Arthur Rylah

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

Rylah was born in Kew, Melbourne. He was educated at Trinity Grammar and the University of Melbourne (LL.B. 1932). In 1937 he married his first wife 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.

After being demobbed in January 1946 he returned to the 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 recognized his talents and by 1953 he was appointed deputy leader of the party the position he was to hold under its leader Henry Bolte for the next 18 years.

Following the Victorian election of 1955, the Liberal Party gained office and on 7 June Rylah was appointed deputy premier, chief secretary and government leader in the Legislative Assembly.

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 picture theatres to open on Sundays (1964); did away with six o'clock closing of hotels allowing alcohol to 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).

His attitudes to morality and censorship in contrast 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, 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 banning the play The Boys in the Band for obscenity and for the covering of immodest public statues of David.

In 1968 he separated from his wife. She died suddenly in March 1969 being found dead in her garden. An autopsy found that she had died of a stroke and the state coroner in an ununusal 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 some 17 years his junior.

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 issue of his first marriage, he died of a cerebral thrombosis on 20 September 1974 in hospital in Fitzroy. He was accorded a state funeral.