Earle Page

Page's first professional posting came before he had even been registered as a medical practitioner. Due to a shortage of doctors, he was acting superintendent of the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children for one month.[9] In 1902, he took up a position as a resident at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, serving in a variety of roles including as house surgeon under Robert Scot Skirving. During that time he contracted a near-fatal infection from a postmortem examination.[10] He also met his future wife, nurse Ethel Blunt.[11] Page returned to his home town in 1903, taking over a practice in South Grafton. He and two partners subsequently established a new private hospital, Clarence House Hospital, which opened in 1904 and served both Grafton and the surrounding region.[12]

Page was a keen adopter of new technologies. In 1904, he bought what he claimed was "the first Rover car in Australia", which was powered by kerosene.[13] He upgraded to an Itala in 1908, and had the chassis enlarged so it could be used as an ambulance. He also had an x-ray machine installed in his hospital, one of the first in Australia outside a major city.[14] Page developed a reputation for surgical innovation, taking a number of patients from Sydney and even some from interstate. One operation that brought him particular fame was the removal of a patient's diseased lung, a procedure that had only been invented a few years previously.[15] Page became an inaugural Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (FRACS) in 1927, and in 1942 was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (FRCS).[16]

In February 1916, Page enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Corps. He served as chief medical officer aboard the troopship HMAT Ballarat, and was then stationed at an army hospital in Cairo for several months. He 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. Page returned to Australia in March 1917 and was discharged from the military in July 1917.[16] Although his active involvement in medicine declined as his political career progressed, he was frequently called upon to treat his fellow MPs or parliamentary staff. This was particularly true after the federal government moved to Canberra, as the new capital had only a handful of qualified surgeons. In 1928, for instance, he performed an emergency appendectomy on Parker Moloney.[17]

Page in about 1920

Page's medical career brought him considerable wealth, and he began investing in land. He 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.[18] His entry into public life came about as a result of his passion for hydroelectricity, which he first observed in New Zealand while attending a medical convention in 1910. He believed that it could be applied to the Northern Rivers region, which was still mostly unelectrified outside of the major towns. Page was elected to the South Grafton Municipal Council in 1913, believing his position as an alderman would be useful in his lobbying efforts. However, his overtures to the state government were rebuffed. In 1915, 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. He toured a number of towns to raise awareness of the new movement, but interest waned as a result of the ongoing war. Later that year, he was part of a syndicate that bought The Daily Examiner, the local newspaper in Grafton.[19]

Page visited a number of hydroelectric sites in North America in 1917, on his way back from military service in France. He was elected mayor of South Grafton in 1918, serving until 1920, and also became the inaugural president of the North Coast Development League. He 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. Page was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1919 federal election, defeating the sitting Nationalist MP, John Thomson in the Division of Cowper. He 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. Page continued to advocate for hydroelectricity throughout his political career, and many such projects were built in New South Wales. However, the specific scheme he favoured for the Clarence River was never put in place, only the smaller Nymboida Power Station. Decentralisation also remained a pet project, with Page frequently arguing for New South Wales and Queensland to be divided into smaller states to aid regional development. The movement for New England statehood waned in the 1920s, but re-emerged in the 1950s; a legally binding referendum on the subject was finally held in 1967, after Page's death, but was narrowly defeated in controversial circumstances.[19]

The Bruce-Page government was heavily defeated by Labor in 1929 (with Bruce losing his own seat), and Page went into opposition. In 1931, a group of dissident Labor MPs led by Joseph Lyons merged with the Nationalists to form the United Australia Party under Lyons' leadership. Lyons and the UAP won majority government at the 1931 election. Although Lyons was keen to form a coalition with the Country Party, talks broke down, and Lyons opted to govern alone—to date, the last time that the Country/National Party has not had any posts in a non-Labor government. In 1934, however, the UAP suffered an eight-seat swing, forcing Lyons to take the Country Party back into his government in a full-fledged Coalition. Page became Minister for Commerce. He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in the New Year's Day Honours of 1938.[32] While nine Australian Prime Ministers were knighted (and Bruce was elevated to the peerage), Page is the only one who was knighted before becoming Prime Minister.

