Грегори Пол Шеридан: Австралиялық журналист және саяхатшы

Australian journalist & author

Gregory Paul Sheridan (born 1956) is an Australian foreign affairs journalist, author and commentator. He has written a number of books on politics, religion and international affairs and has been the foreign editor of The Australian newspaper since 1992. He is a regular commentator on Australian television and radio, including for the ABC and Sky News Australia. The ABC describes Sheridan as "one of Australia's most respected and influential analysts of domestic and international politics." According to friend and academic Karl Schmude, Sheridan's early family life and university experiences gave him a grounding in politics, which steered him towards journalism. In a review of Sheridan's 2015 book God Is Good for You, author Gerard Henderson wrote that "Bob (BAS) Santamaria was one of young Greg's early heroes. Along with United States president J F Kennedy. In 1963, he became interested in politics. Every Sunday, the family tuned into BAS's Point of View commentary program on Channel 9. And 1963 was the year of the Kennedy assassination. Half a century later, Sheridan's politics have not changed much. Like Kennedy and Santamaria, he is an anti communist and a social democrat. Sheridan is also a social conservative and was slow to embrace free market economics." While pursuing his university education, he became involved in student politics. During this time, he befriended the future Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott. Sheridan and Abbott involved themselves in the opposition to the left wing university politics of the 1970s, usually through involvement in the campus Democratic Club, which received support from Santamaria's National Civic Council. Sheridan's 2015 book When We Were Young & Foolish covers his university politics years. After leaving university, Sheridan became an industrial organiser for a trade union and joined the Australian Labor Party. George Orwell and Malcolm Muggeridge inspired me as journalists. And of course Chesterton. One book took me to Asia. Christopher Koch's Year of Living Dangerously, his magnificent novel of Australian journalists in Sukarno's Jakarta. And, oddly enough, a [Vincent] Cronin's biography of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit who was one of the first Westerners in China. His career in journalism began at The Bulletin in the late 1970s. Covering the story of Vietnamese refugees after the Vietnam War sparked an interest in Asian and regional politics. He is a distinguished fellow of the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne. He has written four books on Asian politics, a book on Australia–U. S. relationships, as well as books on religion. Since 2017, Sheridan has published books and articles on Christianity, beginning with an article in The Australian entitled "Is God dead? ", subtitled "The West has much to lose by banishing Christianity". Sheridan told the Catholic Herald that the article "got the biggest readership of any article in the history of the paper since they've been able to measure these things". The following year, he published the book God Is Good for You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times, which argued that "God is true", and discusses the faith of high profile Australian politicians including Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Kim Beazley, Peter Costello, Kristina Keneally, Penny Wong, and Bill Shorten. The book became a bestseller.

Sheridan is a Catholic, and has written two books on Christianity. According to Karl Schmude writing for Quadrant, "Sheridan is more than a cultural Catholic. He actually believes; and he is deeply conscious of the springs of conviction that lie beneath a higher faith."

Sheridan was given an Officer of the Order of Australia Honour in 2016, with the citation, "For distinguished service to print media as a journalist and political commentator on foreign affairs and national security, and to Australia's bilateral relationships". His profile on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Q+A program describes him as "one of Australia's most respected and influential analysts of domestic and international politics. He has written several books on Asia and Australia's role in the region. He is also a keen observer of US international affairs and is on close terms with senior figures in Washington, London and other major foreign capitals."

Sheridan has written that the Whitlam Labor Government (1972 1975) was "overall perhaps the worst government in Australian history", with government expenditure running "wildly out of control".

Sheridan's career in journalism began during the Fraser government years. Sheridan was later critical of what he alleged was Malcolm Fraser's political transformation to the left after leaving office, his embrace of anti Americanism and what Sheridan describes as the "myth making of the legions of new admirers Fraser gained when he abruptly shifted from being a rightwinger to being a leftwinger." When Fraser died in 2015, Sheridan offered this general assessment:

Sheridan has been a supporter of closer ties between Australia and its Southeast Asian neighbours, particularly Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. In his 1998 book Hidden Agendas, John Pilger criticised Sheridan for being a "reliable ally" of Indonesia's Suharto dictatorship while serving as the foreign editor of The Australian. In particular, Pilger derided Sheridan's defence of Indonesia after the critique of Suharto's human rights records by the Clinton administration and the Australian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, following the Santa Cruz Massacre in East Timor. Sheridan said that "even genuine victims frequently concoct stories." In 2006, Sheridan called for the removal by Australia of Mari Alkatiri as Prime Minister of East Timor. Sheridan supported the Australian government's Anti Terrorism Act 2005. He also argued in 2006 that George W. Bush will be judged "one of the great presidents of the United States". In 2019 Sheridan visited Poland and Hungary, paid for by the Polish government and a conservative think tank, the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. He wrote articles praising the Polish and Hungarian governments. In June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests, Sheridan commented on Sky News Australia that there was no systemic racism in US. "Most African Americans are middle class, and they don't suffer daily, shocking racism", Sheridan said. "I myself have lived in the United States on four separate occasions. And I never saw any racial confrontation. I never heard anyone make a racist remark." Sheridan has criticised the ABC. In one column he wrote "the ABC has become a relentless behemoth of unaccountable and vindictive power that persecutes designated enemies in a grievously unfair and unprofessional way" which practices "an irresponsible, vicious, bullying misuse of state power."

Sheridan is a regular panellist on ABC television and radio, however he has at times criticised the national broadcaster for bias. Sheridan was highly critical of the ABC's antagonistic reporting of the case against Catholic Cardinal George Pell, who was acquitted by the full bench of the High Court of Australia in April 2020. Sheridan wrote for The Australian: "the ABC has become a relentless behemoth of unaccountable and vindictive power that persecutes designated enemies in a grievously unfair and unprofessional way. Its campaigns against its enemies have a whiff of the Red Guards in China's Cultural Revolution." Sheridan also criticised Victorian Labor Premier Dan Andrews for refusing to accept the High Court verdict, writing that he saw the Premier's comments as the "most irresponsible remarks made by a modern premier. In more than 40 years of journalism, I can recall no premier making remarks that could be interpreted as challenging the High Court in a criminal matter".