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.

While Health Minister Frank Anstey supported NSW Premier Jack Lang's bid to default on debt repayments, Lyons advocated orthodox fiscal management.

Nonetheless, Lyons' position was strong enough that on 6 January 1932, he was sworn in at the head of a UAP minority government with confidence and supply support from the Country Party.

[3] Following this election, having suffered an eight-seat swing, Lyons was forced to take the Country Party, led by Earle Page, into his government in a full-fledged Coalition.

In an effort to frustrate this move, Lang ordered State departments to pay all receipts directly to the Treasury instead of into Government bank accounts.

[3] In October 1933, James Fenton, co-founder of the United Australia Party, resigned from Cabinet over the lack of industry protection in the government's tariff schedules.

Treasurer Richard Casey introduced the National Insurance Bill in 1938 and it passed through the Parliament despite some opposition from Country Party members, however in the face of further criticisms over costs, the government repealed sections of the Act.

This back-down led to the resignation of UAP Deputy leader Robert Menzies in March 1939, who supported the plan and was by now openly antipathetic to Country Party members – notably Earle Page.

In 1934, the government sought to exclude Communist and anti-Nazi activist Egon Kisch from Australia, but lost a series of legal challenges and was widely seen as having embarrassed itself.

In 1936, British woman Mabel Freer was refused entry to Australia due to her relationship with a married Australian man, with immigration minister Thomas Paterson publicly defaming her character.

Lyons rejected a ten-point policy statement developed by Jack Patten on the grounds that the federal government had no constitutional ability to legislate for Indigenous people.

He announced the New Deal for Aborigines in December 1938, a landmark statement (released as a white paper in January 1939) which provided a pathway to full citizenship rights for Indigenous people consequent on a process of cultural assimilation.

[10]Prior to Lyons' death in April 1939, only minor steps were taken by the government in implementing the recommendations of the New Deal, including the creation of a Native Affairs branch within the Department of the Interior, based in Darwin, and the abolition of the post of Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory.

As prime minister, he travelled to London with wife Enid Lyons in 1935 for the Silver Jubilee celebrations of King George V and Queen Mary – a journey necessitating six months absence from Australia.

Lyons faced anti-Catholic demonstrations in Edinburgh, visited his ancestral homeland of Ireland and had an audience with the Pope in Rome.

[3] Lyons returned to Britain in 1937 for the coronation of King George VI, conducting a diplomatic mission to Italy en route on behalf of the British Government, visiting Benito Mussolini during the period of appeasement of Europe's Fascists in the lead up to World War II.

[5] On 7 April 1939, with the storm clouds of the Second World War gathering in Europe and the Pacific, Joseph Lyons became the first Prime Minister of Australia to die in office.