Greg Sheridan

Sheridan was born in Sydney in 1956 and grew up in a lower middle class Irish-Catholic family. They lived in a two bedroom flat in the western Sydney suburb of Lewisham, where he attended Christian Brothers' High School. The family later moved to Forestville on Sydney's North Shore. At 15, Greg convinced his parents to allow him to go to the Redemptorist seminary at Galong in southern New South Wales to train as a priest; however, he only lasted a year at the institution and completed his high schooling at the Christian Brothers school St Pius X College at Chatswood in Sydney.[2] 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.[3]

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."[2]

He sporadically attended Macquarie University and the University of Sydney over several years, but never graduated, finding it difficult to deal with lecturers with whom he disagreed.[4] While pursuing his university education, he became involved in student politics.[5][6] During this time, he befriended the future Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott.[1] 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.[2] Sheridan also served for a time as senior vice-president of the Sydney University Liberal Club, supporting Abbott standing for the students' representative council.[7]

Sheridan's 2015 book When We Were Young & Foolish covers his university politics years.[1] According to the book, his journalistic career began after he attended the Australian Union of Students (AUS) annual conference in Melbourne in 1977 with Tony Abbott. Of the experience, he wrote: "Everything about the conference, and about AUS and student politics in those days, was undemocratic and full of intimidation ... All the violence in student politics, all of it, came from the left." He recounted leftist and anarchist attacks on Michael Danby and Peter Costello and Tony Abbott, and wrote that, after Abbott and the female member of their group were assaulted by leftists during the AUS conference, Sheridan and Abbott sought counsel from the influential lay Catholic Bob Santamaria for the first time. After the conference, Sheridan wrote an article about the violence which was published in The Bulletin: "Whatever merit or otherwise my journalistic career may have had over the next 40 years, perhaps I owe it all to AUS", he wrote in When We Were Young & Foolish.[7] Sheridan later wrote some articles on the sciences academic conflict at Macquarie University.[8]

After leaving university, Sheridan became an industrial organiser for a trade union and joined the Australian Labor Party.[7]

Sheridan was drawn to being a writer during his Sydney University years, at which time he had several articles published in The Bulletin magazine and elsewhere.[7] He later said that he was drawn to journalism by "a love of words and language, a love of controversy and intellectual debate, a desire to 'use my gunpowder' and make a difference."[9]

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.[1] Sheridan later wrote of his time at The Bulletin: "It was astonishing good fortune for me to know all these people at The Bulletin. Trevor Kennedy, Bob Carr, Alan Reid, Sam Lipski, Malcolm Turnbull and the rest. It was a scintillating magazine under Trevor Kennedy's editorship."[2]

Sheridan joined the staff of The Australian and in 1985 became that newspaper's first China correspondent.[2] He later worked in Washington and Canberra before returning to Sydney as the newspaper's foreign editor in 1992.[10][1] He specialises in Asian and U.S. politics for The Australian and has interviewed presidents and prime ministers around the world.[11]

He is a distinguished fellow of the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne.[12] 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".[13] 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.[14] The book became a bestseller.[15]

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."[3] He is married to Jasbir Kaur "Jessie" Sheridan, who practises the Sikh religion along with their three sons.[9] He moved to Melbourne in 2006.[16]

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".[9][17]

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."[1]

Britain's Catholic Herald has described Sheridan as "a subtle thinker, a keen observer of the cultural climate and an engaging writer.[9]

Sheridan has written extensively on Australian, Asian and international politics, and is a regular commentator on Australian TV and radio.[1][18]

• (editor and co-author) Living with Dragons: Australia Confronts Its Asian Destiny (Allen & Unwin, 1995; ISBN 1-86373-880-0)
• Tigers: Leaders of the New Asia-Pacific (Allen & Unwin, 1997; ISBN 1-86448-153-6)
• Asian Values, Western Dreams: Understanding the New Asia (Allen & Unwin, 1999; ISBN 1-86448-496-9)
• Cities of the Hot Zone: A Southeast Asian Adventure (Allen & Unwin, 2003; ISBN 1-74114-224-5)
• The Partnership: The Inside Story of the US-Australian Alliance Under Howard and Bush (UNSW Press, 2006; ISBN 0-86840-922-7)
• When We Were Young & Foolish: A Memoir of My Misguided Youth with Tony Abbott, Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd & Other Reprobates (Allen & Unwin, 2015; ISBN 9-78176-0113-391)
• God Is Good for You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times (Allen & Unwin, 2018; ISBN 9-78176-0632-601)
• Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World (Allen & Unwin, 2021, ISBN 9781760879099)

• Greg Sheridan – Author at The Australian
• Archive of Sheridan's articles for The Australian, 29 August 2006 – 5 September 2007
• "Interview with Greg Sheridan of The Australian", United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 15 March 2006