”Mr Smith goes to Washington,” journalists mused with amusement when Labor’s foreign minister began his northern hemisphere wanderings as our chief diplomat under the first government of Kevin Rudd. Now Mr (Stephen) Smith, former Labor MP for Perth, has been tapped as our high commissioner to the UK.
Labor fiercely rejects the notion this is a job for the boy, but it certainly is a job for a Labor mate. Smith, 66, spent 20 years in federal parliament, and certainly put up with the rough as well as smooth. In 2010 he was moved into the political graveyard of defence when Labor gave his job to Kevin Rudd. The thinking was that Rudd, a disgruntled deposed PM, would do the least damage if he was sent as far away as possible.
If this pattern continues, the UK will eventually be rewarded with the appointment of Kevin 07 as high commissioner. Not soon, hopefully – they are suffering enough.
The movie quoted in our first paragraph told of the misadventures of a naive senator played by Jimmy Stewart, who confronts all manner of chicanery in the US Senate. Labor is eager to distance itself from the notion that there is anything untoward about Smith’s appointment, especially in a week when it unveiled its model for the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
The opposition is crying hypocrisy, but possibly not too loudly, considering Smith’s immediate predecessors in The Strand are former Coalition heavyweights George Brandis and Alexander Downer. More than half Smith’s 25 full-time predecessors served in the Australian parliament, including former prime ministers Reid, Fisher, Cook and Bruce.
Mark Sawyer is a journalist with extensive experience in print and digital media in Sydney, Melbourne and rural Australia.