Camelot came to Canberra, but did Caroline Kennedy match the hype?

Never had a diplomat arrived in Australia with such star power or as compelling a narrative as Caroline Kennedy. Camelot had come to Canberra, demonstrating the high importance US President Joe Biden placed on the relationship with Australia.

“President Biden is sending someone from Democratic Party royalty to represent him in Australia,” former Australian ambassador to Washington Joe Hockey enthused when Kennedy was appointed in December 2021. The fact she would enjoy a “direct line to the president”, Hockey said, would help take the United States-Australia alliance to new heights.

Caroline Kennedy at the US embassy in Canberra in August 2023.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

When Kennedy, the only remaining child of slain president John F. Kennedy, touched down at Sydney airport in July 2022 it was a major news event. She made a strong first impression, chiding a male reporter for speaking over a female journalist at a brief press conference. Two-and-a-half years later, Biden is departing the White House and Kennedy’s time as US ambassador to Australia is already over. Within the foreign policy community the reviews of Kennedy’s tenure are decidedly mixed.

Her defenders say her time in Australia was a soft-power success, one that presented an appealing image of America after the chaos of Donald Trump’s first term. “She projected an interested, engaged and excited face of American diplomacy in Australia,” says Paul Myler, who served as Australia’s deputy ambassador in Washington under Kevin Rudd, Arthur Sinodinos and Joe Hockey.

Her detractors argue that Kennedy’s ambassadorship lacked depth and failed to capitalise on the goodwill Australians felt towards her. Many asked not to be named to speak frankly about their views. “Pretty uneventful,” is how one former senior diplomat sums up Kennedy’s time in Australia. In a scathing verdict, a prominent member of the foreign policy community says: “She didn’t live up to the hype and expectation. I can’t name one issue she really advanced.”

Allan Behm, a former diplomat who spent almost three decades in the Australian public service and advised Penny Wong on foreign policy. He has met virtually every US ambassador dating back to the Nixon administration but never encountered Kennedy. A devotee of the Kennedy dynasty, he says he was excited by what Biden’s envoy could achieve in Australia, but his expectations went unfulfilled. “I’m disappointed really,” Behm says with a sigh. “I would like to have seen her have a higher profile and more visibility. I think it was a bit of a wasted opportunity for America and that the Biden administration could have been more diligently served here.”

Kennedy at a Canberra Bunnings last February during a sausage sizzle to raise funds for the Cancer Council.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Behm – who last year wrote a book, The Odd Couple, about the US-Australia relationship – says he wished Kennedy could have done more to highlight America’s cultural and economic ties with Australia. He says John Berry, who served as US ambassador under Barack Obama, was more active and effective at this task.

Michael Shoebridge, a former senior official in the Defence Department, says: “Everyone had such high hopes for her, but I thought she made less of an impact than was expected and less than her connections should have made possible. She didn’t damage the alliance, but she didn’t advance it either.”

Shoebridge says Kennedy was “underwhelming” on the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pact between the US, the United Kingdom and Australia, criticising her for not pressing the Australian government to announce a new east coast submarine base or the location of a nuclear waste repository. He says he was surprised that Kennedy did not draw more on her time as US ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration to speak about the need for democratic nations to work together to push back on China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

Then-senator John F. Kennedy with wife Jacqueline and daughter Caroline in 1960, shortly before he became president.Credit: Getty Images

“She was very low-key and seemed happy to cheerlead and congratulate people,” Shoebridge says. “Part of the job of a powerful ambassador is to use the position to take policy further, but Caroline Kennedy stayed within all the bounds. She didn’t colour outside the squares.”

Supporters point to her work lobbying members of the US Congress on legislation to enable the transfer of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, which passed at the end of 2023, as an important achievement. Others say energetic efforts by Australia’s ambassador to Washington Kevin Rudd and colleagues at the Australian embassy was more influential.

One former public servant who met Kennedy describes her as an introvert who was more effective in closed-door meetings than at public speaking. However, a senior federal politician who met Kennedy says: “It was a pretty disappointing and inconsequential tenure. Relative to her three predecessors, I don’t think she made a significant impact.”

The senior politician continues: “You want someone trading phone numbers and accumulating contact details, but in terms of building relationships I got the impression that was left to the team at the embassy rather than being driven by the ambassador.”

Serious health issues in her family meant that Kennedy had to spend significant time in the US rather than Australia, especially during her final year in the job. But she travelled widely throughout Australia, visiting the Garma Festival in the Northern Territory, attending a Dolly Parton drag show in Perth and climbing 80 metres up a tree in an old-growth forest in Tasmania. She sampled a Bunnings sausage sizzle and sang along to Sweet Caroline during a Sydney Swans match at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Last April she participated in the Shitbox rally, driving across the outback to raise money for cancer research.

Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove says Kennedy was a charming and remarkably down-to-earth ambassador. “The breadth of her engagement with Australian life was striking,” Fullilove says. “Despite her storied name she didn’t take herself too seriously, which chimed with Australians.” Her defenders argue that a well-publicised trip in which Kennedy recreated her father’s heroic swim in Solomon Islands during World War II was not just about her family history but rebuilding American prestige in the Pacific, where a fierce contest for influence is under way with China.

Kennedy sat down with this masthead for an extended interview in 2023 but generally favoured lighter media opportunities such as breakfast television and FM radio. She never appeared on the ABC’s flagship 7.30 program and was interviewed once on ABC Radio National Breakfast. Some Canberra press gallery journalists grumbled that China’s ambassador to Australia – who gave two lengthy press conferences last year at the Chinese embassy – was more accessible than Kennedy.

Her one appearance at the National Press Club came in November during the final days of her posting. Many in the think tank community are frustrated Kennedy did not give more weighty speeches or seek to drive public debate on issues such as AUKUS and China.

“She loved doing flowery cultural tourism driving around the outback, but she did not want to engage with anything of substance,” argues a prominent figure in the foreign policy community. “We live in an age of great power competition, and as US ambassador you have to be out there talking about the big issues, not resting on our laurels.” Another leading foreign policy expert says Kennedy was “surprisingly inaccessible on the hard foreign policy issues”.

A defender of Kennedy counters that it was not her job to lecture the Albanese government on AUKUS or promote a more hawkish stance on China. Another supporter says Kennedy deliberately sought to engage with younger Australians and women rather than predominantly male and middle-aged think tank boffins: “There’s more than one way to be an ambassador and she had a different approach.”

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