Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is in New York this week campaigning for a spot on the UN's Human Rights Council and, in a happy piece of timing, for the graduation from Columbia University of her partner David Panton's son.

But the term of Australia's Consul-General in the Big Apple, Nick Minchin, is up after three years, and given the South Australian senator's poisonous relationship with Malcolm Turnbull through the Liberals' darkest days following their 2007 defeat, he was never getting an extension.