Lyons Government

The Right Honourable Joseph Lyons CH
10th Prime Minister of Australia Elections: 1931, 1934, 1937
In office 6 January 1932 – 7 April 1939
Monarch	George V Edward VIII George VI
Governor-General	Isaac Isaacs Alexander Hore-Ruthven
Preceded by	James Scullin
Succeeded by	Earle Page

The Lyons Government was the federal Executive Government of Australia led by Prime Minister Joseph Lyons. It was made up of members of the United Australia Party in the Australian Parliament from January 1932 until the death of Joseph Lyons in 1939. Lyons negotiated a coalition with the Country Party after the 1934 Australian Federal election. The Lyons government stewarded Australia's recovery from the Great Depression

The background to the Lyons Government saw Australia grappling with the immense challenges of the Great Depression.

Joseph Lyons began his political career as an Australian Labor Party politician and served as Premier of Tasmania. Lyons was elected to the Australian Federal Parliament in 1929 and served in Prime Minister James Scullin's Labor Cabinet. Lyons became acting Treasurer in 1930 and helped negotiate the government's strategies for dealing with the Great Depression. With Scullin temporarily absent in London, Lyons and acting Prime Minister James Fenton clashed with the Labor Cabinet and Caucus over economic policy, and grappled with the differing proposals of the Premier's Plan, Lang Labor, the Commonwealth Bank and British adviser Otto Niemeyer. While Health Minister Frank Anstey supported NSW Premier Jack Lang's bid to default on debt repayments, Lyons advocated orthodox fiscal management. When Labor reinstated the more radical Ted Theodore as Treasurer in 1931, Lyons and Fenton resigned from Cabinet.

The stance of Joseph Lyons and Trade Minister James Fenton against the more radical proposals of the Labor movement to deal the Depression had attracted the support of prominent Australian conservatives, known as "the Group", whose number included future prime minister Robert Menzies. In parliament on 13 March 1931, though still a member of the ALP, Lyons supported a no confidence motion against the Scullin Labor government. He resigned from the ALP soon afterward, along with Trade Minister James Fenton and four other right-wing ALP MPs. The United Australia Party was then formed from a merger of the six Labor dissidents, the opposition Nationalist Party of Australia, and several citizens' groups. Lyons became the new party's leader, and hence Leader of the Opposition, with John Latham, the last leader of the Nationalists, as his deputy. The presence of the working-class Lyons as leader allowed the UAP to portray itself as the party of national unity, even though at bottom it was an upper- and middle-class conservative party.

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