Gerard Henderson


Gerard Henderson is an Australian author, columnist and conservative political commentator.
He founded and runs the Sydney Institute, a privately funded Australian current affairs forum.

Education and earlier career

Henderson attended Xavier College, a Jesuit school in Melbourne, before studying arts and law at the University of Melbourne and completing a PhD.
Henderson taught at the Tasmania and La Trobe universities before working for four years on the staff of Kevin Newman in Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government. He moved to the Department of Industrial Relations in 1980; from 1984 to 1986 he was chief-of-staff to John Howard, during which time Howard was deputy leader, then leader, of the Liberal Party of Australia.
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.

Works

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. In December 2013, his column moved to The Weekend Australian, which also carries Media Watch Dog.
He has written several books.
In 1994, Henderson profiled former prime minister Bob Hawke for the ABC TV program Four Corners.
He was a regular political commentator on radio, and appears occasionally on Insiders, another ABC TV program. Since 2020, he decided he would no longer appear due on the program due was unsure of the future of his appearances and had "understood the message".

Views

Henderson's columns defended the former Howard government policy on Iraq and national security since the September 11 attacks.
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'." He has supported the movement for Australia to become a republic.