Page c. 1940

When Lyons died suddenly in 1939, the Governor-General Lord Gowrie appointed Page as caretaker Prime Minister pending the UAP choosing a new leader. He held the office for three weeks until the UAP elected former deputy leader Robert Menzies as its new leader, and hence Prime Minister.[33] Page had been close to Lyons, but disliked Menzies, whom he charged publicly with having been disloyal to Lyons. Page contacted Stanley Bruce (now in London as Australian High Commissioner to the UK) and offered to resign his seat if Bruce would return to Australia to seek re-election to the parliament in a by-election for Page's old seat, and then seek election as UAP leader. Bruce said that he would only re-enter the parliament as an independent.[34]

When Menzies was elected UAP leader, 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 (for failing to enlist during World War I). His party soon rebelled, though, and Page was deposed as Country Party leader in favour of Archie Cameron.[33]

In March 1940, Archie Cameron led the Country Party back into coalition with the UAP. However, he resigned as party leader on 16 October, following the 1940 federal election. Page attempted to regain the party's leadership, but was deadlocked with John McEwen over multiple ballots. As a compromise, the party elected Arthur Fadden as acting leader; he was confirmed in the position a few months later. Page replaced Cameron as Minister for Commerce in the reconstituted ministry.[35]

Parliament House portrait of Page by Fred Leist, 1940–41

Fadden replaced Menzies as prime minister in August 1941. A few weeks later, cabinet decided to send Page to London as resident minister, with the intention that he would be granted access to the British War Cabinet. While he was en route to England, the Fadden Government lost a confidence motion and was replaced by an ALP minority government. The new prime minister John Curtin nonetheless allowed Page to take up the position, declining his offer to return to Australia.[36] The attack on Pearl Harbor in December changed the dynamic of Anglo-Australian relations, as the War in the Pacific became the primary concern of the Australian government. Page assisted in the creation of the Pacific War Council early the following year. He 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. He 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. He was heavily rebuked by Curtin and external affairs minister H. V. Evatt for his error.[37]

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".[37] His tenure was not regarded as a success, and he was said to have suffered from a lack of experience in diplomacy.[38] Field Marshal Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, recalled that in war cabinet meetings he had "the mentality of a greengrocer".[39] Page left London in June 1942 following a severe bout of pneumonia.[37] He had been made a Companion of Honour (CH) before his departure.[40] He returned to Australia in August, travelling via the United States,[41] and quickly turned his attention to planning for post-war reconstruction.[42]

Page spent the remaining years of the Curtin and Chifley Governments on the opposition backbench.[43] He 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. However, he was frustrated by the government's failure to offer him any formal role in developing post-war policy, which he believed was due to him given his past work.[44]

Page c. 1950

Page was reappointed Minister for Health after the Coalition won the 1949 federal election, at the age of 69.[45] He 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. He 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.[46] Unlike in previous governments, Page had little influence beyond his own policy area and was frustrated by the lack of interest in his ideas for national development.[45]

Upon the death of Billy Hughes in October 1952, Page became the Father of the House of Representatives and Father of the Parliament.[47] In 1954, he became the first chancellor of the University of New England, which had become fully autonomous from the University of Sydney.[48] He retired from cabinet at the age of 76, moving to the backbench in January 1956 after the December 1955 election.[49]

Upon Arthur Fadden's retirement in 1958, Page became the only former Prime Minister returned at that year's election.

By the 1961 election, Page was gravely ill, suffering from lung cancer.[50] Although he was too sick to actively campaign, Page refused to even consider retiring from Parliament and soldiered on for his 17th general election. In one of the great upsets of Australian electoral history, he lost his seat to Labor challenger Frank McGuren, whom he had defeated soundly in 1958. Page had gone into the election holding Cowper with what appeared to be an insurmountable 11-point majority, but McGuren managed to win the seat on a swing of 13%.

