The 2025 First Eight Lecture

The Britain-Australia Society and the Australian Studies Institute (AuSI) invite you to the annual First Eight Lecture on Prime Minister William Morris 'Billy' Hughes.‘Captain of His Own Soul’--Billy Hughes Re-Considered Billy Hughes, the ‘Little Digger’, is impossible to sum up satisfactorily. Australia’s most controversial prime minister, he was immensely gifted, full of contradictions and a master manipulator. He made very few friends in a long life, he cheated at cards, he lied when it suited him, and his stance on the issue of conscription in 1916-17 divided the Australian community for two generations.

On the other side of the ledger, however, he was a vitally important figure in the establishment of the Australian Labor Party, a fearsome defender of progressive social welfare legislation, a brilliant orator, a talented creative writer and the longest-serving politician in the history of the Commonwealth parliament. This lecture will attempt to make sense of Hughes’ many…