Gerard Henderson (born 1945) is an Australian author, columnist and political commentator.[1][2] He founded and is the executive director of The Sydney Institute, a privately funded Australian current affairs forum.[3]
The Keating government appointed Henderson to the board of the Australia Foundation for Culture and the Humanities. Later, the Howard government appointed him to the Foreign Affairs Council. He was one of the people invited to Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 Summit held in April 2008.[2]
For several years, Henderson had a weekly column in The Sydney Morning Herald. He also writes "Media Watch Dog", a weekly compendium of media criticism, written from the perspective of a blue heeler named Nancy.[4] In December 2013, his column moved to The Weekend Australian, which also carries Media Watch Dog.[5]
Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-On & Collective Guilt (Connor Court Publishing, 2021; ISBN9781922449818)
Media appearances
In 1994, Henderson profiled former prime minister Bob Hawke for the ABC TV program Four Corners.[2] He was a regular political commentator on radio, and appeared occasionally on Insiders, another ABC TV program.[2] In early 2020, Henderson was dropped from the show after new host David Speers reportedly wanted to try new conservative voices amid claims from sources in the ABC that Henderson failed to sufficiently engage with issues during panel discussions.[6][7]
Views
In 2006, Henderson said John Howard had lost the ongoing culture wars, writing, "In my view, there is only one area where the Coalition has failed to have a significant impact – namely, in what some have termed 'the culture wars'."[8]
Henderson has supported the movement for Australia to become a republic.[9]
References
^Porter, Eric (October 2007). "Taking Conservatives Seriously: Gerard Henderson and Social Policy". Just Policy (45): 30–37. ISSN1323-2266 – via Trove. This article assesses Gerard Henderson's work and ideas. Henderson mainly contributed to Australian conservatism with a concern for social justice and feels that government plays a vital role in securing the conditions for freedom. This article identifies Henderson's vision for Australian society and evaluates how well he achieves his aims. The article also takes Henderson's conservatism seriously, treating his ideas as a coherent philosophical statement worthy of analysis.
^Ewin Hannan; Shaun Carney (10 December 2005). "Thinkers of influence". The Age. While not a think tank, it operates as a forum for debate. It does not commission research or have policies." "The institute is privately funded, with all papers delivered to it published in The Sydney Papers.
