the United Australia Party in a split over financial views during the Depression in the early '30s. So she went along with him. Her political inclinations followed those of her husband as indeed did her religious ones. She had been brought up a Methodist, but converted to Catholicism when she married Joe Lyons. So while her statement about social security to our ears sounds, I suppose, more to the left, we have to remember that in this period, there's a lot of discussion about rebuilding the home and about the importance of family life, issues that were very key to Enid Lyons' heart.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Given she has 12 children, it's not surprising.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
No, it's not surprising. She's very focussed on the domestic realm. But the social security, both parties in parliament at that point, are looking to a post-war future in greater distribution. And certainly while it was the Labor Party that pushed a social welfare package more strongly, I think her talking about social security and contribution to show how, if we think about both conservative thought, was also echoing those sentiments at the time.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Indeed. And I think it'd be fair to say when you look at the philosophies behind Liberalism in this country she is really espousing those true philosophies, is she not, because she's talking there about justice for all, but also social responsibility that you have something you contribute.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Yes, absolutely. It's liberal in the small 'l' liberal sense. Liberalism that is about individual responsibility and being part of a wider society as a participating citizen. She did mention in that speech that everyone has to participate, everyone has to contribute to the building of society and to their social and economic place within it.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
My guest is Kate Darian-Smith, who's a professor of History and Australian Studies at the University of Melbourne. And we're talking about Dame Enid Lyons, responsible for one of the great speeches born of rural Australia, because that's where she came from, as she entered the House of Representatives for her maiden speech in 1943. Let's return to that speech now. And one of the other issues that was on Dame Enid Lyons' mind, was, of course, population and the need to try and build a population in this country post-war.
MARGOT FOSTER:
I am delighted that the honourable member for Denison, Dr Gaha, should have secured the honour of having introduced to this chamber, in this debate, the subject of population. I, like him, have pondered on this subject, not with my feet upon the mantlepiece, but knee-deep in shawls and feeding bottles. I believe that something more than decentralisation is necessary if the population of Australia is to be increased. It would be well to go back a little while and look for the reasons for the decline of population during the last 50 or 60 years. Two main reasons are ascribed — the first the growth of industrialism and the changed conditions resulting therefrom. Population became urban instead of rural, and the conditions in which the children were brought up became less and less suitable. People were crowded, housing was inadequate and the large families went to the wall.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
That's Dame Enid Lyons. And I must say, Kate, in listening to… I know this is an enactment from our very own Margot Foster. But there's a humour that runs through the speech. Even though, obviously, she's most sincere about these issues that concern her, she's also not adverse at twisting some wry humour into her world view.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Yes, I think that's right. She's a very accomplished speechmaker by the time she's making this speech in the House of Representatives. Enid Lyons had been making political speeches since she was 20 years old and did play quite a large public role during her husband's period as prime minister. So she's, I think, a very warm speaker. That was often how she came across. She was a frequent speaker. I think the use of humour… Certainly, when she was giving this speech, everyone sitting in parliament would have known that she was the mother of 12 children. She's drawing upon, again, those references to domesticity, but certainly with a kind of wry tone.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Indeed. And we haven't got an excerpt that actually illustrates this more than the one where she talks about being a new broom and she has to fit in with the older brooms in the cupboard, implying that the other politicians, all male, are the older brooms, which I think is very funny. It's great. So I think this is a good point to make, too, Kate, that obviously very popular to be voted into Federal Parliament, first woman in the House of Reps to be like that. So, obviously, not only popular in her electorate, but as you say a most popular woman, probably one of the most well-known women of her time because of her public addresses around the nation. And I was reading from her son an account that says even when their mother was at home, she could make a speech about broccoli or lettuce and reduce you to tears or laughter. She had that power. So, obviously, a great adjunct to her husband, but also one of those leading figures in any nation at that time.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Yes, I think that's right. She really was well-known. Her husband, after all, had been in federal politics right through the 1930s. A lot of press opinion and attention was on the running of the family and she stood for many women as a rather… a model that it would be very, very difficult to emulate, of course, of someone who had a public life, again in support of her husband, but also ran a private household.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
One of our first true stateswomen, would you say?
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
I think so. I do think that she certainly was able to perform extremely well in a public sphere. She was well-respected. She had a career in politics that went on for some years and went into the Menzies government.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Menzies, in fact, gave her a ministry.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Yes, he did. She had an interesting relationship with Menzies, because she'd seen him… He had resigned from cabinet when Joe Lyons was very ill, really in the period leading up to his death. She was always a bit distrustful of Menzies and made that clear in her autobiography, but worked well with him in that government. So she's actually quite remarkable in, I suppose, the way in which she adjusts and works within the known structures, always arguing, and she did continue to argue this in all of her public addresses, her aims for the rights of women, particularly of women in the home.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
And I was reading, too, that, obviously, a woman, as you say, ensconced in one of the great political love affairs of the time. And when her husband, Joe Lyons, died, I think in 1939, she was devastated, but then continued, of course, to be a single parent to 12 children. And then entered parliament four years later. That's an extraordinary feat by any measure. And then later in life, suffered from ill health and it was discovered that she'd carried a broken pelvis since the birth of her first child.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Yes, quite remarkable, actually. Quite remarkable. And she actually retired from parliament in the 1950s in ill health, but, yes, obviously the burdens of bearing 12 children, certainly with a broken pelvis, it is extraordinary. She was quite an extraordinary woman. She was respected by the Labor Party, of course, as well. Under the Curtin government during the war, she was involved in a national inquiry into the birthrate. Obviously, who could be better than to be a public figure than Dame Enid Lyons talking there about the need to rebuild the family and so on? But she worked well within the Curtin government because those particular goals — greater reproduction, the Australian birthrate, there was quite a lot of concern that it seemed to be declining — could work well, then, with the Curtin government.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Not for the first time have we thought about birthrates and our concerns in that area. Kate Darian-Smith, thank you very much for giving us some insights into a remarkable person in this history of Australia. And it's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you.
KATE DARIAN-SMITH:
Thank you very much.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
Kate Darian-Smith, professor of History and Australian Studies at the University of Melbourne. Kate's also the editor of a book called Stirring Australian Speeches published by Melbourne University Press. We'll finish now with another excerpt, our final excerpt, from one of the great speeches of rural Australia from Dame Enid Lyons.
MARGOT FOSTER:
We need maternity and nursing services. We need some kind of domestic help service. We need better houses. But those things cannot in themselves revive the falling birthrate. We must look to the basic wage, which at present provides for the needs of three children for every man who receives it, yet how many thousands of men in this country have no children at all? Let the man's wages be a direct charge upon industry, but the children should be a charge on the whole community.
MICHAEL MACKENZIE:
And that's the Cate Blanchett of Bush Telegraph, Margot Foster there, re-enacting the maiden speech of Dame Enid Lyons.