Minister Don Farrell hands top woman’s plum US post to ALP mate Chris Ketter

ALP powerbroker Don Farrell appointed ex-Labor senator Chris Ketter as the new trade envoy in San Francisco. But official Kirstyn Thomson was the ‘preferred candidate’ for the job.

Former Labor senator Chris Ketter. Picture: Annette Dew

The Albanese government handed a plum trade investment job in the US to a little-known former Labor senator from Queensland – just months after a high-ranking female Austrade executive was named “preferred candidate” based on a competitive recruitment process.

Trade Minister Don Farrell in July appointed his friend Chris Ketter, who served one term as a Labor backbench senator, to be Australia’s next senior trade and investment commissioner and consul-general in San Francisco.

The Australian can reveal that Kirstyn Thomson, head of the Americas investment desk at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, known as Austrade, was the “preferred candidate” for the job.

However, Senator Farrell’s office dumped the recruitment process after it was completed and picked Mr Ketter in place of Ms Thomson.

Mr Ketter, a Labor staffer since losing his Senate seat in 2019, has no experience in trade investment and did not apply for the job.

Before his Senate stint, he was a union official for 32 years with the Queensland branch of Senator Farrell’s old “Shoppies” union, and a close Farrell ally and friend.

Mr Ketter is scheduled to depart for San Francisco in December but he officially started work on August 1 at Austrade’s Brisbane office, undergoing training by the woman he displaced for the job, Ms Thomson.

The appointment of Mr Ketter – which required cabinet approval – came despite Foreign Minister Penny Wong declaring last Nov­ember that the Albanese government would move away from political appointments to “more qualified senior officials”.

Ms Thomson, who has headed Austrade’s Americas investment desk since 2021 and has more than two decades of expertise in trade and investment, was among some 50 people who applied for the position when it was advertised on September 8 last year.

After applications closed on October 3 last year, a three-person recruitment panel chaired by Austrade’s New York-based Americas general manager, Tony Davis, conducted interviews.

The panel picked Ms Thomson as the best internal candidate from Austrade when the recruitment process concluded in December, and Mr Davis is understood to have told her she was the sole preferred candidate.

A second applicant, Anthony Panaretto from Sydney-based Alpha Investment Partners, with 25 years’ experience as a Macquarie Group executive, much of it in New York, was also in contention as the top external candidate for the senior executive service position, but he lost out to Ms Thomson.

When Senator Farrell’s office relayed to senior Austrade executives earlier this year that the job would go to Mr Ketter, Ms Thomson was told she would stay in her job heading the Americas desk in Brisbane.

Government sources say as a consolation for losing the San Francisco posting to a “Labor mate”, Ms Thomson’s name was added to an Austrade merit list so she could be considered for another posting at a later date.

Ms Thomson has since been anointed internally – but not yet publicly – as Australia’s senior trade commissioner in Singapore. She is due to start there next year after Mr Ketter is settled in the US.

The Australian sought comment from Senator Farrell on Wednesday on why the government did not go ahead with Ms Thomson after she was the preferred candidate from the recruitment process, and why Mr Ketter was chosen despite not applying for the job and having no trade investment background.

A spokeswoman for Senator Farrell said he had nothing further to add other than the media statement announcing Mr Ketter’s appointment on July 7.

Mr Ketter confirmed he had started at Austrade’s Brisbane ­office, and was being prepared for San Francisco by Ms Thomson and others. “There’s a number of people,” he said.

Asked about being prepped by Ms Thomson, despite a recruitment process identifying her as the preferred candidate, Mr Ketter said: “I will come back to you, or somebody will come back to you, with a response.”

Kirstyn Thomson.

Ms Thomson would not confirm or deny she applied for the San Francisco position and was the “preferred candidate”.

She said she had applied for international postings and was appointed for Singapore.

“There’s no substance to it, I’m being posted to Singapore,” she said. “I was applying for a number of postings and Singapore is a better fit with the investment portfolio I have … in Southeast Asia.”

Besides heading Austrade’s Americas Investment Desk, Ms Thomson has two decades of international investment and trade job experience, including posts in London and Myanmar.

Few SES-level senior trade commissioner roles have been advertised in recent times. The San Francisco position was the first Ms Thomson applied for. She appears to have been chosen for Singapore from Austrade’s internal merit list, after the San Francisco selection process was overridden by the minister’s office.

The job ad published on September 8 last year for the San Francisco job – to replace departing incumbent Nicholas Nichles – said the successful candidate would be an “experienced executive” leading a large team to “build commercially focused relationships in North American and ­regional markets”.

Trade Minister Don Farrell. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Kelly Barnes

The ad described Austrade as “experts” in connecting Australian businesses to the world.

