tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/2gb-3969/articles2GB – The Conversation2023-07-24T08:57:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102862023-07-24T08:57:20Z2023-07-24T08:57:20ZView from The Hill: It’s just too hard and too late to delay and recalibrate Voice referendum<p>With the polls showing public support for the Voice flagging, some people believe the referendum should be deferred. </p>
<p>There is certainly reason for concern about the fate of the “yes” vote. The polls have been softening for a while, but the Resolve Political Monitor survey <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nsw-slip-into-no-camp-puts-voice-on-track-for-defeat-20230720-p5dpxs.html">published</a> in the Nine newspapers at the weekend showing support for the Voice down to 49% in New South Wales was particularly alarming for its supporters. </p>
<p>NSW and Victoria (where the “yes” vote is 52%) would be expected to form the backbone of a successful referendum. </p>
<p>“No” supporters have an interest in advocating delay, seeing it as a way to kill off the whole thing. But on the other side, some nervous “yes” advocates fear defeat and all the consequences that would bring, and are looking for salvage options. </p>
<p>Even before the Resolve poll, NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, a “yes” backer, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/21/delay-voice-to-parliament-referendum-2024-liberal-andrew-bragg#:%7E:text=voice%20to%20parliament-,Pro%2Dvoice%20Liberal%20Andrew%20Bragg%20calls%20for%20referendum%20delay,2024%20to%20'save%20the%20concept'&text=One%20of%20the%20few%20Liberal,the%20referendum%20to%20next%20year.">suggested</a> the referendum should be put off until mid-2024. He said in a 2GB radio interview on Friday </p>
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<p>I fear that the process has not yielded enough consensus to garner a “yes” vote. And I think it would be worth considering recalibrating at this stage, to save the concept and to deliver a successful referendum.</p>
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<p>Superficially tempting as this argument might seem, it is impractical and would almost certainly be counterproductive.</p>
<p>To back off the current wording and timetable (the vote is due in the last quarter of the year and is expected in October) would be nearly impossible for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. He has come too far, invested too much. </p>
<p>It would spark a serious backlash from Indigenous leaders, many of whom would likely see it as a sellout by the prime minister. Albanese would be opening another battlefront for himself. </p>
<p>From the government’s point of view, prolonging the argument around the Voice into another year would distract attention from other parts of its agenda and take the issue dangerously closer to the next election. Some ministers would surely resist.</p>
<p>If the referendum were merely deferred, with the wording unchanged, there’s no reason to think the Voice proposal would become any more popular. That could just provide more time for opposition to build. </p>
<p>Bragg proposes “recalibrating” the Voice in an effort to get bipartisan support. </p>
<p>But trying to do this would be fraught, even if the government were willing to attempt it. </p>
<p>When it needed a relatively minor change in the proposed wording, it ran into opposition from its Indigenous advisers, and had to compromise. </p>
<p>To obtain bipartisan support – Bragg’s aim – the government would almost certainly have to retreat to seeking to put only recognition in the constitution, with a Voice simply legislated. Opposition leader Peter Dutton would not be able to sign up to anything other than a gutted Voice, which was not in the Constitution. </p>
<p>This would never be accepted by the Indigenous proponents. </p>
<p>And Bragg himself said: “I don’t think it’s the right thing to let go of the Voice in the Constitution concept”. </p>
<p>The easier road would always have been a constitutional amendment for recognition, with the Voice legislated. </p>
<p>But Albanese on the night of the election, and well before, embraced the full Uluru Statement from the Heart. That, in its entirety, committed him to a Voice in the Constitution, treaty and truth telling. </p>
<p>Indigenous people have argued strongly that without being in the Constitution, the Voice would be at risk of being scrapped, as previous bodies have been. </p>
<p>The risk now is that voters’ wariness of putting it in the Constitution might mean the Voice never starts. </p>
<p>The die is cast on the content of the question and the window in which the vote will be held. The government can only manage its campaign as effectively as it can, and hope enough of those who are undecided, “soft no” voters, or have yet to tune in to the debate fall the way of a “yes” vote when the time comes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210286/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, a ‘yes’ backer, suggested the referendum should be put off until mid-2024 in a radio interview last weekMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1712122021-11-04T09:27:12Z2021-11-04T09:27:12ZThe last squawk? Alan Jones finally seems to have nowhere to go<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430181/original/file-20211104-19-10z9y1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Himbrechts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>So the Parrot, as H. G. Nelson called him, has been pushed off his perch, Sky News having refused to renew his contract. </p>
<p>Over 36 years, Alan Jones became one of the most powerful, divisive and socially destructive voices the Australian media has ever produced.</p>
<p>At the same time, in rating terms, he became a phenomenon. In April 2020, he achieved his <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/alan-jones-tops-sydney-breakfast-radio-ratings-for-226th-time/news-story/abdb7c3cb2d473a42d595f1c2f65752d">226th ratings win</a> in the Sydney breakfast time slot, a performance that has never been equalled and probably never will be.</p>
<p>It was an accomplishment built on three foundations. He was articulate in the red-blooded language of conservative outrage that his listeners felt but could not put into words. He had an unerring instinct for the issues that would inflame them, and he persuaded them that he was their champion in the corridors of power.</p>
<p>His broadcasting career began in 1985 when he joined Radio 2UE in Sydney as its mornings host. He moved to the breakfast shift in 1988 and soon took it to number one.</p>
<p>In 2001, he moved from 2UE to 2GB, taking a large slice of his audience with him and making that station number one in the Sydney breakfast market, a position it has recently regained after <a href="https://www.mediaweek.com.au/sydney-radio-ratings-2021-survey-5-ben-fordham-1-kj-1-fm/">slipping briefly</a> when Jones left in May 2020.
