100 Facts About Earle Page

Sir Earle Christmas Grafton Page was an Australian politician and surgeon who served as the 11th prime minister of Australia from 7 to 26 April 1939, in a caretaker capacity following the death of Joseph Lyons.

Earle Page was the leader of the Country Party from 1921 to 1939, and was the most influential figure in its later years.

Earle Page entered the University of Sydney at the age of 15, and completed a degree in medicine at the age of 21.

Earle Page soon became involved in local politics, and in 1915 purchased a part-share in The Daily Examiner, a local newspaper.

Earle Page briefly was a military surgeon during World War I Page gained prominence as an advocate of various development schemes for the Northern Rivers region, especially those involving hydroelectricity.

Earle Page helped found a movement for New England statehood.

In 1919, Page was elected to Federal Parliament representing the Division of Cowper.

Earle Page joined the new Country Party the following year as its inaugural whip, and then replaced William McWilliams as party leader in 1921.

Earle Page opposed the economic policies of Prime Minister Billy Hughes, and when the Country Party gained the balance of power at the 1922 election, he demanded Hughes' resignation as the price for a coalition with the Nationalist Party.

Earle Page was made Treasurer of Australia under the new prime minister, Stanley Bruce, serving in that role from 1923 to 1929.

Earle Page had a significant degree of influence on domestic policy, with Bruce concentrating on international issues.

Earle Page returned to cabinet after the 1934 election, when the Country Party entered a new coalition with Joseph Lyons' United Australia Party.

Earle Page was appointed Minister for Commerce, and concentrated on agricultural issues.

When Lyons died in office in April 1939, Earle Page was commissioned as his successor in a caretaker capacity while the UAP elected a new leader, Robert Menzies.

Earle Page subsequently denounced Menzies and refused to serve in his cabinet, withdrawing the Country Party from the coalition, but this proved unpopular and he resigned the party leadership after a few months.

The coalition was eventually reconstituted, and Earle Page served again as Minister for Commerce under Menzies and Arthur Fadden until the government's defeat in October 1941.

Earle Page retired from cabinet at the age of 76, and died a short time after losing his seat at the 1961 election.

Earle Page served in parliament for almost 42 years, the third longest-serving Australian parliamentarian of all time; only Menzies lasted longer as the leader of a major Australian political party.

Earle Christmas Grafton Page was born in Grafton, New South Wales, on 8 August 1880.

Earle Page was the fifth of eleven children born to Charles Earle Page and Mary Johanna Haddon Cox.

Earle Page's parents had both lived in Grafton since they were children.

Earle Page's mother was born in Tasmania to an English father and a Scottish mother.

Earle Page's father, born in London, was a successful businessman and a member of the Grafton City Council, serving a single term as mayor in 1908.

Earle Page began his schooling at Grafton Public School, where he excelled academically.

Earle Page consequently had to rely on scholarships to advance his education.

Earle Page was equal top in mathematics in his first year, and was awarded the lucrative Struth Exhibition for "general proficiency in the arts", which allowed him to switch to medicine and covered his first four years of medical school.

At Sydney Medical School, Earle Page's lecturers included William Haswell, James Hill, Charles Martin, Anderson Stuart, and James Wilson.

Earle Page returned to his home town in 1903, taking over a practice in South Grafton.

Earle Page upgraded to an Itala in 1908, and had the chassis enlarged so it could be used as an ambulance.

Earle Page had an x-ray machine installed in his hospital, one of the first in Australia outside a major city.

Earle Page developed a reputation for surgical innovation, taking a number of patients from Sydney and even some from interstate.

Earle Page became an inaugural Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1927, and in 1942 was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

In February 1916, Earle Page enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Corps.

Earle Page was chief medical officer aboard the troopship HMAT Ballarat, and was then stationed at an army hospital in Cairo for several months.

Earle Page was transferred to a hospital in England in July 1916, and concluded his service as a surgical specialist at a casualty clearing station in France.

