page_title: Andrew Peacock
section_title: After politics
hierarchical_section_title: Andrew Peacock / After politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Ambassador Penne K. Peacock, and Ambassador Andrew Peacock at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2016.
context_page_description: Andrew Sharp Peacock AC GCL is a former Australian politician and diplomat. He served twice as leader of the Liberal Party, leading the party to defeat at the 1984 and 1990 elections. He had earlier been a long-serving cabinet minister.
  Peacock was born in Melbourne and attended Scotch College before studying law at the University of Melbourne. A former president of the Young Liberals, he was elected to Parliament at the age of 27, filling the blue-ribbon seat of Kooyong, vacated by Sir Robert Menzies. Peacock was appointed to cabinet in 1969 by John Gorton and later served under William McMahon and Malcolm Fraser. He held a variety of portfolios, most notably serving as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1975 to 1980. He unsuccessfully challenged Fraser for the Liberal leadership in 1982, but was then elected as Fraser's successor following the party's defeat at the 1983 election.
  At the 1984 election, the Peacock-led Coalition slightly reduced Labor's majority. He resigned the Liberal leadership the following year after failing to have his deputy John Howard removed; he was duly replaced by Howard.
context_section_description: Peacock resigned from Parliament in September 1994. In 1996 when asked about blocking John Howard, Malcolm Fraser said Peacock obviously was, while Peacock claimed he supported John Hewson continuing. When Howard became Prime Minister in 1996, he appointed Peacock as the Australian Ambassador to the United States. Since the end of this appointment in 1999, Peacock has mostly lived in the United States.
  In 2002 he married Penne Percy Korth, a Washington, D.C. society figure and former United States Ambassador to Mauritius. Midway through 2002 Peacock joined Boeing Australia Holdings as President of Boeing Australia. He retired from Boeing in 2007, and joined Gold Coast-based fund manager MFS Ltd as chairman. He held the position for 15 months, resigning shortly before the firm collapsed with debts of $2.5 billion. He later stated: "I should have looked more carefully at MFS before going into it. The business wasn't going well, and I thought I could turn it around but I couldn't.".
  His daughter Ann Peacock married Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger in 1999. They had two sons before separating in 2009. Peacock had earlier endorsed his future son-in-law Kroger as his successor in Kooyong in 1994 but Kroger declined.
  Peacock and his American-born third wife retired to Austin, Texas, where she had gone to university. He visits Australia regularly and does not intend to become a U.S. citizen, although he holds a green card. He gave up drinking after moving to the U.S., after experiencing heart problems. Peacock supported Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, after originally supporting Marco Rubio in the Republican primaries. He placed a bet on Trump to become president even before the first primary, at odds of 16–1. In a January 2018 interview with the Australian Financial Review, he said he was "disquieted by the first year's performance", praising Trump's tax cuts but expressing his disappointment with Trump's decisions to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. According to Peacock, his wife is a staunch conservative and regards him as "the most liberal person she's ever met". He has expressed dismay at the disappearance of moderate Republicans, and the general polarisation of American politics.
caption: Peacock with his third wife Penne Percy Korth Peacock at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2016
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