Smith's father, Charles David Ross, is listed on the 1963 Electoral Roll as a journalist[3] living in Claremont.
[4] In the early 1970s, Smith became an announcer for an afternoon radio show on 2UE in Sydney – a current affairs program, working with his close friend Mike Carlton.
The revamp included the following changes: In December 1981, speculation was rife surrounding the future of George Negus on Nine's 60 Minutes, with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting Smith and Negus had been seen having lunch at media hangout Eric's Seafoods Fish Cafe in Crows Nest, significant (the article implied) because Smith was news director ATN-7 The meeting with Negus was also seen in the context of Smith's revamp of Seven's newsroom the previous month.
He is reported to have said "There was just one lunch – and we're just good friends", and in the same article Jacqueline Lee Lewes writes that "Smith, who, it must be said, is rather enjoying all the fuss that this one matey meeting has caused".
This is the whales' side of the case for survival ..."[7] Kepert described one of Smith's descriptive and more anthropomorphic paragraphs as "gush like a breathless romance": "She reflected on the set of his head, the way it thrust powerfully forward and down from his blowholes to the fine line of his tightly closed jaw ... Nika noted in Musco that the smug expression was tempered somehow by an overall look of good humour ... She liked this whale.
The whales' migratory habits, their diet, their physiology, their family and group patterns, are doubtless as the scientist sees them.
The South Australian premier at the time, John Bannon, repeated the compliment, going on to say "He dealt with serious events and put all points of view" and "He knew which issues touched people.