Page, Sir Earle (1880-1961), served as prime minister of Australia for less than three weeks in 1939. He took office after the death of the previous prime minister, Joseph Lyons. Page was Australia’s first caretaker prime minister—that is, he served as prime minister on a temporary basis until his replacement could be chosen.
Page belonged to the conservative Country Party (now the National Party), which represented the interests of rural Australians. He helped found the party and headed it from 1921 to 1939.
Page had a long career in government, both before and after becoming prime minister. He was one of Australia’s longest-serving members of Parliament, holding his seat for 41 years 361 days, from 1919 to 1961. He also held several Cabinet posts. He received a knighthood in 1938 for his contribution to politics, becoming Sir Earle Page. He was the first Australian prime minister to be knighted before he took office.
Early years
Boyhood and education.
Earle Christmas Grafton Page was born on Aug. 8, 1880, in Grafton, New South Wales, Australia. His parents were Charles Page, an English-born blacksmith and coach builder, and Annie Cox Page. Earle enrolled in the University of Sydney at the age of 15. He graduated in 1902 with a degree in medicine. He trained as a surgeon at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, a teaching hospital in Sydney. There, he met a nurse named Ethel Esther Blunt (1876-1958).
Marriage and family.
In 1903, Page returned to Grafton, where he established a country medical practice. He started a small private hospital, which he equipped with an X-ray machine and other technology that was advanced for that time. He also bought a sawmill and dairy farms. In addition, he became part owner of a newspaper, The (Grafton) Daily Examiner. His hospital and farms eventually made him wealthy.
Page hired Ethel Blunt to supervise his Grafton hospital. On Sept. 18, 1906, the young couple married. They had a daughter named Mary (1909-1994) and four sons—Earle (1910-1933), Donald (1912-1989), Iven (1914-1945), and Douglas (1916-2006).
Military service.
In 1916, during World War I, Page joined the Army Medical Corps of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). The AIF was the part of the Australian Army that fought overseas. He served as a surgeon in military hospitals in Egypt, France, and the United Kingdom. He left the Army in 1917.
Political career
Entry into politics.
Page was elected mayor of South Grafton in 1918. In 1919, he won election to the Australian House of Representatives. He represented Cowper, a district in New South Wales. He held the seat through 17 elections, until 1961.
In 1919, Page ran as an independent candidate with the support of the Farmers and Settlers Association of New South Wales. In 1920, the association merged with several other rural-based parties to form the Country Party. The new party elected Page as its leader in April 1921.
Cabinet member.
In the election of 1922, the Nationalist Party and the Labor Party won almost the same number of seats. To form a government, the Nationalists needed to enter a coalition (partnership) with Page’s Country Party. Page, however, refused to form a coalition because he disliked the policies of the Nationalist leader, William M. Hughes, on rural issues. Hughes resigned and was replaced by Stanley M. Bruce, whom Page was willing to support.
Bruce became prime minister, and Page became the unofficial deputy prime minister. The coalition, known as the Bruce-Page government, lasted until 1929. Page served as treasurer of Australia from 1923 to 1929. The Bruce-Page government promoted Australia’s agricultural exports through a variety of measures. Such measures included subsidies (government support) for the export of many farm products.
In 1934, Page brought the Country Party into a coalition with the United Australia Party (UAP), which was led by Prime Minister Joseph Lyons. Page became minister for commerce, an office he held until 1939. He also held the post of minister for health in 1937 and 1938. In 1938, King George VI of the United Kingdom made Page a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
Prime minister.
Prime Minister Lyons died suddenly on April 7, 1939. Lord Gowrie, the governor general (representative of the British monarch), called on Page to become caretaker prime minister. Page took office on April 7. He served until Lyons’s party, the UAP, elected Robert Gordon Menzies as its new leader.
Page refused, however, to serve with Menzies. He accused Menzies of cowardice for not enlisting in World War I. He also charged that Menzies was disloyal to Lyons. Page resigned as prime minister on April 26 and withdrew the Country Party from the coalition. Menzies then became prime minister.
Page’s criticism of Menzies disturbed many members of Page’s own party. Page was forced to resign as the Country Party’s leader on Sept. 13, 1939.
Cabinet member again.
By 1940, Page had settled his dispute with Menzies. He then returned to the Cabinet as minister for commerce under Menzies. Page again became minister for health under Menzies, holding the post from 1949 to 1955. In October 1952, Page became the ”father of the House of Representatives” and ”father of the Parliament,” two informal titles given to the longest-serving member.
Later years
In 1955, Sir Earle became the first chancellor (head administrative officer) of the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales. Ethel Page died on May 26, 1958. On July 20, 1959, Sir Earle married Jean Thomas, his secretary. He spent the last years of life writing a memoir, Truant Surgeon: The Inside Story of Forty Years of Australian Political Life. The book was published in 1963, after his death.
Sir Earle refused to resign from Parliament even after learning he had lung cancer in 1961. He went into a coma just before the election on Dec. 9, 1961. He died on December 20, at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, where he had trained. He never learned that he had lost his seat in Parliament in the election. Page’s grandson Donald L. Page became a member of the Parliament of New South Wales in 1988.
