Staniforth Smith

The Honourable Staniforth Smith MBE
Senator for Western Australia
In office 29 March 1901 – 31 December 1906
Personal details
Born	(1869-02-25)25 February 1869 Kingston, Victoria
Died	14 January 1934(1934-01-14) (aged 64) Perth, Western Australia
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Free Trade Party
Relations	William Staniforth (great-grandfather)
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Occupation	Engineer

Miles Staniforth Cater Smith, MBE (25 February 1869 – 14 January 1934) 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 (née Charlesworth) 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 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 (ALP) 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".

Public service

He then became involved in Government Service in Papua, where in 1907 he was appointed Director of Agriculture and Mines. In 1910–11, he led an expedition into the interior, where he and his party were lost and 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.

Staniforth Smith as a private soldier in 1916 (Illustrated War News)

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.

Later life

After retiring from government service in 1930, he took up farming at Boyup Brook in Western Australia, where he died in 1934.

Memory

The Staniforth mountain range is named after him due to role he played in the passing of the Papua Act 1905 which saw the transfer of the territory of Papua from Britain to Australia.

Further reading

• Ballard, Chris (2016). "Explorers & co. in interior New Guinea, 1872–1928". In Shellam, Tiffany; Nugent, Maria; Konishi, Shino; Cadzow, Allison (eds.). Brokers and Boundaries: Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory. Australian National University Press. ISBN 9781760460129.
• Beattie, Belinda (2022). "Russel Ward on Staniforth Smith". Media History. 29 (3): 321–337. doi:10.1080/13688804.2022.2079481. S2CID 249143123.
• Mettam, John (1998). "Miles Staniforth Cater Smith: the Territory's forgotten Administrator". Journal of Northern Territory History. 9: 91–101. doi:10.3316/ielapa.980909635.
• Schieffelin, Edward L.; Crittenden, Robert (1991). Like People You See in a Dream: First Contact in Six Papuan Societies. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804718998.