Frederick William Leist (1873-1945), Patrick Joseph Lynch (detail), 1938, Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection. View full image

President, 31 August 1932 to 30 June 1938
Australian Labor Party, 1907 to 1916;
National Labour, 1916 to 1917;
Nationalist Party, 1917 to 1931;
United Australia Party, 1931 to 1938

Regarded as a ‘colourful character’, an independent thinker, a champion of the Senate and a proud Western Australian, Patrick Lynch (1867-1944) represented his state as a senator for 32 years.¹ Born and educated in Ireland, Lynch worked on the family farm in County Meath before immigrating to Queensland in 1886. In the ensuing years, he held a variety of jobs across the continent, including in railway construction, marine engineering and engine driving, eventually making his way to the WA goldfields.²

Settling in Boulder in 1897, Lynch became a founding member and general secretary of the powerful Amalgamated Certificated Engine Drivers’ Association of WA (1897-1904).³ Having been involved in the labour movement during the acrimonious 1890 maritime strike in NSW, Lynch worked with numerous organisations, including the Boulder Municipal Council (1901-04), to improve conditions on the goldfields. Elected to the newly-created seat of Mount Leonora in the WA Legislative Assembly in 1904, he resigned in 1906 to stand as a Labor candidate for the Senate and was subsequently elected.⁴

An ardent protectionist, the new senator supported high tariffs, immigration restrictions, investment in national development and defence, and the transcontinental railway that had been promised to WA in the leadup to Federation. Having purchased a wheat property at Three Springs outside Geraldton in 1909, Lynch also took up the cause of fellow wheat farmers. A supporter of conscription, he was among the Labor dissidents who followed Prime Minister Billy Hughes into the newly- formed Nationalist Party after the defeat of the 1916 conscription referendum.⁵

Lynch was a proponent of the Senate’s scrutiny functions, successfully proposing that the Committee of Public Accounts be a joint committee, rather than a House committee, and supporting the establishment of the Senate’s Regulations and Ordinances Committee. These committees and their successors became powerful Senate tools for government oversight.⁶

Lynch, by then a member of the UAP, was elected President of the Senate in 1932, following two unsuccessful nominations in 1926 and 1929. Generally respected across the chamber, he proved to be a principled defender of the role and authority of the Senate and took pride in the fact that no senator had dissented to his rulings.⁷

Defeated at the 1937 election, Lynch remained President until his term expired in July 1938. The following year he unsuccessfully contested the WA state seat of Geraldton for the Nationalist Party before retiring to his property at Three Springs. Lynch died in 1944. He was survived by his second wife Mary Brown, whom he had married in 1933, and three children from his first marriage to Annie Cleary.⁸

Frederick William Leist
Sydney-born Frederick Leist (1873-1945) studied art part-time at the Sydney Technical College while training as a furniture designer in the workshops of David Jones Ltd. He later trained at the Art Society of NSW, learning methods of plein air painting. He found his niche as a black and white artist, illustrating for the Bulletin in the 1890s and becoming staff artist for the Sydney Mail. An original Council member of the Society of Artists and then of the Royal Art Society of NSW after the merger of the two societies, Leist helped re-establish the Society of Artists in 1907. Moving to London in 1908, he worked as an illustrator before turning his focus again to painting, exhibiting regularly with the Royal Academy of Arts. Noted for his portraits of ‘handsome women’, Leist was elected to the Royal Society of Artists and to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, among other clubs and societies. In 1917, he became an official war artist with the AIF. He returned to Australia in 1926 and exhibited paintings from his travels in Sydney and Melbourne. In subsequent years Leist taught at the Sydney Technical School and continued to regularly exhibit his work in galleries and associations.⁹

Patrick Joseph Lynch
by Frederick William Leist
1938
Oil on canvas
89.8 x 69.4 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection

References
1. Unless otherwise noted, information is sourced from G Brown, ‘Death of ex-Senator the Honorable Patrick Joseph Lynch’, Senate, Debates, 9 February 1944, pp. 7–8; G McLeay, ‘Death of ex-Senator the Honorable Patrick Joseph Lynch’, ibid., pp. 6–7; D Cusack, ‘Lynch, Patrick Joseph (1867–1944)’, The Biographical Dictionary of the Australian Senate, Department of the Senate, Parliament of Australia, published first in hardcopy 2004, accessed 2 August 2021.
2. ‘Patrick Lynch’, Morgans Courier (WA), 14 June 1905, p. 1; ‘The Late Patrick J. Lynch’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 22 January 1944, p. 2; Cusack, op. cit. Websites accessed 2 August 2021.
3. ‘Death of ex-Senator Patrick Lynch’, The Canberra Times, 17 January 1944, p. 2, accessed 2 August 2021; Cusack, op. cit.
4. Cusack, ibid.; D Black, ‘Lynch, Patrick Joseph (Paddy) (1867–1944)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed 2 August 2021.
5. Ibid.
6. Cusack, op. cit.; see also Department of the Senate, ‘Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances’, Navigate Senate Committees, accessed 28 July 2021.
7. PJ Lynch, ‘Senators – Valedictory – Public Works Committee: Resignation of member’, Senate, Debates, 30 June 1938, p. 2956.
8. ‘Ex-Senator Lynch’, The West Australian, 17 January 1944, p. 2, accessed 22 August 2021.
9. J Kerr, ‘Frederick William Leist’, Design & Art Australia Online, 2014; ‘Lieutenant Fred Leist’, Australian War Memorial; M Rutledge, ‘Leist, Frederick William (Fred) (1873–1945)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1986. Websites accessed 26 March 2021.