Former MP Dame Annette King tipped to be next High Commissioner to Australia

Former MP Dame Annette King is tipped to become High Commissioner to Australia around the middle of this year. Photo / File

Former MP Dame Annette King is tipped to be appointed the next High Commissioner to Australia by the end of the year.

King left Parliament at the last election and was made a Dame in the New Year's Honours.

It is understood King is now in line to be appointed as High Commissioner for Australia in the middle of the year and will take up the post when the current High Commissioner Chris Seed leaves after August.

King had a key role in the campaign of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the coalition negotiations that followed as part of Labour's negotiating team. She has family in Australia.

In the past, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has railed against "plum" postings for former MPs, saying it was doing experienced senior diplomats out of a post and if he was Foreign Minister again he would recall those he did not believe were suited to the job.

He is yet to recall any of those former politicians serving as diplomats, who include Tim Groser in Washington and Maurice Williamson as a consul general in Los Angeles.

While former politicians have often been sent to London and Washington DC, career diplomats are more common for Australia which is our closest international partner.

Seed, the current High Commissioner, is a senior diplomat who was appointed in 2013 and who is due to return to New Zealand later this year.

Peters and King have a respectful relationship and the posting was understood to be an unwritten understanding of the coalition relationship.

King did not respond to requests for comment.