For a long time, he was politically untouchable.</p>
<p>In 1999, he was caught up in what became known as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/nov/15/4">cash-for-comment scandal</a>. His evidence to the ensuing Australian Broadcasting Authority inquiry was dismissed by the counsel assisting, Julian Burnside, QC, as defying belief.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-times-suited-him-then-passed-him-by-the-alan-jones-radio-era-comes-to-an-end-138420">The times suited him, then passed him by: the Alan Jones radio era comes to an end</a>
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<p>In 2000, the inquiry made adverse <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2457387">findings against him</a>.</p>
<p>Politically, he remained untouched. Within a few weeks, he was hosting an event for John Howard, who was then prime minister, and in 2001, he was dining with the Labor premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, to discuss government policy.</p>
<p>The following week, Carr dispatched his police minister-designate, Michael Costa, to Jones’ home to discuss law-and-order policy.</p>
<p>For his part, Howard used Jones’ program to reach that audience segment known as “Howard’s battlers”, occupants of what Jones called Struggle Street, of which Sydney’s western suburbs have a plentiful number and where Jones rated strongly.</p>
<p>To the extent he was able to put the issues of this audience directly to the likes of Howard and Carr, Jones was indeed a voice for the otherwise voiceless in the corridors of power. Whether this had any effect on voting intentions is another question.</p>
<p>Author and social researcher Rebecca Huntley has written that after 15 years of research, she had not found Jones to be any more influential with voters than ABC Radio or The Sydney Morning Herald. She concluded: </p>
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<p>For a long time at 2GB, he was commercially untouchable, too.</p>
<p>In 2007, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/jones-broadcast-incited-violence-acma-20070411-gdpvre.html">he was found</a> by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to have breached the radio code of practice by inciting violence against people of Middle Eastern ethnicity in a series of incendiary broadcasts leading up to the race riots at Cronulla Beach in 2005.</p>
<p>The ACMA characteristically decided it was sufficient to enter into a “dialogue” with 2GB.</p>
<p>In 2012, he said Julia Gillard, who was then prime minister, should be put in a chaff bag, taken out to sea and dumped. At about the same time, he made a speech to the Sydney University Liberal Club in which he said Gillard’s recently deceased father had “died of shame” at the lies his daughter told.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of this, social media pressure on big advertisers such as Harvey Norman, Big W and Mercedes-Benz was so intense that Jones’ employer, Macquarie Radio, suspended all advertising on the show to take the pressure off them.</p>
<p>In 2019, Jones told Scott Morrison, who had by then become known as the “2GB prime minister”, to shove a sock down the throat of New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Jones was outraged Ardern had said Australia would have to answer to the nations of the Pacific on climate change.</p>
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<p>This time, advertisers boycotted the Jones show in droves, costing 2GB <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/25/alan-joness-radio-show-loses-hundreds-of-advertisers-since-jacinda-ardern-storm">an estimated 50%</a> of the show’s revenue. </p>
<p>Macquarie Radio was getting sick of him. In addition to these advertising losses, in 2018, he had cost the network $3.75 million in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-12/alan-jones-defamed-wagners-court-decision-brisbane-qld/10230384">a defamation action</a> brought against it by four brothers whom Jones had wrongly accused of causing the deaths of people in Grantham, near Toowoomba, during the Queensland floods of 2011. </p>
<p>In May 2020, he retired from 2GB, but was snapped up Sky News amid great fanfare for a personal nightly spot at 8pm.</p>
<p>His ratings were poor. He routinely came fourth behind other Sky-at-Night luminaries such as Andrew Bolt, Paul Murray and Peta Credlin.</p>
<p>The COVID-19 disinformation he routinely spread on the program was a factor in Sky’s being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/01/sky-news-australia-banned-from-youtube-for-seven-days-over-covid-misinformation">suspended by YouTube</a> for seven days in early August.</p>
<p>Shortly before that, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph had dropped his column, which he had also used to spread COVID disinformation.</p>
<p>Whatever his talents, and however impressive his record, he has been a canker on Australian democracy.</p>
<p>Finally he seems to have run out of platforms, not because of the harm he has done to the social fabric but because he is no longer rating well and bringing in big advertising dollars.</p>
<p>That is the way it was always going to end.</p>
<p><em>Correction: this article originally said the ACMA ruling was in 2005. In fact, in was in 2007</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The controversial broadcaster seems to have run out of platforms, not because of the harm he has done, but because he is no longer bringing in big advertising dollars.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1644892021-07-14T08:59:02Z2021-07-14T08:59:02ZRight-wing shock jock stoush reveals the awful truth about COVID, politics and media ratings<p>A COVID-induced rancour that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/13/rightwing-media-war-over-covid-lockdown-escalates-as-ray-hadley-calls-out-ridiculous-alan-jones">has broken out</a> between Sydney’s commercial radio shock jocks and the Sky News night-time ravers over Sydney’s lockdown would be funny if it were not so serious.</p>
<p>It is mildly entertaining to see 2GB’s Ray Hadley excoriating his former colleague Alan Jones, now at Sky, for his “ridiculous stance” against the lockdown, with Jones calling New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian “gutless” for extending it.</p>
<p>Hadley went on to brand Sky’s Andrew Bolt a “lapdog” for agreeing with Jones, and Bolt retaliated by calling Hadley a “weak and ignorant man who panders to an ugly pack”.</p>
<p>It takes one to know one, of course, but behind all this spittle-flecked slanging there is a serious issue: the disproportionate political power of a small group of radio and television broadcasters in Sydney.</p>
<p>It is one factor that helps explain the procrastination and prevarication that have marked the premier’s response.</p>
<p>Long before COVID-19 afflicted the world, the shock jocks of Sydney commercial radio stations, particularly 2GB and 2UE, had created a successful business model built on outrage.</p>
<p>It is based on a political ideology that appeals to an older audience living in what Jones is pleased to call “Struggle Street”. It is not conservatism, as they like to claim, but rank reactionaryism.</p>