Earle Page returned to Australia in March 1917 and was discharged from the military in July 1917.

Earle Page bought several large farming properties in South-East Queensland, including in Nerang, Kandanga, and the Numinbah Valley; Pages Pinnacle in the Numinbah State Forest is named after him.

Earle Page believed that it could be applied to the Northern Rivers region, which was still mostly unelectrified outside of the major towns.

Earle Page was elected to the South Grafton Municipal Council in 1913, believing his position as an alderman would be useful in his lobbying efforts.

In 1915, Earle Page was one of the founders of the Northern New South Wales Separation League, which advocated the creation of a new state in the New England region.

Earle Page toured a number of towns to raise awareness of the new movement, but interest waned as a result of the ongoing war.

Earle Page visited a number of hydroelectric sites in North America in 1917, on his way back from military service in France.

Earle Page was elected mayor of South Grafton in 1918, serving until 1920, and became the inaugural president of the North Coast Development League.

Earle Page developed more concrete plans for a hydroelectric project on the Clarence River, and put forward various other development schemes relating to roads, railways, and ports, all of which served to raise his profile in the local district.

Earle Page was elected to the Australian House of Representatives at the 1919 federal election, defeating the sitting Nationalist MP, John Thomson in the Division of Cowper.

Earle Page stood as an independent with the endorsement of the Farmers' and Settlers' Association, and after the election joined the new Country Party, along with 10 other MPs from rural seats.

Earle Page continued to advocate for hydroelectricity throughout his political career, and many such projects were built in New South Wales.

Decentralisation remained a pet project, with Earle Page frequently arguing for New South Wales and Queensland to be divided into smaller states to aid regional development.

Earle Page was elected leader of the Country Party in 1921, replacing William McWilliams.

Earle Page then began negotiations with Hughes' successor as leader of the Nationalists, Stanley Bruce.

Earle Page's terms were stiff; he wanted his Country Party to have five seats in an 11-man cabinet, including the post of Treasurer and the second rank in the ministry for himself.

Earle Page was acting prime minister on several occasions, and in January 1924 chaired the first meeting of Federal Cabinet ever held in Canberra, at Yarralumla.

The final years of Earle Page's treasurership were marked by the beginnings of an economic downturn.

Earle Page was a strong believer in orthodox finance and conservative policies, as well as a "high protectionist" supporting tariff barriers to protect Australian rural industries.

Earle Page introduced a series of reforms to the Commonwealth Bank to enhance its central banking functions.

In 1924, Bruce and Earle Page established the Loan Council to coordinate public-sector borrowings between the state and federal governments.

Earle Page was one of the chief supporters of the National Insurance Bill 1928, which would have provided "sickness, old age, disability and maternity benefits", as well as payments to orphans and a limited form of child endowment.

Earle Page regarded time out of office as a period which "sharpened our wits and enabled us to prepare public opinion for the policies we hoped to implement when the next opportunity came".

Earle Page rejected this and insisted that the trade and customs portfolio be assigned to the Country Party.

Earle Page considered retiring from politics but was persuaded to instead take a leave of absence, with his deputy Thomas Paterson serving as acting leader of the Country Party for nine months.

Earle Page eventually negotiated a new coalition agreement with Page, which provided four ministerial positions and assurances around tariff policies.

Earle Page was appointed Minister for Commerce, a significant portfolio covering agriculture and trade policy, and again became the de facto deputy prime minister.

Earle Page found some of his attempts to guide policy were stymied by state agricultural ministers, with the AAC remaining a voluntary body reliant on passage of state legislation.

Earle Page was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in the New Year's Day Honours of 1938.

Earle Page held the office for three weeks until the UAP elected former deputy leader Robert Menzies as its new leader, and hence prime minister.

Earle Page had been close to Lyons, but disliked Menzies, whom he charged publicly with having been disloyal to Lyons.

