She told Sky News: "I think the Prime Minister has a lot of questions to answer, and not just him, but his chief of staff, and all the people in No 10 who pushed this appointment. "I think it is a national embarrassment. There are many people who should have been given that job, or who should have been interviewed for that job, and they didn't get a chance."
The head of the department of defence, Greg Moriarty, will succeed Kevin Rudd as Australia's ambassador to the United States. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, announced Moriarty's appointment to the role on Sunday. A former chief of staff to Malcolm Turnbull and former Australian envoy to Iran and Indonesia, he has led the defence department since 2017. He will take up the posting in Washington from April. Moriarty was Australia's inaugural counter-terrorism coordinator and previously worked in US Central Command in the Gulf during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He represented Australia in Papua New Guinea, and as a negotiator of the peace monitoring group for Bougainville.
