David Smith

We estimate David Smith received a parliamentary salary of: $239,270

Based on the Remuneration Tribunal base salary of $239,270 plus any additional allowance for ministerial, shadow or office-holder roles held at time of generation.

• Latest quarter total: $152,159
• Printing and Communications: $82,130
• Publications: $271
• Office Consumables and Services: $11,873
• Telecommunications - Usage: $398
• Private-Plated Vehicle: $4,075
• Travel Allowance: $4,621
• Fares: $412
• Domestic Travel: $1,307
• Office Facilities - Not stated: $47,072

• Thursday briefing: ​Why does Donald Trump have it in for the UK?
• ‘Emergency situation’: Trump says he will order payments to TSA agents amid turmoil at US airports – as it happened
• ‘Huge build-up of risk’: London’s centuries-old shipping industry wrestles with Iran war
• Japanese prime minister explains to Trump that her country cannot join his Iran war – as it happened
• Iranian foreign minister claims Israeli strikes on fuel depots are ‘ecocide’ – as it happened
• Here we are again: inside the 13 March Guardian Weekly
• Australia’s blind refusal to question Trump’s bombing of Iran risks ensnaring us in a dangerous folly | Paul Daley
• Afternoon Update: ‘Trump’s war’ on Iran under fire; PM tables Liberals’ leaked election review; and how to see the blood moon eclipse
• Trump news at a glance: president goes to war again
• Trump delivers longest-ever State of the Union address – as it happened