The joint consul-general’s position in San Francisco was outlined briefly as a secondary role – to represent the Australian government and deliver consular services for Australians aboard.

Mr Ketter, 62, joined the Queensland branch of the socially conservative Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association as a young official straight out of university in 1982.

He worked his way up to become the SDA’s state secretary in 1996 and held that position until becoming Labor’s No. 2 Queensland Senate candidate for the 2013 election.

As a union official, he was closely aligned with Senator Farrell, who was the SDA’s South Australian branch secretary and national president before his Senate career. Senator Farrell remains highly influential in the ALP’s Right faction.

In his first speech to parliament, Mr Ketter thanked Senator Farrell for his “friendship and support”. At the time, Senator Farrell watched from the public gallery after losing his seat in 2013, before he regained it at the next election.

During six years as a senator, Mr Ketter had a low profile. He served as deputy opposition whip and chaired the Senate economics references committee.

He lost his seat at the 2019 election when Shorten Labor’s primary vote in Queensland dropped to 26.6 per cent and the party failed to score a second Senate seat.

Unemployed after losing his seat, Mr Ketter became a staffer with then deputy opposition leader Richard Marles, who told The Australian at the time that Labor needed to reconnect with socially conservative Australians and people of faith. He said Mr Ketter was joining his personal staff “with the task of helping rebuild party support in the Sunshine State”.

Mr Ketter stayed as a “senior adviser” after Labor won last year’s federal election and Mr Marles became Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister.

As a backbench Labor senator, Mr Ketter’s salary was $207,100, plus a car and parliamentary allowances. His base salary in San Francisco is expected to exceed $250,000, boosted by significant taxpayer-funded entitlements in US dollars to cover a car, rent, utility bills, moving costs and top US health insurance.

Announcing Mr Ketter’s appointment on July 7, Senator Farrell made no mention of the former’s union background and their longtime association, or that Mr Ketter was picked after another “preferred candidate”.

Senator Farrell cited Mr Ketter’s stint as a senator and adviser to Mr Marles, saying Mr Ketter “brings extensive experience across government, and in the ­defence industry and critical ­technologies sector, which will help bolster Australia’s AUKUS objectives”.

According to Austrade, the San Francisco post is focused on attracting US trade investment to Australia and not related to the AUKUS defence security pact.

When Mr Ketter’s name popped up as the government’s candidate in place of Ms Thomson earlier this year, a senior Austrade official raised with Senator Farrell’s office that a similar US-based trade position was coming up soon in Houston.

It was suggested Houston might be a “better cultural fit” for Mr Ketter and perhaps the government could stick with Ms Thomson for San Francisco, considering her expertise as Austrade’s head of the Americas Investment Desk.

Senator Farrell’s office is understood to have responded that Mr Ketter remained the pick for San Francisco.

Austrade is understood to have raised Houston as an alternative, in part, because of internal questions about whether Mr Ketter would allegedly feel comfortable working in San Francisco as “the gay capital in the world”, given his conservative religious views.

Mr Ketter was Labor’s only senator – apart from Tasmania’s Helen Polley – to vote against legislation to legalise same-sex marriage for Australians in 2017.

A third of the 15 staff in Austrade’s San Francisco office also allegedly identifies as gay and has views on same-sex marriage and other issues that could be different to Mr Ketter’s.

The Australian does not suggest Mr Ketter is anti-gay or that he would not work well with gay people.

On the day Senator Farrell issued his media statement in July announcing Mr Ketter’s appointment – plus two others to Germany and the Middle East – it was a Friday afternoon when Canberra’s press gallery was diverted by that day’s royal commission report into the Robo-debt scandal.

In May this year, the Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window column speculated that Mr Ketter was “strongly favoured” for the San Francisco job.

This was despite Senator Wong’s edict last November that Labor intended “rebalancing appointments” for top foreign posts away from former politicians, as happened under the Morrison government, to “more qualified senior officials consistent with community expectations and position requirements”.

Before the Ketter appointment, Labor had started replacing former politicians in international posts. The exceptions were Kevin Rudd as Australia’s ambassador to Washington, a personal pick by Anthony Albanese, and Stephen Smith as Australia’s high commissioner to London.

Few critics, including on the Coalition side, took issue with these appointments considering their high-level past positions.

The Ketter appointment has some similarities to the NSW government picking John Barilaro, formerly deputy premier and Nat­ionals leader, as NSW trade commissioner to New York on a $500,000 salary in May last year.

It was later revealed a senior public servant, NSW trade department executive Jenny West, had been offered the position in Aug­ust 2021 after a “full recruitment process” which identified her as the “best candidate”.

The offer to Ms West was rescinded a month later. After quitting politics, Mr Barilaro applied when the job was readvertised and was appointed. He later declined to take up the job, saying it was untenable while also denying any wrongdoing.