![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/45e84a8d924778642e5859b84043be58.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nThe Albanese government will recommend to the Governor-General that Greg Moriarty AO be appointed as Australia\u2019s next Ambassador to the United States.<\/p>\n
Mr Moriarty will take over from former prime minister Kevin Rudd as ambassador on March 31, 2026.<\/p>\n
The Albanese government described Mr Moriarty as \u201cuniquely experienced to take forward the Australia-US alliance\u201d.<\/p>\n
He has held senior roles across the Australian Public Service, including Secretary of the Department of Defence since 2017.<\/p>\n
He has also previously served as Ambassador to Indonesia (2010\u20132014) and Iran (2005\u20132008).<\/p>\n
Within the Office of the Prime Minister, Mr Moriarty previously held senior positions, including as Chief of Staff to former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.<\/p>\n
It comes after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently announced Mr Rudd would finish his tenure early, ending a three-year posting that began in March 2023.<\/p>\n
Both Mr Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong insisted the decision to quit a year early was entirely Mr Rudd\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Mr Rudd will resume his role as Global President of the Asia Society and lead its Centre for China Analysis, working between New York and Washington on US-China relations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The early exit followed a tense White House meeting in October 2025 with former US President Donald Trump, who told him, \u201cI don\u2019t like you and I probably never will\u201d.<\/p>\n
Despite calls for resignation at the time, Mr Albanese defended him and said he would serve out his term.<\/p>\n
The appointment of Mr Moriarty concludes weeks of speculation about who would succeed Kevin Rudd.<\/p>\n
Former Labor senator Stephen Conroy, former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon, as well as former prime ministers Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull were all floated as options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Albanese government will recommend to the Governor-General that Greg Moriarty AO be appointed as Australia\u2019s next Ambassador…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16169,2324,64,63,227378,227377,74758,31478,44,1037,50105],"class_list":["post-435394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-albanese-government","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-ambassador-to-the-united-states","tag-greg-moriarty","tag-kevin-rudd","tag-labor-party","tag-news","tag-trump-administration","tag-washington-dc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}