• Explainer: the Latino vote in the US (2012-09-04)
  David Smith
  In the first of The Conversation’s video explainer series - produced in collaboration with SBS Online - Dr David Smith from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney discusses the importance…
• US election live blog (2024-11-06)
  Amanda Dunn, Justin Bergman, Matt Garrow
  Rolling coverage of the key news, developments and analysis as the voting results come in.
• US government shutdown: worse may yet be to come (2013-10-02)
  David Smith
  At midnight, the United States government was shut down after Congress could not agree to a deal on changes to president Barack Obama’s signature health-care legislation, Obamacare. Around 800,000 non-essential…
• US debt crisis heralds the return of the Tea Party (2013-10-24)
  David Smith
  The US debt crisis is over for now, but legislators have just kicked the can down the road. In this series on the US debt ceiling, academics from Australia, the UK and the US assess the lingering global…
• Trump and Clinton face off in first US presidential debate: experts respond (2016-09-27)
  Nicole Hemmer, Bryan Cranston, David Smith, Kumuda Simpson
  The Conversation’s experts respond to the first US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
• Dysfunction by design: why American politics is in gridlock (2013-04-21)
  David Smith
  For all its international power, the United States government seems increasingly powerless to make laws for the benefit of its own people. The recent failure to implement popular gun control measures in…
• Gun control and the price of freedom: Obama’s great challenge (2012-12-17)
  David Smith
  Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year…
• The lost cause of American political fact-checkers (2012-09-16)
  David Smith
  Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Political fact checkers seem to perform a vital public service for American democracy. Websites such as FactCheck.org…
• Building codes not enough to protect homes against water damage in severe storms (2017-06-29)
  Matthew Mason, Daniel Smith, David Henderson, Debbie Falck, Geoffrey Boughton
  Water moves into Australian homes during severe tropical storms like Cyclone Debbie. But no definitive housing codes, standards or guidelines exist to stem the flow of unwanted storm water.
• Does Donald Trump really want to be a dictator? (2024-07-30)
  David Smith
  His recent remarks about Christians never having to vote again may have been misunderstood – but they are telling nonetheless.
• University of Sydney
  University of Sydney
  Dr David Smith is jointly appointed between the United States Studies Centre and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Smith has a PhD in political science from the University…
• A Supreme Court showdown looms for Trump’s tariffs. Will it limit presidential power? (2025-10-21)
  David Smith
  The case presents an important test of the Supreme Court’s willingness to curb Trump’s so-called emergency powers.
• Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’: why the US is on a war footing over tariffs and mass deportations (2025-04-01)
  David Smith
  Donald Trump’s aggressive foreign policy is being cast as necessary for national security. This ensures he’ll encounter little pushback from Congress or the courts.
• Why disappointment and dissent can’t break the two party system (2012-10-02)
  David Smith
  On Election Day in 2012 many Americans will vote against a candidate they hate, not in favour of a candidate they like. This is often the case. During the 2004 contest between George W. Bush and John Kerry…
• Trump can’t delay the election, but he can try to delegitimise it (2020-08-04)
  David Smith
  The president has already refused to guarantee he will accept the result of the November election, and there are many other ways he can undermine it in the minds of the voting public.
• Has Australia fallen for Obama’s soft power? (2012-06-13)
  David Smith
  When Barack Obama was under fire for his foreign policy inexperience in 2007, he told the New York Times that his unique biography could be a vital instrument in a new American foreign policy. “If you…
• Donald Trump blames everyone but himself for the coronavirus crisis. Will voters agree? (2020-04-15)
  David Smith
  Trump has staked his re-election on a strategy of making confident predictions about beating the virus and shifting the blame to ‘foreign’ elements.
• Would Australians support mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine? Our research suggests most would (2021-05-10)
  David Smith, Katie Attwell, Uwana Evers
  More people say they would support a vaccine mandate than say they would definitely take the vaccine themselves.
• Obama’s Syria strategy: the war he doesn’t want (2013-09-11)
  David Smith
  On Tuesday night Washington time, US president Barack Obama made a public plea to Congress to authorise a military action in Syria that he probably doesn’t want. The tell-tale sign Obama doesn’t actually…
• Blaming Donald Trump for conservative losses in both Canada and Australia is being too kind to Peter Dutton (2025-05-04)
  David Smith
  The Coalition should resist seeing Trump as a natural disaster over which they had no control. Peter Dutton made many other missteps that doomed his party’s chances.
• Guns, Sikhs and Obama’s political inertia on domestic terror (2012-08-08)
  David Smith
  Immediately after the Oak Creek massacre, many suspected the killings were a continuation of the post-9/11 wave of attacks on Sikhs who were mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans and beards. The…
• University of Sydney
  University of Sydney
  Dr David Smith is jointly appointed between the United States Studies Centre and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Smith has a PhD in political science from the University…
• Politics on four legs: presidents and their pets (2013-08-23)
  David Smith
  A dog saved Richard Nixon’s political career. In September 1952, Republican presidential nominee Dwight Eisenhower was furious with Nixon, his running mate in the coming presidential election. Nixon, who…
• Americans have voted for Donald Trump to become president again, and the economy is the biggest reason (2024-11-06)
  David Smith
  Sweeping all of the swing states, Trump’s was an emphatic victory. And a key reason is that many Americans feel worse off than they were four years ago.
• It’s now Biden v Sanders as Super Tuesday narrows the field for the Democratic nomination (2020-03-04)
  David Smith
  One moderate; one progressive: the Democratic race has come down to Joe Biden against Bernie Sanders, with the chips increasingly falling Biden’s way.
• The accumulated injustices of the Trayvon Martin case (2013-07-14)
  David Smith
  The criminal justice system has always been at the sharp end of race relations in the United States. Not only have African Americans been treated more harshly than whites as suspects and offenders, they…
• Trump is ignoring the power of nationalism at his own peril (2025-03-20)
  David Smith
  Trump’s brand of American nationalism ignores the fact other countries also have national aspirations – and are willing to fight back.
• ‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol (2021-01-07)
  David Smith
  Trump has claimed for weeks the election is stolen. Having fired up his supporters in this way, it became much harder to control mob behaviour.
• Seaweed is taking over coral reefs. But there’s a gardening solution – sea-weeding (2023-09-14)
  Hillary Smith, David Bourne
  Many researchers are exploring high-tech ways to help reefs survive the climate crisis. But low-tech solutions like manually pulling out seaweed have a place too.
• As Australian shipping grows, how can we avoid collisions with marine animals? (2016-11-30)
  David Peel, Joshua Smith
  Ships in Australian waters are getting bigger and more numerous all the time. We need a plan to help them avoid crashing into whales and other large sea creatures.
• A ‘Christian nation’ no longer: why Australia’s religious right loses policy battles even when it wins elections (2021-08-05)
  David Smith
  Those on the Christian right in Australia once wielded considerable clout, but they are no longer in a position to bring the majority of Australians in line with their views.
• How China’s pandas became its most valuable diplomats – and its vulnerable children (2025-07-30)
  David Smith, Minglu Chen
  No other animal can make the giant panda’s adorable symbolism – but in China, its diplomatic power has at times been met with nationalist outrage.
• University of Sydney
  University of Sydney
  Dr David Smith is jointly appointed between the United States Studies Centre and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Smith has a PhD in political science from the University…