The 1937 Federal Election

Two popular icons of the 1930s: Joseph Lyons poses with Shirley Temple. From the Home Hill Museum, Devonport.

On this day, 23 October 1937, the Lyons Government is re-elected for its third term of office. Joseph Lyons thus became the first Australian Prime Minister to win three successive elections, a testament to the political instability that had characterised our early Federal history. ‘Honest Joe’ was tremendously popular with the Australian public, as the mild-mannered Tasmanian used radio broadcasts to reach into the homes of ordinary voters, while his large family and background as a schoolteacher gave him a grassroots appeal that centre-right politicians often lacked. This would be the first election in which Robert Menzies would campaign as the United Australia Party Deputy, with Lyons leaning heavily on him as the two men engaged in a gruelling schedule of travel and speechmaking.

The election would be the stiffest test that the Lyons Government had thus far faced. The UAP had been conjured into existence to ‘save Australia’ from the crisis of the Great Depression, and while it could take credit for having achieved this and brought about rising economic prosperity, the accomplishment of the task eliminated the party’s raison d'être. The UAP was increasingly directionless, being held together by little more than Lyons’s popularity. Without a clear agenda and with important defence discussions taking place in the United Kingdom, 1937 had been a notoriously thin year as far as parliamentary sittings were concerned, while in March a referendum to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws over the marketing of goods had been heavily defeated.

On the other side of the aisle, their Labor opponents had a new sense of unity under their new leader John Curtin. Curtin had successfully re-integrated the Lang Laborites of New South Wales, who had split off from the main party under the direction of the populist (now former) Premier Jack Lang, back into the mainstream Labor fold. The Labor Party also had a sense of electoral momentum, having won the Gwydir by-election for what should have been a safe Country Party seat (albeit with the help of three Country Party candidates splitting the vote). As far as Labor was concerned the new prosperity was an illusion that was not being adequately shared, and they hoped to capitalise on this.

With international tensions high in the lead up to the Second World War, defence would figure as the key election issue. Following the direction of the Imperial Conference he had just attended, Lyons wanted Australia to invest money in her Navy in order that Australia could take her place in an Empire-wide coordinated security strategy based on Britain commanding the seas. That is not to say that Lyons neglected defence spending in other areas, during his tenure it grew from 5.5% to a staggering 14.9% of overall expenditure.

While he somewhat agreed on the necessity of the spending, Curtin rejected the naval focus and wanted the money redirected to the Army, munitions, and above all the Air Force so that Australia could have the self-reliance to defend herself in the event that Imperial Forces were occupied elsewhere. Lyons dubbed this an ‘isolationist’ strategy, that was naïve in thinking Australia could go it alone. It was the existence of a strong Australian Navy that would keep Britain engaged in the Pacific; without it Australia was far more likely to be left to her fate. Labor in turn accused the Government of secretly plotting conscription, even though this was a bit incongruent with their accusation that Lyons was only focused on ships.

The other major debate was on the Government’s proposal for a scheme of national insurance, where weekly contributions would make ‘available for the great majority of the employed population guaranteed benefits during sickness, medical treatment at all times, pensions for widows and orphans, and superannuation’.  Labor proposed a corresponding system of unemployment insurance, pensions for widows with dependent children, and a 40-hour work week, but as broader social services without the emphasis on the contributory basis.

Menzies, who gave the Government’s response to Curtin’s policy speech, attacked Labor’s proposals as dangerously inflationary. On the matter of defence, he maintained the traditional line that ‘the protection of Australia lay in British naval power, and that is why the Lyons Government, in co-operation with the British Government, was preparing to make the navy the first line of defence’. Above all, he thought that the Government should be re-elected based on its stellar economic record.

In the end the Government won the election quite comfortably, but most agreed this was more an endorsement of Lyons the man than the UAP and its policies. For Menzies it must have been bittersweet. Lyons had privately indicated that he intended to hand over the leadership to Menzies, but the party had pressured Lyons to stay on as they needed his popularity to win. During the election Lyons had even promised voters that ‘I am going to continue as leader for a long time yet’. Tragically, Lyons’s health would not allow him to hold true to that promise, and so it was that the electoral majority that the Coalition won in 1937 would ultimately be the one that made Robert Menzies Prime Minister for the first time.

Further Reading:

A.W. Martin, Robert Menzies, A Life: Volume 1 1894-1943 (Melbourne University Press, 1993).

Anne Henderson, Joseph Lyons: The People's Prime Minister (NewSouth Publishing, 2011).