Lyons, Joseph Aloysius

Related Category: Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands History: Biographies

(lī´ənz), 1879–1939, Australian statesman, b. Tasmania. He left schoolteaching in 1909 to enter political life, was a Labour member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly until 1929, and was premier of Tasmania. He became a member of the commonwealth Parliament in 1929 and held cabinet posts, but in 1931 he repudiated the Labour government's proposals of inflation to solve the depression and helped form a coalition United Australia party. As prime minister of Australia for three terms (1932–39), he reduced the national debt and restored the country to solvency.