<p>In marginal electorates, largely in western Sydney, there are enough people who find this ideology attractive to make politicians nervous.</p>
<p>That is what has given these jocks political power incommensurate with their position in Australia’s democratic institutional arrangements.</p>
<p>They have become a kind of shadow government in New South Wales.</p>
<p>For example, in 2001, when Bob Carr, a Labor Premier, was about to appoint Michael Costa police minister, he sent Costa to Jones’s home to discuss law-and-order policy.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-times-suited-him-then-passed-him-by-the-alan-jones-radio-era-comes-to-an-end-138420">The times suited him, then passed him by: the Alan Jones radio era comes to an end</a>
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<p>In 2017, a former Director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales, Nicholas Cowdery, QC, <a href="https://www.legalaid.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/27520/Nicholas-Cowdery-Influence-of-the-media-on-the-criminal-justice-system-in-NSW-Legal-Aid-NSW-Criminal-Law-Conference-2017-.pdf">singled out</a> Jones and Hadley, as well as the recently resurrected John Laws, as wielding disproportionate power over politicians and other policy-makers.</p>
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<p>They hate, to differing degrees, independent statutory officers such as Directors of Public Prosecutions who speak out objectively on issues in criminal justice.</p>
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<p>In more recent times, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has relied on Hadley to provide him with a friendly platform on which to propagandise. </p>
<p>The relationship between the two has been described as a “bromance”, although it had a temporary rupture in 2015 when Hadley tried to have Morrison swear on the Bible concerning any role he might have had in the demise of Tony Abbott as prime minister.</p>
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<span class="caption">Scott Morrison often relies on sympathetic interviews on Hadley’s show to get his message across.</span>
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<p>Berejiklian, as a Liberal premier, has also prospered in her commercial radio relationships, most notably from the benignity of Jones’s successor in the 2GB breakfast slot, Ben Fordham.</p>
<p>He was supportive of her even during the embarrassing disclosures about her relationship with the Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire, who is the subject of an <a href="https://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/investigations/current-investigations/2020/former-nsw-mp-for-wagga-wagga-operation-keppel">ICAC investigation</a>.</p>
<p>So she had a stake in not rattling the shock jocks’ cages. That meant trying to hold the line against lockdowns.</p>
<p>However, that calculation changed abruptly last week after the latest Sydney radio ratings showed that for the first time in 18 years, 2GB lost the breakfast time-slot.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/contrasting-nsw-and-victoria-lockdown-coverage-reveals-much-about-the-politics-of-covid-and-the-media-163482">Contrasting NSW and Victoria lockdown coverage reveals much about the politics of COVID – and the media</a>
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<p>The winners were the KIIS FM pair of Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, whose shtick involves penis pageants and a determination not to be “woke”.</p>
<p>Horrified fellow-travellers in the right-wing commentariat pounced on Fordham. Jones was especially vitriolic. His successors, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/13/rightwing-media-war-over-covid-lockdown-escalates-as-ray-hadley-calls-out-ridiculous-alan-jones">he said</a>, didn’t have the “balls” to stand up to “cancel culture warriors”. Government, media and big pharma seemed to be all in bed together, and the media were too ready to accommodate the left.</p>
<p>Management at 2GB were also aghast. The Australian reported they told Fordham to take a harder line with Berejiklian, and Fordham duly delivered. Three days after the ratings results had come out, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/ten-reporter-unloads-antoinette-lattouf-on-racism-at-nines-today-show/news-story/0120052e5b828d1bd061b2ebf31b40ec">he unleashed</a> this on-air tirade against the Premier’s lockdown decision:</p>
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<p>The virus hasn’t killed anyone this year, but the lockdowns, the extensions, the excuses, the mistakes, the missed opportunities, they are killing this city fast. And stop telling us it’s about the health advice!</p>
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<p>By now Berejikilian was in a bind.</p>
<p>There was her own hubris, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/sydney-will-be-lucky-if-lockdown-isn-t-extended-20210626-p584iy.html">proclaiming</a> her state doesn’t do lockdowns.</p>
<p>There was Scott Morrison’s hostility to lockdowns, exemplified by his repeated attacks on the Victorian Labor Government. Was she to be a source of further embarrassment to him over how the pandemic is playing out?</p>
<p>There was Morrison’s cosy relationship with the likes of Hadley, in which their reciprocal position on lockdowns was self-reinforcing.</p>
<p>And there was the demonstrated willingness by 2GB station management to go after Berejiklian in pursuit of better ratings for Fordham’s breakfast show.</p>
<p>In the circumstances, it is hardly a surprise that she has procrastinated and prevaricated.</p>
<p>If, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tougher-4-week-lockdown-could-save-sydney-months-of-stay-at-home-orders-our-modelling-shows-164483">as many epidemiologists</a> are saying, the so-called “light” approach is condemning Sydney to a long lockdown and exposing the rest of the country to avoidable risk, the role of the jocks in creating the political climate in which Berejiklian is operating since the Delta strain took hold should not be underestimated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Behind the vitriol over whether Sydney should be in lockdown is a window into how power operates in New South Wales.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1384202020-05-12T12:15:23Z2020-05-12T12:15:23ZThe times suited him, then passed him by: the Alan Jones radio era comes to an end<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334244/original/file-20200512-66649-1xgy6dj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C523%2C4476%2C3088&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Kris Durston</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Time has finally caught up with Alan Jones. Time as measured in years, but not time as measured by social and attitudinal change.</p>
<p>It is remarkable that his recipe of nostalgia, bullying and reactionary politics, all delivered in a ranting, hectoring style, is as successful today as it has been for the whole 35 years of his career in radio broadcasting.</p>
<p>Two hundred and twenty-six ratings wins in the highly competitive Sydney breakfast radio market is testament to that.</p>
