CANBERRA, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Governor-General Peter Cosgrove has announced his intention to retire before the next election, giving the current government the power to appoint his replacement.
Cosgrove's five-year term as the representative of the Australian monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II, concludes in March, two months before the nation must head to the polls.
Bill Shorten, leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP), in August called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to extend Cosgrove's term until after the election, allowing the victorious party to make the key appointment.
Shorten wrote to Morrison asking him to extend Cosgrove's term amid speculation that the prime minister would appoint Julie Bishop, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs and deputy of Morrison's Liberal Party between 2007 and 2018, to the post.
"Given that a general election must be held in or before May of next year, an extension to his term would allow an incoming prime minister to nominate to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II an appropriate successor and new governor-general following the next election," he wrote.
"Such an extension is within convention and would be supported by the opposition."
Cosgrove on Wednesday thwarted those plans by announcing he had no intention to serve beyond his five-year term.
"My plan is to retire at the end of March," he told News Corp Australia.
"That's when my five years is up. It's not fixed, but if you do the job properly, at the end of five years you're probably running out of puff a bit...after five years, the job deserves and demands new vigour."
In 2013, then-PM Julia Gillard extended Quentin Bryce's term as governor-general by six months to avoid a clash with the election, allowing Tony Abbott to appoint Cosgrove after leading the Liberal National Party (LNP) to a landslide victory.
