Staniforth Smith
Miles Staniforth Cater Smith, was an Australian politician, public servant and explorer. He served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1901 to 1906 and was later a senior public servant in the Territory of Papua and the Northern Territory of Australia.
Early life
Smith was born on 25 February 1869 in Kingston, Victoria. He was the son of English immigrants Margaret Gomersall and William John Smith. He was raised on his father's farming property and attended St Arnaud Grammar School in St Arnaud. He briefly studied engineering at the University of Melbourne and then began working for Goldsbrough Mort & Co. in Melbourne.In 1896, Smith moved to the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia where he initially worked as a bookkeeper for C. R. Knight and Company in Coolgardie. He subsequently moved to Kalgoorlie where he was employed by Reuters Telegram Company and was a member of the West [Kalgoorlie, Western Australia|West Kalgoorlie] Progress Committee. He was elected to the Kalgoorlie Municipal Council in 1898 and served as mayor of Kalgoorlie from 1900 to 1901.
Politics
Smith supported the federation movement and was elected to the Senate at the inaugural 1901 federal election, winning the most votes of any candidate in Western Australia. He joined the Free Trade Party but supported Chris Watson's Australian Labor Party government in 1904. According to Brian De Garis, he sat "in opposition to the Barton and later Deakin governments, although he was sympathetic to much of the nation-building legislation, and indeed veered at times towards protectionist policies".Papua
He then became involved in Government Service in Papua, where in 1907 he was appointed Director of Agriculture and Mines. In 1910, Smith launched an expedition to explore the hinterland of the Gulf of Papua, seeking to cross from the Purari River to the Kikori River and eventually reach the Strickland River. He also sought to confirm reports from Donald Mackay of the existence of coal seams near Mount Murray., He and his party became lost and were feared dead for several weeks. Rescued with much publicity, he was hailed as an explorer and in 1923 awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.During the First World War he served in the military from 1916 to 1918, for which he was awarded an MBE. On his return to Australia he briefly served as acting Administrator of the Northern Territory for 1919–1921, before resuming his involvement with Papua as Commissioner for Crown Lands, Mines and Agriculture.
Northern Territory
In 1911, following the assumption of federal control over the Northern Territory, Smith was a candidate to become the first federally appointed administrator of the Northern Territory. The position was instead given to John Gilruth, with Murray lobbying strongly against Smith's appointment and accusing him of "incompetence and of cruelty to the indigenous people".The Darwin rebellion of late 1918 resulted in the effective expulsion of Gilruth from the territory over allegations of maladministration and corruption. Gilruth's deputy Henry Ernest Carey. After Carey's departure, the government offered the post of acting administrator to Smith as one of the few experienced colonial administrators. He accepted the position only after securing a commitment from Prime Minister Billy Hughes that the government would introduce legislation allowing for the representation of the Northern Territory in federal parliament, in the form of one senator with limited voting rights.
Smith's appointment took effect on 1 December 1919. He arrived in the capital Darwin alongside Norman Ewing, who had been appointed to lead the royal commission into the rebellion. Smith's "one concern was to ensure peace in the Territory". He investigated and resolved a number of the grievances that had led to the rebellion. He restored control of parklands to the Darwin Town Council.
In August 1920, Smith applied to be appointed administrator of the Northern Territory on a permanent basis. The following month, the federal government introduced the Northern Territory Representation Bill to provide for the representation of the territory in the Senate. The bill failed to pass, with a number of speakers arguing that representation in the House of Representatives would be more appropriate. The government did not move to resubmit an amended bill, despite Smith's expression of disappointment. He correspondingly withdrew his application for the administratorship in October 1920 and requested to return to his prior post in Papua.
Personal life
In 1928, aged 59, Smith married Marjorie Mitchell, a niece of Western Australian premier James Mitchell. The couple had four children.After retiring from government service in 1930, Smith took up farming at Kulikup, Western Australia. He died in Perth on 14 January 1934, aged 64, due to "chronic nephritis, uraemia and myocarditis".