<p>And power. Former Prime Minister John Howard, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/john-howard-responds-to-alan-jones-radio-retirement/vi-BB13Xt45">said in a tribute</a> that Jones had been the most influential radio broadcaster during his time in politics, a period of 33 years.</p>
<p>In the early 2000s, Jones was for a time a de facto member of the NSW state cabinet. In 2001, when Premier Bob Carr was about to appoint Michael Costa as the new police minister, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-01/newton-alan-jones/4288824">he told Costa to go and see Jones</a> at his home and talk about policing policy with him.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/it-will-be-money-not-morality-that-finally-turns-the-tide-on-alan-jones-122051">It will be money, not morality, that finally turns the tide on Alan Jones</a>
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<p>Only a year earlier, Jones had come out badly from what was called the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/nov/15/4">cash-for-comment</a> inquiry. The <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s158502.htm">inquiry found</a> he and other talkback hosts had taken money from big companies to spruik their virtues, while making it look as if it was their own honestly held opinion.</p>
<p>Yet within weeks, Jones was hosting an event for Howard, who was then prime minister and had become a fixture on the broadcaster’s program.</p>
<p>It invites the question, why?</p>
<p>There are many answers, but one is overwhelmingly more important than the others: the climate of fear and resentment created in certain sections of society by economic dislocation and the threat to security represented by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.</p>
<p>In 2006, the Australia Institute produced <a href="https://www.tai.org.au/sites/default/files/WP100_8.pdf">a webpaper by Clive Hamilton</a> that described the characteristics of Jones’s audience based on extensive demographic and attitudinal data from Roy Morgan Research.</p>
<p>It showed Jones draws his audience largely from an older generation in lower to middle income brackets. His listeners are more religious than other Australians, more socially conservative, more likely to believe that the fundamental values of Australian life are under threat and more likely to favour heterosexual families in which children are disciplined and taught respect for authority. They were also reported to feel less safe than they used to.</p>
<p>If we reflect on the tectonic shifts in society since Jones embarked on his radio career in 1985, it is possible to see how an audience like this might find the Jones recipe appealing.</p>
<p>The late 1980s were years in which the Hawke-Keating governments opened the Australian economy to global competition. Many manufacturing jobs were lost overseas. Blue-collar workers, many trained for one job only, were suddenly on the economic scrapheap.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/e620f529f1c25637ca2570ec007868d6!OpenDocument">Australian Bureau of Statistics reported</a> that long-term unemployment in Australia reached an unprecedented peak of 366,000 persons in March 1993, representing 38% of the unemployed. The previous peak (31% of total unemployment) occurred in February 1984. Older men had been particularly affected by this trend.</p>
<p>Nobody had asked them whether they thought this was good policy. They felt disenfranchised and their resentment was to surface in a variety of ways: dislike of Asians, contempt for Aboriginal people and more lately, fear of Islam and asylum-seekers.</p>
<p>These attitudes were discovered in much social research during the ensuing decades. An example was <a href="https://socialequity.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/2598460/Islamisation-and-Other-Anxieties.pdf">a report for the Melbourne University Social Equity Institute</a> on attitudes to asylum-seekers in 2016.</p>
<p>It noted that many of the fears and resentments underpinning attitudes to asylum-seekers were similar to those behind the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party in the mid-1990s.</p>
<p>The promise by Howard in 1996 to make Australians feel “relaxed and comfortable” turned out to be a successful election strategy, and for the 11 years of his prime ministership, Howard was a fixture on the Jones program.</p>
<p>It was symbiotic. The people Jones referred to as living in “Struggle Street” became “Howard’s battlers”.</p>
<p>The election of Kevin Rudd in 2007, with its focus on climate change, was calculated to make Australians feel anything but relaxed and comfortable.</p>
<p>Jones read this unerringly and became a relentless climate denier, offering his own version of comfort to an audience confronting an existential threat for which the science was both irrefutable and incomprehensible.</p>
<p>It was over climate change that in August 2019 Jones uttered his infamous entreaty to Scott Morrison that he should <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/alan-jones-tells-scott-morrison-to-shove-a-sock-down-throat-of-jacinda-ardern-20190815-p52hja.html">shove a sock down the throat</a> of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shoving-a-sock-in-it-is-not-the-answer-have-advertisers-called-time-on-alan-jones-122367">Shoving a sock in it is not the answer. Have advertisers called time on Alan Jones?</a>
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<p>Powerful women were often his target. His proposal in 2011 that Julia Gillard, then prime minister, should be taken out to sea and dumped in a chaff bag, was also provoked by his anger at her government’s climate-change policies.</p>
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<p>This may or may not have resonated with his ageing audience, but at any rate they stayed loyal to him.</p>
<p>He has been accused of racism, particularly in respect of Middle Eastern people and Muslims generally.</p>
<p>In 2009, the New South Wales Administrative Decisions Tribunal <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-02/tribunal-rules-alan-jones-incited-hatred/4292052">found Jones</a> “incited hatred, serious contempt and severe ridicule of Lebanese Muslims” during on-air comments in April 2005.</p>
<p>He had described them as “vermin” who “rape and pillage a nation that’s taken them in”.</p>
<p>These insults were unleashed at a time of racial tension in Sydney that culminated in <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/cronulla-rioters-10-years-later-speak-of-pride-regret-death-im-not-ashamed-20151127-gl9mrh.html">the Cronulla riots</a>, when a confrontation between men of Middle Eastern appearance and Anglo-Australian lifesavers provoked a violent retaliatory response a week later.</p>
<p>Multiculturalism and feminism have been two of the most enduring forces for social change in Australia over the past five decades. Jones has been a vocal campaigner against both. Coupled with economic dislocation and the threat of terrorism, they have reshaped the contours of Australian society.</p>
<p>The times have suited him, but in many fundamental respects time has also passed him by.</p>
<p>His outbursts have generated social and commercial backlashes recently that were unthinkable just a few years ago, powered by the new force of social media.</p>