Page had campaigned sporadically before going to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney for emergency surgery. He went comatose a few days before the election and never regained consciousness. He died on 20 December, 11 days after the election, without ever knowing that he had been defeated.[19][51]

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. Only Billy Hughes and Philip Ruddock have served in Parliament longer than Page.[52] He 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.

Page's defeat/death saw the Australian Federal Parliament having no former Prime Ministers among its members since the period between Sir Joseph Cook's resignation from Parliament in 1921 to become Australia's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Billy Hughes' forced resignation as Prime Minister in 1923.

Page and his first wife Ethel

Page married Ethel Blunt on 18 September 1906. They had met at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital while he was undertaking his medical residency; she was a senior nurse there. Page soon began courting her, and convinced her to become the matron of his new hospital in Grafton. She gave up nursing after their marriage, but was active in politics and community organisations. The couple had five children: Mary (b. 1909), Earle Jr. (b. 1910), Donald (b. 1912), Iven (b. 1914), and Douglas (b. 1916). Their grandchildren include Don Page, who was active in New South Wales state politics, and Geoff Page, a poet.[11]

Page was predeceased by his first wife and his oldest son. Earle Jr., a qualified veterinarian, was killed by a lightning strike in January 1933, aged 22.[53] Ethel died in May 1958, aged 82, after a long illness.[54] On 20 July 1959 at St Paul's Cathedral, London, Page married for a second time, wedding his long-serving secretary Jean Thomas (32 years his junior). Stanley Bruce was his best man.[19] The second Lady Page lived for almost 50 years after her husband's death, dying on 20 June 2011; her ashes were interred at Northern Suburbs Crematorium.[55]

Bust of Earle Page, Prime Ministers Avenue in the Ballarat Botanical Gardens

Decorations

• In 1929, Page was made a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom (PC).[16][19]
• In 1938, Page was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG).[32]
• In 1942, Page was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH).[40]
• In 1942, Page was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (FRCS).[16]
• In 1952, Page was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa by the University of Sydney.[16]
• In 1955, Page was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa by the University of New England (the first honorary degree awarded by the institution).[16][19]

Namesakes

• Division of Page – division of the federal House of Representatives; established in 1984, includes the city of Grafton[56][57]
• Page, Australian Capital Territory – suburb of Canberra[57]
• The Sir Earle Page Library and Education Centre, in the city of Grafton[57]
• Earle Page College – residential college of the University of New England; opened in 1963[57][58]
• Page Chest Pavilion – building at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital; opened in 1957, demolished in 2010[57]
• Page Research Centre – think tank associated with the National Party of Australia; established in 2003[59]

• Hughes, Colin A (1976), Mr Prime Minister. Australian Prime Ministers 1901–1972, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Victoria, Ch.12. ISBN 0-19-550471-2
• Hawkins, John (2009). "Earle Page: an active treasurer" (PDF). Economic Roundup. Department of the Treasury (4): 55–68.
• Wilks, Stephen (2017). 'Now is the Psychological Moment': Earle Page and the Imagining of Australia (PDF) (PhD thesis). Australian National University.
• In their autobiographies Ann Moyal and Ulrich Ellis wrote of their experience of working with Page.
  • Moyal, Ann. Breakfast with Beaverbrook: memoirs of an independent woman (Hale & Iremonger, 1995)
  • Ulrich Ellis A Pen in Politics (Gininderra Press, 2007).
• Both had helped Page with his autobiography Truant Surgeon: The Inside Story of Forty Years of Australian Political Life (Angus & Robertson, 1963).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Earle Page.

• "Earle Page". Australia's Prime Ministers. National Archives of Australia. Retrieved 19 March 2010.
• "Earle Page". National Museum of Australia. Retrieved 19 March 2010.
• Bridge, Carl (1988). "Page, Sir Earle Christmas Grafton (1880–1961)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press. ISSN 1833-7538. Retrieved 19 March 2010 – via National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.