Arthur Rylah

Sir Arthur Gordon Rylah KBE CMG (3 October 1909 – 20 September 1974) was an Australian politician and lawyer.

Background

Rylah was born in Kew, Melbourne. He was educated at Trinity Grammar and the University of Melbourne, graduating with a law degree from this university in 1932. Five years later he married Ann Flora Flashman, a veterinarian, with whom he had two children.

In 1940 he was appointed major in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) serving in the Northern Territory, New Guinea and on New Britain. He was mentioned in despatches.

Politics

After being demobilised in January 1946, he returned to practising law, and joined the newly formed Liberal Party. In May 1950 he was elected to the Victorian parliament for the Legislative Assembly seat of Kew, which he was to hold for the next 21 years.

Rylah's political colleagues quickly recognised his talents and in 1953 he was appointed deputy leader of the party. This was the position which he was to hold under the party's leader, Sir Henry Bolte, for the next 18 years.

Following the Victorian election of 1955, the Liberal Party gained office. On 7 June Rylah was appointed Deputy Premier of Victoria, Chief Secretary and Government Leader in the Legislative Assembly.

Described as a "human dynamo", Rylah had great capacity for work: during his time as Chief Secretary he introduced legal off-course betting (1960), setting up the first Totalizator Agency Board in the world; allowed cinemas to open on Sundays (1964); did away with six o'clock closing of hotels, thereby permitting alcohol to be served till 10pm (1965); allowed sport to be played on Sundays (1967); and prepared legislation for compulsory wearing of seat-belts for motorists (1970) and to provide for random breath-testing of motorists (1971).

In contrast to all this dynamism, Rylah's attitudes to morality and censorship were seen by many to be reactionary and repressive. His remark in 1964 that he would not allow his 'teenage daughter' to read Mary McCarthy's novel The Group became notorious. When it was pointed out to him that he did not have a teenage daughter (his sole daughter was fully adult), he replied that he could always imagine one. He zealously took on his role of public censor, banning everything from James Joyce's Ulysses to Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads ("No, I haven't read it, but with a title like that it must be dirty"). He was also responsible for prohibiting performances of the play The Boys in the Band (which he condemned as obscene) and for the covering of immodest public statues of David.

In 1968 he separated from his wife, who in March 1969 was found dead in her garden. An autopsy found that she had died of a stroke; and the state coroner, in an unusual move which generated considerable controversy at the time, allowed her remains to be cremated without an inquest into the sudden death. Within seven months Rylah had married for a second time, this time to a divorcee 17 years his junior by the name of Ruth Ryler . who had 4 children to three fathers none of which was Arthur ryler Ace Phillips David and Sam Reiner and Micheal Clark, the youngest (Micheal) was a family secret until well after her death when in about 2007 David Reiner discovered this and managed to contact Micheal Clark under his adopted name of Clark.

In February 1971 he announced that would resign from parliament in the following month. However he collapsed at his desk on 5 March and spent the next four months in hospital. He retired to his rural property, pursued his interest in horse-racing, and became a director of several companies. Survived by his second wife, and by the children of his first marriage, he died on 20 September 1974 in hospital in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. He was accorded a state funeral.

Honours

Arthur Rylah was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the New Years Day honours of 1965. He was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the Queen's Birthday honours of 1968.

He is commemorated in the name of the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research.