Editing Billy Hughes (section)

==1930s==
[[File:Nla.pic-an23301710-v.jpg|thumb|Billy Hughes, [[John Curtin]], and the [[Governor-General of Australia]] [[Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester]] in Canberra, 1945]]
The UAP won a sweeping victory at the 1931 election. Lyons sent Hughes to represent Australia at the 1932 League of Nations Assembly in Geneva and in 1934 Hughes became Minister for Health and Repatriation in the [[Lyons government]]. Later Lyons appointed him Minister for External Affairs, but Hughes was forced to resign in 1935 after his book ''Australia and the War Today'' exposed a lack of preparation in Australia for what Hughes correctly supposed to be a coming war. Soon after, the Lyons government tripled the defence budget.<ref name="autogenerated1978">Brian Carroll; From Barton to Fraser; Cassell Australia; 1978.</ref> Hughes also wrote in ''Australia and the War Today'' that the League of Nations was broken and that it could have worked only if it had been backed by force. He believed that every nation must look to its own defences and that, as Britain was preoccupied in European affairs, Australia would have to defend itself.<ref name="Jones161">Jones, 'The Foreign Policy of William Morris Hughes of Australia', p. 161.</ref>

After the 1931 [[Japanese invasion of Manchuria]], Hughes believed that the British should remain neutral, and adopted the same attitude towards [[Second Italo-Ethiopian War|Italy's invasion of Abyssinia]] in 1935. Hughes believed that the British Empire was in danger because of its weakness in the Mediterranean.<ref name="Jones161"/>

Hughes was brought back to Australia by Lyons as Minister for External Affairs in 1937. In 1938 Germany requested the return of her Pacific colonies but Hughes declared that Australia should hold onto New Guinea, and in April 1939 he said that if Germany wanted colonies she would have to fight for them.<ref name="Jones161"/>

By the time of Lyons' death in 1939, Hughes was also serving as Attorney-General and Minister for Industry. He also was Minister for the Navy, [[Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Australia)|Minister for Industry]] and Attorney-General at various times under Lyons' successor, [[Robert Menzies]].<ref name="autogenerated1978"/>