Christopher Pyne’s mother Margaret dies aged 92
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Tragedy for one of Australia’s most famous politicians: His mother dies aged 92: ‘A great life, well lived’
- Former Defense Secretary Christopher Pyne’s mother, Margaret, has died aged 92
- She died on September 12 in Adelaide, six weeks before she turned 93
- Pyne had described his mother as the ‘Matriarch’ of his family in May 2019
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Former Defense Secretary Christopher Pyne’s mother has died aged 92.
Margaret Elsie Pyne died peacefully at Adelaide’s Lourdes Valley retirement home in Myrtle Bank on September 12, just six weeks before her 93rd birthday.
The mother of five and grandmother of twelve had been widowed since 1988, after the death of her husband Remington, an ophthalmologist from Adelaide, at the age of 59.
Mr Pyne said his mother, who was also a member of the Liberal Party, had her ‘faculties to the end’.
“If you’re going to die, that’s not a bad way to go,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
An obituary in The Advertiser newspaper said: ‘Beloved mother and mother-in-law of Remington, Nicholas and Annemarie, Alexander and Veronique, Samantha and Simon and Christopher and Carolyn.
Beloved grandmother of Remington, Henrietta and Alexa, Beatrice, George and Edwina, Sebastian and Sabine, Eleanor, Barnaby, Felix and Aurelia.
Former Defense Secretary Christopher Pyne’s mother has died aged 92. Margaret Elsie Pyne died in a retirement home in Adelaide on September 12, just six weeks before her 93rd birthday (she is pictured with her son in 2019)
“A beautiful life, well lived.”
Mr Pyne withdrew from politics in the May 2019 election and used Mother’s Day that month to note that Margaret was almost 90.
‘The Matriarch. My mother Margaret. I’m still hitting almost 90. Happy Mother’s Day,” he said.
Mr Pyne was first elected to Parliament in March 1993, at the young age of 25, in Sturt in east Adelaide, after challenging long-serving MP Ian Wilson for the Liberal Party’s pre-selection.
But he didn’t become a minister until 2013 after reportedly telling future Prime Minister John Howard in 1995 that he was “yesterday’s man” as he sought support to replace Alexander Downer as Liberal leader.
An obituary in The Advertiser newspaper stated that the widow died peacefully at the Lourdes Valley facility in Myrtle Bank. She died just three days after the Queen and had been widowed since 1988, following the death of her Adelaide doctor husband Remington, aged 59.
Pyne was the leader of the moderate faction of the Liberal Party in South Australia, to which his late mother belonged, and is in favor of Australia becoming a republic.
He spent 14 years in the backseat before becoming Secretary of State with the aging portfolio in March 2007.
By then, the Howard administration had been in power for 11 years and lost the November election to Labor’s Kevin Rudd.
Pyne had to wait until September 2013 to become a minister, with the election of Tony Abbott’s coalition government, after he had been an MP for 20 years.
He was Minister of Education from 2013 to 2015 before switching to industry and science in September 2015 when Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister.
The South Australian became Defense Secretary in August 2018 when Scott Morrison took over.
The South Australian became Defense Secretary in August 2018 when Scott Morrison took over
After spending more than half of his life as a Member of Parliament, Mr Pyne retired from politics in 2019 and established Pyne and Partners as a registered political lobbyist.
His mother’s death came just nine months after he lost his high school friend Christian Kerr at Saint Ignatius College, a journalist at The Australian who had helped him win the Liberal Party’s pre-selection three decades ago.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Pyne.