Earle Page contacted Stanley Bruce and offered to resign his seat if Bruce would return to Australia to seek re-election to the parliament in a by-election for Earle Page's old seat, and then seek election as UAP leader.

When Menzies was elected UAP leader, Earle Page refused to serve under him, and made an extraordinary personal attack on him in the House, accusing him not only of ministerial incompetence but of physical cowardice.

Earle Page attempted to regain the party's leadership, but was deadlocked with John McEwen over multiple ballots.

Earle Page replaced Cameron as Minister for Commerce in the reconstituted ministry.

The new prime minister John Curtin nonetheless allowed Earle Page to take up the position, declining his offer to return to Australia.

Earle Page assisted in the creation of the Pacific War Council early the following year.

Earle Page later recalled Winston Churchill's frustration in war cabinet meetings with Curtin's decision to withdraw troops from the Middle East and North Africa and return them to Australia.

Earle Page credited himself with helping negate the tensions between the two men, but in February 1942 mistakenly advised Churchill that the Australian government was amenable to diverting the 7th Division to Burma rather than return it directly to Australia.

Earle Page wrote to Curtin in April 1942 that since January he had been through "the worst period of acute mental distress of my whole life".

Earle Page's tenure was not regarded as a success, and he was said to have suffered from a lack of experience in diplomacy.

Earle Page left London in June 1942 following a severe bout of pneumonia.

Earle Page had been made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour before his departure.

Earle Page spent the remaining years of the Curtin and Chifley governments on the opposition backbench.

Earle Page served on the Advisory War Council and was a delegate to the constitutional convention in Canberra in late 1942, which included members of all major political parties.

Earle Page was reappointed Minister for Health after the Coalition won the 1949 federal election, at the age of 69.

Earle Page was the chief architect of the National Health Act 1953, which established a national public health scheme based on government subsidies of voluntary private insurance and free medical services for pensioners.

Earle Page played a key role in securing the support of the medical profession, which had strongly opposed the Chifley government's attempt to introduce universal health care.

Unlike in previous governments, Earle Page had little influence beyond his own policy area and was frustrated by the lack of interest in his ideas for national development.

In 1951 when Senator Gordon Brown of the ALP suffered a stroke while speaking in the Senate, Earle Page, a trained surgeon rushed in from the House to treat him before medical professionals could take Brown to hospital for treatment.

Earle Page retired from cabinet at the age of 76, moving to the backbench in January 1956 after the December 1955 election.

Earle Page sought a 17th term in parliament at the 1961 election, having joined Billy Hughes two years earlier as only the second person to serve over 40 years in federal parliament.

Earle Page was diagnosed with bowel cancer and underwent immediate surgery.

Earle Page had been gravely ill even before being admitted to hospital and was too sick to campaign nearly as actively as he had campaigned in the previous four decades.

Earle Page fought the election anyway, though he scarcely appeared on the hustings.

Earle Page died in hospital on 20 December 1961, aged 81.

Earle Page was granted a state funeral at St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney.

The seat had been reported as a Labor gain on election night 11 days earlier; Earle Page died without knowing he had been defeated.

Earle Page had represented Cowper for just four days short of 42 years, making him the longest-serving Australian federal parliamentarian who represented the same seat throughout his career.

Earle Page was the last former prime minister to lose his seat until Tony Abbott lost his seat of Warringah in 2019, though John Howard would lose his seat of Bennelong as a sitting prime minister in 2007.

Earle Page soon began courting her, and convinced her to become the matron of his new hospital in Grafton.

Earle Page gave up nursing after their marriage, but was active in politics and community organisations.

Earle Page was predeceased by his first wife and his oldest son.

On 20 July 1959 at St Paul's Cathedral, London, Earle Page married for a second time, wedding his long-serving secretary Jean Thomas.

The second Lady Earle Page lived for almost 50 years after her husband's death, dying on 20 June 2011; her ashes were interred at Northern Suburbs Crematorium.