Talk:Gerard Henderson

"progressive political views"

Im prepared to concede that "progressive political views" can be used here with regard to the republic, becaue one side wants to keep the status quo and the other wants to "progress toward change", but the despite it technically being the same situation for Euthanasia and Asylum seekers, I think the connotations for these touchy issues causes a POV problem when tying the word "Progressive" to a person's views on them. For example, someone could argue that a change from mandatory detention of asylum seekers to instantly turning them back to their port of disembarkation could be "A progression" and thus labeling a point of view mandating a softening of Asylum seeker laws is POV in the other direction.

Add all this to the fact that we had just come off setting up a binary opposition of conservative v progressive, where we suddenly have the conservatives with the new IR laws (in this article where we mention the 'conservative position on Workchoices'), where the conservatives make the change and the so-called "progressives" want to keep the status quo. - You see the problem here.

I don't see the problem here. You can Bend it anyway you like but It is not the case of "turning them back to their port of disembarkation" as being a Progressive point of view as his the reference to his progressive point of is that Gerrard Henderson is against such treatment of Asylum Seekers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.160.99.7 (talk) 08:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

private or secret

User:Rumcorp keeps changing 'privately funded' to 'secretly funded' to describe the Sydney Insititute. I've given up reverting, mainly because edit wars achieve nothing. I don't think 'secretly funded' can stay because it implies the he runs some sort of shadowy organisation, which raises concerns with WP:BLP.Teiresias84 10:30, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[User:Teiresias84] keeps changing secretly funded to privately funded, calls me mate and wants to put the law onto me. If no one knows who funds the Sydney Institute, and all readers are encouraged to ask them where their funding comes from, then why is it not secret, the shareholders in private companies are easily established, thus in this context, private is a poor choice of wording.Rumcorp 13:21, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Challenge for Rumcorp. Please tell me how to identify the shareholders of Big 4 tourist parks. Not so easy is it? Greglocock (talk) 02:16, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia's rules practically mean that we cannot call the Sydney Institute "secretly funded" unless we cite a "reliable source" which explicitly describes the funding as "secret" or "concealed" or something very similar. Going from a source which says (fx) that the SI does not report who backs it to saying that the SI is secretly funded counts as "original research". Cheers, CWC 04:26, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

critic of the chasers?

Henderson simply kicked them out of the Sydney institute when the American ambassador was giving a talk and they ran in with a sign saying "fuck Hicks". Hardly a well known critic

January 2013

I've just made a large edit to the article. Here are some comments and questions.

1. Why do we mention GH's 2006 article on The Culture Wars? I'm not objecting, just asking.
2. Some of the article was taken word for word from GH's bio at the SI website, but that bio was never mentioned. I've fixed both these problems.
3. I've removed all the tags from the start of the article; I think I fixed all those defects.
4. I removed some uncited info about media appearances that are not mentioned in the SI bio, on the assumption that the article was out-of-date. Of course, it could be that the SI bio is out of date and the article was correct. Corrections welcome.
5. In his bio, GH says that his "important articles include (i) his 1983 essay “The Industrial Relations Club”, (ii) his 1985 re-assessment of Australia’s involvement in World War I titled “Exploding the Myth that they Died in Vain” , (iii) the introduction to his 1990 book Australian Answers (where he introduced the concept of the Federation Trifecta to explain the bipartisan agreement between political conservatives and social democrats after the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901) and (iv) his January 1993 critique of the left-wing interpretation of Australian history “Rewriting Our History” which was published in the Australia Day issue of The Bulletin."
   Perhaps we should say something about these? IIRC, the first item there played a significant role in Australian economic/political history.

I think this article could stand a lot more work, but at least it is not as bad as it was. Cheers, CWC 12:24, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Queries

• It seems a bit silly to describe Gerard Henderson as the executive director of the Sydney Institute when the institute doesn't exist independently of him — after all, his wife is the deputy director. The institute's website also carries his column "Media Watch Dog" which is purportedly written by his dog, Nancy. It would make more sense for him to call it the Henderson Family Institute.
• On another tack, it seems wrong to say that he takes a conservative view of industrial relations when he was a supporter of the DLP.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:14, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

On the first point: I've changed the lede to say he "founded and runs the Sydney Institute".

On the second point: I'm not sure what a "conservative" view of Industrial Relations is. So, yeah, we probably shouldn't use that phrasing. Actually, I'd need to do some searching and reading to find a wiki-Reliable way to describe Hendo's views on IR. OTOH, I know that he coined the phrase "industrial relations club" and used it as the title of an influential 1983 essay criticising that 'club'. So let's hope that another editor can fix this ....

Cheers, CWC 11:57, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Mentioned in MWD

For whatever it's worth, Dr Henderson mentioned this article briefly in MWD 343. (Did this article ever say that he "worked for ... Malcolm Fraser" rather than that he worked for Kevin Newman?) Cheers, CWC 07:41, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced

I have removed some unsourced material from the page, in particular that claimed Henderson held partisan views of a certain type. We need to use reliable secondary sources to corroborate claims of partisanship or political party affiliation or friendliness to the left or right wing. I hope that @Michael Glass: will understand that we are unable to use such a description here or anywhere else on Wikipedia, until such sources can be found. (Wikipedia is not a reliable source that can be cited in other articles.) Elizium23 (talk) 03:08, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

In Australia it is common knowledge that Gerard Henderson is a conservative commentator. Here is evidence:

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. https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/39496298?q&versionId=52350089

In his case the label is descriptive rather than partisan.Michael Glass (talk) 22:32, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I think Michael Glass′s subsequent edit is the best that we can do, unless someone comes up with an amazing RS. It justifies the use of "conservative", while indicating (in the quote) which brand of "conservative" applies here. Thanks, Michael. Cheers, CWC 09:08, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about "conservative". The article by Eric Porter badly cited says, "Henderson’s main contribution to Australian conservatism is his concern with social justice". Henderson was in the Democratic Labor Party, which was "conservative" in some senses, but not in others. When Keating was PM, he was a supporter of Keating. He is apparently still on good terms with him.[1] Calling Henderson a "conservative" is not particularly helpful. He is more nuanced than that. I think it would be better to let readers make up their own minds.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:24, 16 December 2019 (UTC)