Alan Jones has never shied away from controversy. Relentlessly pounding various positions for decades, he has remained, till his recent announcement that he would be retiring, immoveable. He ducked accusations; he prevailed in the face of storms and juggernauts. At Sydney radio station 2GB, he maintained a degree of authority from the fear of politicians.
Current and former prime ministers on Jones’ aisle of politics were congratulatory and reflective. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, on hearing the news of Jones’ impending retirement, was warm. ‘You’ve always spoken your mind to everyone, including me, and we’ve had one or two disagreements, but you’ve always done the right thing for your country.’ Tony Abbott suggested that Australia’s ‘national conversation will be different and poorer without @AlanJones on radio every morning.’
Predictably, praise was absent in other quarters. Writer John Birmingham’s response to Abbott’s meditation was simple: Australia would be able to find another bottom-barrelled racist. Such views served to highlight the point that all Jones touches, or is touched by, turns to controversy.
Finding that paragon virtue of balance seems nigh impossible. When the biography Jonestown was published, fury fumed in both Murdoch and Fairfax presses. Andrew Bolt suggested that the work by Chris Masters had served to ‘out’ Jones by focusing on his time as a teacher in charge of boys. Ditto Paul Sheehan, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald. Masters’ ‘examination of Jones’s time at the school, is, like so much of the book, suffused with sexual innuendo.’ David Marr was left with the balancing act, retorting that the biography made no allegations of sexual impropriety.
The reaction to Jonestown underlined the force Jones had, and continues to have, as the most prominent of Australian shock jocks. The shock jock is cocooned and Teflon coated, a survivor of the firestorm controversy that would sink most public figures. He survived the disclosure of that most unsavoury of speeches about Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father having ‘died of shame’. (That venture saw a loss of $1.5 million in revenue.) He lasted the maelstrom that was cash-for-comment. As Marr has observed with some astonishment, the 1999 revelations ‘that he sold his opinions for millions should have left him scuppered, washed up, wrecked and finished, there and then.’ The backers remained; his audience forgot.
Perhaps, most remarkably, the leader of shock jocks lasted that most relentless, brutal and, for the most part, unregulated of pack animals: the social media platform. The comments on Gillard and paternal shame triggered howls of stormy offence but did little to dislodge Jones from his ratings perch.
But in August 2019, this almost changed. With politicians gathered at the Pacific Islands Forum, Jones had some unsolicited advice for Morrison: to ‘shove a sock down the throat’ of his New Zealand counterpart Jacinda Ardern for constantly raising the issue of climate change. Things threatened to crumble for Jones. Morrison was unimpressed. His predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, called for on an apology for this ‘latest misogynistic rant’. But it was the social media campaign naming and shaming sponsors of Jones’ program that exerted most pull. Support from such giants as Coles and the Commonwealth Bank evaporated. Unsettled, 2GB’s management was forced into warning Jones that he was on ‘his last strike’.
'Jones had a performance to give, and found a participant.'
As with all shock jocks, Jones thrives on confrontation (in Masters’ words, ‘tough, ruthless and took no prisoners’) and theatre. His opponents often made the mistake of supplying the oxygen, thinking that cold evidence survives the heated amphitheatre of public debate. When accused of taking a contrarian view on the contribution of carbon to climate change on the ABC’s Q&A program, he simply brought out favourable ammunition from his 2GB castle: an interview with the controversial Swedish climate scientist Nils Axel-Mörner, a critic of the rising sea thesis. That Axel-Mörner is himself the grand jester of controversy, claiming to have paranormal powers for divining water and metal, was neither here nor there. Jones had a performance to give, and found a participant.
For all this, such performances courted danger and exerted undue influence. A blight among many in his broadcasting career must always be the ignominious role he played in the Cronulla riots in December 2005, sparked by exhortations to white Australians to reclaim the beaches from those of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’. Instead of calming crowds and lifting the red mist, Jones turned demagogue in inciting them. The NSW Administrative Appeals Tribunal subsequently found in 2009 that Jones had ‘incited hatred, serious contempt and severe ridicule of Lebanese Muslims’.
The enduring presence of Jones leaves the sociologist and media analyst with a puzzle. As Masters pondered, the shock jock could be ‘extremely unfair and vicious’ at times. He was also to his listeners an 'advocate for the little person who was on struggle street.’ A similar view was expressed by his most perennial critic Media Watch. ‘There’s been many stoushes but Jones’ commitment to his listeners, his tireless work ethic and ratings success, is to be congratulated.’
This is the sort of situation that sits uneasily for the public relations micro-managed creature that is the twenty-first century politician. Fed by round-the-clock pollsters, such a figure bends to the less than sweet calls of shock jock sirens who have their fleshy fingers on the pulse, who know the disturbed mood. Where politicians fear to seize the day, the punditry and shock jocks will.
In 2018, the ABC’s Laura Tingle suggested that the current political class, estranged from voters and the public, had become allergic to the courageous advocacy of policy positions. Preference was instead given to emphasising ‘a point of political difference with their opponents.’ In such an environment, the shock jock revels, sensing the cowardice and forcing a view. At least they can speak their mind; why can’t politicians?
Dr Binoy Kampmark is a former Commonwealth Scholar who lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Main image: Alan Jones at press conference (Getty Images/Matt King)