<p>For his latter-day employer, Nine Entertainment, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/25/alan-joness-radio-show-loses-hundreds-of-advertisers-since-jacinda-ardern-storm">he was high-risk</a>. The withdrawal of 19 big advertisers from his program after the attack on Ardern came only a few months after he had <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-12/alan-jones-defamed-wagners-court-decision-brisbane-qld/10230384">cost 2GB $3.75 million in defamation damages</a>, plus costs, for a baseless and relentless campaign in which he blamed a family of quarry owners for the deaths of 12 people in the 2011 Grantham floods.</p>
<p>It may be no coincidence that his retirement comes as his contract with Nine approaches its end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With his defence of those on “struggle street” mixed with a hectoring and bullying style, Jones exerted enormous influence on Australian public life. But utlimately, progress ran over the top.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1280182019-11-28T11:26:53Z2019-11-28T11:26:53ZGrattan on Friday: Own goals and defeat of union legislation give Scott Morrison a horror week<p>The strange affair of Angus Taylor and the allegedly doctored document of dubious provenance he used to try to discredit Sydney’s lord mayor Clover Moore and her council over climate change is replete with lessons for political players.</p>
<p>One: avoid gratuitous point scoring, but if you must do it, make sure your facts are correct.</p>
<p>Two: when you are caught out in a mistake, make a clean breast of things, and as quickly as possible – don’t dally with your apology.</p>
<p>Three: if you are the prime minister, and your embattled minister is facing a police investigation, do nothing that might suggest, even if wrongly, that you are intervening in the course of justice.</p>
<p>Four: when, as PM, you are defending your man or woman in parliament, make sure the material you use has been triple checked.</p>
<p>Failure to observe these obvious and sensible practices has created a distracting issue for the government and then damagingly escalated it. In the process, Taylor has been discredited, and Scott Morrison has been embroiled and embarrassed – or embarrassed himself. Every twist and turn has been entirely self-created by the government. The whole thing was avoidable.</p>
<p>Taylor’s self-image and the political reality of his career have sharply diverged since he was elected to parliament in 2013, with the hope, indeed the expectation in his own mind, of eventually becoming prime minister.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-under-fire-for-calling-nsw-police-commissioner-over-angus-taylor-investigation-127922">Scott Morrison under fire for calling NSW police commissioner over Angus Taylor investigation</a>
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<p>It did not seem at the time an unreasonable aspiration. A Rhodes scholar, a McKinsey man who became a director at Port Jackson Partners, Taylor presented well and looked the part.</p>
<p>He identified with the conservative wing of the Liberals (later supporting Peter Dutton’s leadership bid and criticising Malcolm Turnbull), although certain people who knew him well and worked with him in his previous career are surprised at some of the positions he takes today including on issues related to climate change.</p>
<p>Belying his early promise, Taylor has been embroiled in controversies (including over his interest in a family company investigated about land clearing), and since becoming energy minister under Morrison he has performed poorly in what’s admittedly a very challenging portfolio.</p>
<p>In general, Taylor has fallen victim to a combination of hubris and stubbornness.</p>
<p>His response to the City of Sydney’s declaration of a climate emergency was to point to what he claimed were the councillors’ huge travel costs - and thus large carbon footprint - with the imputation of hypocrisy. His letter to Moore was given to the Daily Telegraph just to hype his attack.</p>
<p>But the figures he used were wrong – so wrong it is amazing Taylor, with a background dealing with numbers, did not immediately spot a problem.</p>
<p>When the error was inevitably revealed, Taylor insisted the document providing the basis for his claim “was drawn directly from the City of Sydney website”. He said his office on September 9 accessed a report on that site. Taylor sticks by this story publicly, and reportedly says the same thing privately to Morrison.</p>
<p>But the council report on the site contained the correct figures, and the evidence so far – notably the City of Sydney metadata - indicates that report was not altered.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-stands-by-energy-minister-angus-taylor-who-faces-police-probe-127818">Scott Morrison stands by energy minister Angus Taylor, who faces police probe</a>
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<p>So where did Taylor’s allegedly doctored and certainly inaccurate document come from?</p>
<p>The most likely explanation appears to be the Taylor office somehow accessed a draft, and then a staffer misread that draft, inflating the very modest travel costs into the millions of dollars that Taylor claimed.</p>
<p>But why, if something like that is what happened, Taylor did not ‘fess up with the full story immediately is inexplicable.</p>
<p>This week’s announcement of a NSW Police investigation took the affair to a new level, raising the question of whether Taylor should be stood aside while that proceeds. This can be argued both ways: in my view there’s a reasonable case for not standing him aside. There are precedents, and anyway the probe will be finished quickly.</p>
<p>What was not reasonable was for Morrison to ring NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller to ask about the investigation. Not least because he and Fuller are well acquainted personally – they previously lived near each other.</p>
<p>(As a side point, Fuller was caught out in relation to this neighbourliness. A while ago he told 2GB Morrison used to take in his, Fuller’s, rubbish bin. This week, playing down his closeness to Morrison, Fuller said that never happened.)</p>
<p>Apart from the proprieties, a leader with any appreciation of process should know that by directly contacting the commissioner he was opening himself to attack.</p>
<p>To do so was a misjudgement. Then Morrison added carelessness when, raising Labor examples of people not standing aside while under police investigation, he attributed the words of radio presenter Ben Fordham to a Victorian detective.</p>
<p>This was another instance of somebody being sloppy. While many journalists will identify with mixing up a quote – there but for the grace of god, etc – if you’re a prime minister doing it in the middle of a stoush, the political fallout is nasty.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/louts-thugs-bullies-the-myth-thats-driving-morrisons-anti-union-push-123688">'Louts, thugs, bullies': the myth that's driving Morrison's anti-union push</a>
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<p>With one week of the parliamentary year remaining, Labor has decided to deny Taylor a pair next Wednesday and Thursday for him to go to the International Energy Agency conference in Paris. It could be another rough few days for the minister, unless he gets a very quick all-clear from the NSW police.</p>
<p>By late Thursday the government was hoping its very difficult week would finish with an important win – the passage of its Ensuring Integrity legislation to crack down on recalcitrant unions and union officials. But there things went horribly wrong.</p>
<p>Pauline Hanson, despite securing concessions, voted with Labor and the legislation was lost on a tie.</p>
<p>The government was visibly shocked, with attorney-general Christian Porter saying it would seek to reintroduce the legislation “at an appropriate time” - whenever that might be.</p>
<p>Hanson said she was firing a warning shot across the bows of both union bosses and the government – the former should get their act together and the latter should clean up white collar crime.</p>
<p>“What I pick up from the public is a crystal-clear view that this government, and past governments, have one rule for white-collar crime and a much harsher rule for blue-collar crime,” she had said earlier. The shocking revelations about Westpac came at a very bad time for a government pressing its case for action on unions.</p>
<p>As it looks to the final sitting week, the government is desperately trying to wrangle Jacqui Lambie, who’s playing hardball, into voting for the repeal of medevac.</p>
<p>Another rebuff on what it regards as critical legislation would be deeply humiliating.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With one parliamentary week remaining, Angus Taylor has been discredited, and Scott Morrison has been embroiled and embarrassed – or embarrassed himself. And the whole thing was avoidable.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1220512019-08-20T20:06:07Z2019-08-20T20:06:07ZIt will be money, not morality, that finally turns the tide on Alan Jones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288674/original/file-20190820-170946-1hj6mhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The perception of Jones' power has led to him being courted by politicians, and so wielding actual power.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joel Carrett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alan Jones’s political power is to a large extent based on a self-fulfilling prophecy: politicians believe he can shift votes, so they pay homage to him, which adds to the impression that he can shift votes.</p>
<p>This perception of power, in turn, gives him actual power.</p>
<p>Yet the author and social researcher Rebecca Huntley is <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/10/13/the-power-alan-jones/15393492006987">reported as saying</a>:</p>
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<p>Fifteen years of research and I haven’t found Alan Jones to be that much more influential with voters than ABC Radio or The SMH. He is only powerful because politicians think he is.</p>
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<p>So if evidence that he actually shifts votes is hard to find, how did this phenomenon develop?</p>
<p>Developments in media-political relations over the 34 years that Jones has been broadcasting give some pointers.</p>
<p>He was a pioneer in what has become known as the outrage industry. He rants and raves in extraordinarily fluent broadsides, captivating in their aural power and – to a listener of a certain type – intoxicatingly persuasive.</p>
<p>This listener is typically in the autumn of life and living in the western suburbs of Sydney, where a tough life has bred cynicism about politicians, bureaucrats and big companies.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/outrage-polls-and-bias-2019-federal-election-showed-australian-media-need-better-regulation-117401">Outrage, polls and bias: 2019 federal election showed Australian media need better regulation</a>
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<p>Early on, Jones tapped into this sentiment, becoming the champion of what he called “Struggle Street”, although he himself lived in an apartment overlooking Circular Quay and the Opera House.</p>
<p>His ratings rose and so did his perceived capacity to win over the hearts and minds of Struggle Street.</p>
<p>By the late 1990s, companies that were on the nose with the public, like Telstra and some of the banks, began to see that he might be able to change public attitudes towards them, if his commentary about them could be made to look like his honestly held opinion.</p>
<p>In fact these commentaries were paid for, but this was not disclosed to the audience, and so in 1999 Jones, along with several other high-profile talkback hosts, were caught up in what became known as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/nov/15/4">cash-for-comment scandal</a>.</p>
<p>Despite adverse findings against him by the regulator at the time, the Australian Broadcasting Authority, belief in his power to sway audiences remained undiminished.</p>
<p>A few weeks after these findings were announced, he hosted an event for then Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, and dined with the NSW Labor Premier, Bob Carr, to discuss matters of government policy.</p>
<p>The following week, Carr sent his Police Minister-designate, Michael Costa, to discuss policing policy with Jones.</p>
<p>At Radio 2UE, where Jones was then working, the revenue generated not just by conventional advertising but by the cash-for-comment arrangements, had made Jones’s position there impregnable. </p>
<p>And when he switched to 2GB in 2002, he became an instant rainmaker for his new station, and equally impregnable there, free of management constraints and therefore in a position to play favourites and create enmities with whomever he chose.</p>
<p>His core audience – those on “Struggle Street – were then given special attention by the prime minister, and came to be known as "Howard’s battlers”.</p>
<p>For the entirety of his prime ministership, from 1996 to 2007, Howard made a point of cultivating Jones, and became a favourite. A former colleague of Jones, Mike Carlton, has <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/10/13/the-power-alan-jones/15393492006987">been quoted as saying</a> that there was allegedly an operative in Howard’s office dedicated to working on what were called “Jones issues”. </p>
<p>Whether this was true or not, Howard became a regular guest on the Jones program, saying it gave him a chance to speak directly to the Australian people rather than having his message filtered by sceptical journalists.</p>
<p>A prime ministerial imprimatur of this kind is calculated to increase perceptions of political power.</p>
<p>Then, just as Howard was departing office in 2007, the phenomenon of social media was gaining momentum in Australia.</p>
<p>It turbo-charged the outrage industry, and Jones was skilled up to take advantage of this new libertarian free-for-all.</p>
<p>He had already been <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/-/media/Broadcasting-Investigations/Investigation-reports/Radio-investigations/pdf-pre-2013/2gb_report1485-pdf.pdf?la=en">found in 2005</a> to have breached the radio industry code of practice by inciting violence against people of Middle Eastern ethnicity in a series of incendiary broadcasts leading up to the race riots at Cronulla that year.</p>
<p>But as usual, the broadcasting regulator, now called the Australian Media and Communications Authority, contented itself with entering into a “dialogue” with 2GB.</p>
<p>Then, in 2012, he gave encouragement to the idea that Julia Gillard should be put in a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/insults-and-chaff-bags-leave-jones-in-bad-odour-20121001-26vla.html">chaff bag and dumped at sea</a>. Once more there were no consequences.</p>
<p>And now, in 2019, he is encouraging Scott Morrison – already known as the 2GB Prime Minister – to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/alan-jones-tells-scott-morrison-to-shove-a-sock-down-throat-of-jacinda-ardern-20190815-p52hja.html">shove a sock down the throat</a> of the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.</p>
<p>Three strikes, but still not out.</p>
<p>Finally, however, there is a sign the 2GB management might have begun to ask themselves whether Jones has outlived his profitability.</p>
<p>They have <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-17/alan-jones-jacinda-ardern-further-comments-termination-2gb/11424876">warned him</a> that one more rant like that and they will terminate his contract.</p>
<p>It cannot just be that a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/alan-jones-losing-more-advertisers-in-wake-of-attack-on-jacinda-ardern-20190819-p52iip.html">swag of big advertisers</a> have abandoned the Jones program. This has happened in the past when he has committed some atrocity, but they drift back after the hue and cry has died down.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sexist-abuse-has-a-long-history-in-australian-politics-and-takes-us-all-to-a-dark-place-99222">Sexist abuse has a long history in Australian politics – and takes us all to a dark place</a>
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<p>However, last year Jones <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/alan-jones-just-lost-a-3-75-million-defamation-case-over-the-2011-queensland-floods-2018-9">cost the station A$3.75 million</a> in defamation damages, plus millions more in legal costs after he wrongly and persistently accused the owners of a quarry in the Queensland town of Grantham of causing the deaths of local people who died in the 2011 floods.</p>
<p>At the time of writing, Macquarie Media, which owns 2GB, is being purchased by Nine Entertainment, which already owns the Nine TV network and the big mastheads of the old Fairfax company, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review.</p>
<p>It may be that this takeover will add a reputational dimension to the assessment of Jones’s value to shareholders.</p>
<p>If Jones does finally come to grief, it will be because of considerations like these, not because of any damage he does to the social fabric.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The broadcaster’s latest outrage may finally make his employer act - but not because of any damage he is doing to the social fabric.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/457332015-08-05T12:07:24Z2015-08-05T12:07:24ZWho’s afraid of Alan Jones?<p>After a <a href="http://www.2gb.com/audioplayer/116796">spectacular run-in</a> with Environment Minister Greg Hunt recently over the proposed Shenhua Watermark coal mine, broadcaster Alan Jones had Trade Minister Andrew Robb <a href="http://www.2gb.com/audioplayer/120401">in his sights</a> on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Jones took aim at the free trade agreements Robb has negotiated, and at Chinese and other foreign investment in land.</p>
<p>While Hunt appeared to retreat under the onslaught and change position – although he later insisted he hadn’t – Robb fired back with both barrels, suggesting Jones was using a “racist” argument and peddling the line of “the most corrupt union in Australia”.</p>
<p>Jones put to Robb that the government said its free trade deals had gained greater access for beef and dairy to Japan and China but “they won’t need our exports – they are going to buy up our dairy farmers and buy up our beef farms”.</p>
<p>“This is just a scare campaign,” Robb replied. “1% of agriculture is owned by the Chinese. 1%, and yet most people would think that it is 20% with all the ranting by the unions and everyone else.”</p>
<p>Jones had a list, to which Robb countered by recalling that 100 years ago the British Vestey company owned “all of the north, and they couldn’t take it away”.</p>
<p>Anyway, Robb added, “we cannot get Australian investors to put money into agriculture”.</p>
<p>“So what do we do then?” Jones asked. “Let China just buy it up?”</p>
<p>“Alan, in my lifetime, I have never seen a farm leave Australia,” Robb said, pointing out that Australia was a capital-limited country, and it got taxes, jobs and infrastructure from the investment.</p>
<p>When Robb repeated his point about Vestey’s owing a lot of land, Jones said: “We are talking about China, South Korea and Japan”.</p>
<p>“No, it’s a racist … ”, said Robb before Jones jumped on him: “Oh I’m racist now? Jesus, come on.”</p>
<p>Robb moved on to the CFMEU. “I can’t believe that you’ve been last week peddling all of the CFMEU lines … They are the most corrupt union in Australia, Alan. They are in bed with the bikies who control 15% of the drug trade in Australia. Give me a break.”</p>
<p>Jones had no intention of giving Robb a break. “You’re concerned that there is an argument being mounted that you can’t handle, other than throwing around those slogans.”</p>
<p>Robb said the CFMEU had totally misrepresented the Australia-China free trade agreement. “And why do they use the word ‘China’ every second word? Because they know it produces a nervous response throughout the community, rather than looking at the facts.”</p>
<p>When Jones referred to a “Chinese government-owned company on the Liverpool plains which will have an 8000 acre hole in the ground, 300 meters deep”, Robb said the planned mine was “on the ridge” not the plains.</p>
<p>“You don’t know what you are talking about. You are only quoting and parroting the stuff you are told in Canberra. I know the area, I’m telling you,” Jones said.</p>
<p>“I don’t know it as well as you do,” Robb conceded, “but I do know the area and I have looked at the topography of where this mine is”.</p>
<p>Jones quickly issued an invitation: “You are welcome to come with me”.</p>
<p>One presumes Robb might find he’s a little busy.</p>
<p>Jones is the most influential shock jock on the air. Many politicians fear him and he revels in his power.</p>
<p>This year, after the federal government reversed approval for a aged care development at Sydney’s Middle Head that Jones had campaigned against, the broadcaster quickly noted his role. The thwarted developers had no doubt about it.</p>
<p>In a statement made to the Federal Court, the company involved said: “The decision was catalysed and driven by Mr Jones”. The statement of claim said Jones had told his listeners he had held discussions with Hunt and parliamentary secretary Bob Baldwin and the matter was “in excellent hands”. The legal action was later settled but the reversal decision stands.</p>
