Mabel Magdalene Freer was a British woman whose exclusion from Australia on morality grounds in 1936 became a cause célèbre and led to a political controversy.
Freer aboard TSS Awatea in Sydney in December 1936, during her second attempt to enter Australia
Customs officials boarding TSS Awatea in connection with Freer's second attempt to enter Australia
Interior minister Thomas Paterson
Daily Telegraph cartoon satirising Paterson's attempts to justify Freer's deportation
The Lyons government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Joseph Lyons. It was made up of members of the United Australia Party in the Australian Parliament from January 1932 until the death of Joseph Lyons in 1939. Lyons negotiated a coalition with the Country Party after the 1934 Australian federal election. The Lyons government stewarded Australia's recovery from the Great Depression and established the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Lyons government
Poster promoting the return of the Lyons government at the 1937 federal election; Lyons became the first Australian prime minister to win three elections
Joseph Lyons with his politically active wife Enid Lyons.
UAP Minister and veteran World War I Prime Minister Billy Hughes (left) with Richard Casey and John Lavarack c. 1933. Hughes opposed the policy of "appeasement" favoured by the Western powers and warned of an Australia ill-prepared for the coming war.
