Joe Hockey to remain in Washington after ambassador role ends

Joe Hockey’s term as Ambassador to the US ends on January 1, but he has a new reason to remain in Washington.

Joe Hockey speaks at a recent gala dinner in New York. Picture: Supplied

Joe Hockey will stay on in Washington after his term as Australia’s Ambassador to the US ends, taking on a part-time role as a high-profile guest lecturer on public policy and politics at the American University.

The role delays Mr Hockey’s return to Australia until late next year after his term as ambassador ends in January. It keeps the former Treasurer’s options open if he wants to explore a full-time role in the US, including on Wall Street, although he has not said whether his next career will be based in the US or back home in Australia.

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Mr Hockey, 54, joins a line-up of high profile new lecturers at the university next year including former housing secretary under George W Bush, Alfonso Jackson, former chief speechwriter for Barack Obama, Cody Keenan, and a former vice-president of Google, Susan Molinari.

They will lecture students at the American University’s Sine Institute of Policy and Politics with the aim, according to the university, of “enhancing and improving our conversation on the most important issues that America and the world face today”.

“I’m very proud of the highly distinguished group that is joining us,’ said Amy Dacey, executive director of the Sine Institute for Policy and Politics.

The university says the institute “is committed to bringing students together with experts and top scholars to discover common ground and offer nonpartisan policy solutions”.

Mr Hockey has been ambassador to the US since January 2016, succeeding Kim Beazley.

Mr Hockey has said that despite serving 20 years in federal parliament, including four jobs as a minister and now a four-year term as ambassador in Washington, he wants to keep working.

“I have another career in me and I don’t want to stop working. I need to keep moving,” he told The Australian earlier this year.

He has faced the challenge of dealing with the turbulent Trump administration but has succeeded in forging close connections to key players inside the White House including Mr Trump’s chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

“There was an established process for gathering information under President Obama because his government was very structural, very procedural and very predictable,” Mr Hockey said earlier this year.

“And then along comes ­President Trump and all the normal processes are shredded because it is an unconventional administration. You have to have personal relationships because the decisions are being made within such a small circle of people.”

During Mr Hockey’s time in Washington, Australia was one of the few countries granted an exemption from Mr Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs. In September the President – an occasional golfing partner of Mr Hockey — also granted prime minister Scott Morrison the first state dinner given to an Australian leader since John Howard in 2006.

‘It’s been an extraordinary job to have been in Trump’s Washington,” Mr Hockey has said. “Just extraordinary.’’

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia