Stephen Smith: from defence review to Labor’s first mate

Former defence and foreign affairs minister — and Anthony Albanese ally — Stephen Smith has been appointed to be Australia’s next High Commissioner to the UK — a plum posting traditionally reserved for political friends of the government.

Smith will take up his posting early next year after completing the Defence Strategic Review — a role for which he was hand-picked by Albanese. 

Smith’s appointment follows a fine tradition which saw the former Coalition government appoint former attorney-general George Brandis to the London role. Other former high commissioners include Howard government ministers Richard Alston and Alexander Downer.

The last Labor government appointed former South Australian Labor premier Mike Rann to the London job.

Can we mark Smith’s posting down as the first of the Albo mates’ jobs? The Friday afternoon announcement gives it the feel of something the government would prefer to keep muted.

Whatever the case, the appointment places Smith, who has impeccable defence credentials, in the capital of one of Australia’s AUKUS partners at a time when the alliance faces early challenges over the production of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet.

It also caps a remarkable return to prominence for Smith after close to decade away from the frontline of public life.

Crikey’s abiding memory of Stephen Smith is the hair: a full bouffant of black turning to grey adorning the head of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd defence minister, who was last sighted retreating to his home state of Western Australia, the Labor government a smoking ruin in the rear-vision mirror.

It was a surprise to see the Hair’s head bob up again in early August as Anthony Albanese’s captain’s pick to run the rule over Defence, alongside the former Chief of the Defence Force, Sir Angus Houston, who received his knighthood as a captain’s call of former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Professor Smith, to give him his full title, was immediately rounded on by the Australian Defence Association’s long-serving executive director Neil James, who labelled him “easily in the worst-five defence ministers of the last seven decades”. Take that, buff-head.

So what has Smith been up to for the past 10 years? In short, he has burrowed deep into US-Australia defence networks.  

Smith’s first move out of politics was to the University of Western Australia where he became a professor of international law and later chair of the UWA defence and security program. But it is his role as a director of the Perth US-Asia Centre that has opened up a whole new set of powerful relationships. The centre has close links to Sydney’s US Studies Centre. One of its key focus areas is Australia, Indo-Pacific and US relations. Former Labor defence minister Kim Beazley is also on the centre’s board.

According to official returns, the US-Asia Center receives the bulk of its support from the American Australian Association Ltd, which is a founding member of the centre and which last year channelled $1.5m in funding to the centre. The American Australian Association was founded by Sir Keith Murdoch in the 1940s as a vehicle for promoting cultural and business ties between the two countries and has grown in influence since with close to $10 million in federal funding, some of which it provides to the centre.

In 2018 Smith made his corporate move when he joined the board of ASX-listed cyber security company archTIS. The company’s clients included the Defence department and Attorney-General department. Smith left the company in 2020. In the same year, he was appointed to the federal government’s Cyber Security Industry Advisory Committee.

Smith is now chair of a new WA-based cybersecurity venture called Sapien. Other board members include former US Director of Intelligence James Clapper AO, who had served as the principal intelligence advisor to then president Barack Obama.

Cybersecurity, it happens, is among the top of Albanese’s defence priorities. Albanese has been close to Smith dating back to the Howard years when the two were in opposition. Close observers will have noted that Smith was on hand to help Albanese during the last election campaign, with Smith acting in the role of political “elder”.

Announcing Smith’s appointment to the London job today, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Lynette Wood would continue as Australia’s acting high commissioner until Smith’s arrival. 

Wong said a replacement for Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, the former Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos, would be announced ahead of the completion of his posting in February 2023. 

So which political mate will it be?

Well, not John Barilaro, that’s for sure.