Caroline Kennedy to be next US ambassador to Australia
ADAM CREIGHTON - DECEMBER 16, 2021
Joe Biden has nominated Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former president John F. Kennedy, to be the next ambassador to Australia, pending Senate confirmation, ending months of speculation as to whether she wanted the role.
Former Australian ambassadors and foreign policy experts feted the decision as a signal of the ever closer ties between Washington and Canberra, owing to Ms Kennedy’s close connection with President Biden and the White House.
Ms Kennedy, 64, has a distinguished history of diplomatic experience, having served as US ambassador to Japan under former president Barack Obama for four years to 2017.
“Prior to her time in Japan, Kennedy was at the forefront of education reform efforts in New York City, creating public private partnerships to promote arts education, school libraries, and performing arts spaces,” the White House said in the announcement.
Ms Kennedy said in a statement that she was “excited to get to know the Australian people, learn about their fascinating country and share with them what I love most about America”.
She called Australia “a country that is vital to our future security and prosperity”.
“I look forward to collaborating with the government of Australia to strengthen our alliance, improve global health and increase vaccine access during this terrible pandemic and to address the urgent climate crisis,” she said.
Kim Beazley, Governor of Western Australia and former US ambassador said Ms Kennedy would be “enormously effective” in Canberra.
“She is a good diplomat and has had a great history in the political life of the United States. She is a woman who gets noticed and we want that in an American ambassador to Australia,” he said.
Michael Thawley, who preceded Mr Beazley as Australia’s ambassador in Washington, said Ms Kennedy was “politically astute” and her appointment reflected the “esteem and affection which Australia enjoys in the US”.
“As the daughter of one of the US’s most loved presidents and a member of one of the US’s most significant political dynasties, she is something of a symbol of the consequential place Australia occupies in the US’s world view,” he said.
Press speculation about Ms Kennedy’s impending nomination, presumably leaked by well connected officials, had sprouted up throughout the year, inviting concern she may ultimately have not wanted the role.
Speaking in May when speculation of her candidacy first emerged, Joe Hockey, treasurer in the Abbott government and former Australian ambassador in Washington, said the appointment of Ms Kennedy would be “hugely symbolic”,
“It would be a very powerful statement that Joe Biden sees Australia as a key ally in the Indo-Pacific region,” he said.
“It would be symbolic, not only because of her vast personal experience as a successful ambassador to Japan, but also because of her position as a member of the royal family of the democratic party.”
Ms Kennedy, an early supporter of Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency, if approved by the Senate, will succeed Donald Trump’s ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse, a US lawyer, who returned to the US in January after 22 months as ambassador.
Ms Kennedy would be the first ambassador in Canberra appointed by a Democrat president since John Berry’s appointment in 2013, who succeeded Californian lawyer Jeffrey Bleich, Barack Obama’s first appointment as ambassador in Canberra.
Ms Kennedy, who grew up in New York before receiving a degrees in arts and law at Columbia and Harvard University, backed Mr Biden’s bid for the presidency in a January 2020 editorial in The Boston Globe.
Caroline, daughter of Jacqueline Kennedy, was five when her father was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, just two months short of three years since his inauguration.
It was among a series of tragedies the famous US family endured, including the death of Caroline’s brother, John, in a plane crash in 1999.
Ms Kennedy has three adult children and is married to Edwin Schlossberg.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/caroline-kennedy-to-be-next-us-ambassador-to-australia/news-story/eb5f564828583e7a253540b2c8f2a5db