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Clip description
Dame Enid Lyons reads her maiden speech, originally presented in the House of Representatives in Canberra on 29 September 1943.
Curator’s notes
While it is possible to access Hansard records, newspaper reports and photos of the day, to actually hear the voice of Dame Enid Lyons brings to life the person as well as an important event in Australian political history.
In her biography of Lyons, Anne Henderson argues that she effectively used her domestic experience and abilty to speak plainly to great success in political debate throughout her career. For example, listen to her choice of words on the topic of housing: 'We want good walls and strong foundations; we want good fittings, but we don’t want something that will cost more than is necessary.’
According to newspaper reports of the period there was a great deal of public interest in her first appearance in Parliament. This interest probably led to the decision to record her reading the speech for broadcast on radio. There are a few slight differences in wording between the text of the official Hansard record and this recording. The sense of the significance of this event is suggested by the slight tremble in Lyons’s voice when she says, ‘This is the first occasion upon which a woman has addressed this House’.
During the speech, Lyons refers to recently seeing a film dealing with the European conflict, which included a scene of the evacuation of Dunkirk. Contemporary newspaper reports refer to screenings of American army films including Divide and Conquer (1943), which features a segment that bears a close resemblance to the footage Lyons describes.