<p>Also this year, Jones strongly attacked then-Queensland premier Campbell Newman over coal mining before the state election. Jones claimed Newman had lied to him; Newman alleged Jones had defamed him. Jones’s program was broadcast into Queensland.</p>
<p>Jones was unrelentingly critical of the Gillard government, saying on air that she should be “put into a chaff bag and thrown into the sea”. But his most notorious performance was not on his program but when, referring to the death of Gillard’s father, he told a Sydney University Liberal Club function that her “old man recently died a few weeks ago of shame. To think that he had a daughter who told lies every time she stood for parliament.”</p>
<p>When John Howard was prime minister, a staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office was specifically designated to help liaise with Jones.</p>
<p>As a minister in the Howard government and as prime minister, Tony Abbott has had a clear sense of Jones’ clout, treating him with care and describing him as “a friend of mine”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
After a spectacular run-in with Environment Minister Greg Hunt recently over the proposed Shenhua Watermark coal mine, broadcaster Alan Jones had Trade Minister Andrew Robb in his sights on Wednesday…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100522012-10-09T03:20:59Z2012-10-09T03:20:59ZShock jocks unite - when commercial interests overcome public good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16312/original/68nj9vp2-1349751371.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The sort of controversy surrounding Alan Jones and 2GB is familiar territory for US shock jocks; aggressive rhetoric threatens to drown out constructive dialogue.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Macquarie Radio Network Chairman Russell Tate’s decision to suspend all advertising on radio broadcaster Alan Jones’ 2GB Breakfast Show is an extraordinary testament to the conviction that commercial media doesn’t in fact give audiences what they want. </p>
<p>Tate has said Macquarie had been forced to <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/time-out-on-jones-advertisers/story-e6frg996-1226490229610">“call time out”</a> for advertisers to quell an anti-Jones campaign which followed Jones’ now-notorious remarks about Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s late father.</p>
<p>But it also represents a canny strategy that draws on recent precedents in the radio and television industries. When we look at those precedents, we see just how troubling the Jones affair truly is; it says ominous things about where Australia sits in international media trends toward aggressive political rhetoric.</p>
<p>The idea that one presenter is bigger than the radio station or even network is not new; think <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Howard_Stern_Show">US shock-jock Howard Stern</a>. </p>
<p>In 2006, Stern left the Infinity Broadcasting Corporation for Sirius, the satellite radio operation. Sirius believed that there was a market for a subscription radio service that would give listeners what they wanted, and what they wanted was Stern. </p>
<p>Sirius offered the self-styled “King of All Media” a deal reportedly worth as much as $220 million. So vast was Stern’s audience, and the advertising premium it commanded, that Infinity insisted the shock jock should honour the remainder of his contract. </p>
<p>Stern used his notice period to mock the station and urge listeners to buy satellite sets so that they might follow him to Sirius. No matter; the revenues stream he generated made it literally worth putting up with the insults.</p>
<p>The sort of controversy that surrounds Jones and 2GB was meat and drink to Stern. His career has seen a running battle with US media regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). There is almost nothing Stern won’t joke about - including <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/04/12/flashback-howard-stern-on_n_45737.html">the Columbine school massacre</a>. </p>
<p>And yet his popularity moved from strength to strength. He’s even been <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/howard-sterns-crazy-americas-got-talent-gamble-20120521">anointed as Simon Cowell’s heir</a> on America’s Got Talent. Employers have stuck with him through the turbulence, and been handsomely rewarded for doing so.</p>
<p>Sometimes, industry insiders justify the presence of men like Stern and Jones by arguing that they are essentially actors. Take Glenn Beck, latterly of US Fox News. Beck set out to style himself as a right-wing alternative to the enormously successful Jon Stewart. So, early in his television career, CNN urged viewers not to be alarmed by Beck’s penchant for wishing violence upon liberal opponents. He didn’t mean it. This was just his shtick.</p>
<p>People were less inclined to laugh after the assassination attempt on US Member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords. Jared Loughner opened fire on Giffords at a political rally in Tucson, Arizona in January 2011. She survived, but six people were killed, and 12 others wounded. Before the assault, Giffords had spoken of her unease at being the target of sinister mediated criticism. </p>
<p>Chillingly, she had predicted the attempt on her life; Sarah Palin had published a campaign graphic depicting Giffords’ electoral district in a cross-hair. Giffords read this as a sign of an alarming escalation in the acrimony of political debate, warning that this trend was likely to have serious consequences. How right she was.</p>
<p>Shock jocks soon found themselves subjected to scrutiny on this count. Former MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann explicitly accused Glenn Beck (and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly) of creating a climate that directly encouraged real acts of violence. </p>
<p>In an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NILQy11biY">extraordinary attack</a> on Beck, O’Reilly and Fox News, Olbermann ordered all of them to apologise to America, and also demanded that sponsors abandon the men and the station should contrition fail to materialise. None of these events came to pass.</p>
<p>Against this background, it’s easy to see why people have made so much of Alan Jones’ comments about the Prime Minister, and just as easy to see why Russell Tate is standing by his errant employee. </p>
<p>If there ever was a time when it would have been possible to joke about putting the Prime Minister into a chaff bag and throwing her into the sea, a glance over at America shows why that time should be put firmly into antiquity. </p>
<p>US media observers are enormously concerned about how the popularity of aggressive political commentary is making it impossible to hold constructive dialogue at a time when the nation needs it most. As Jon Stewart has put it, men like Glenn Beck should “stop hurting America”.</p>
<p>Of course, they won’t as long as they can find a market for their views. Or, more to the point, powerful employers who believe there is a market for their views, and who will work to build one. </p>
<p>Seen this way, the Jones controversy is not about giving 2GB listeners what they want; it is about the commercial value of male outrage in highly competitive media markets, and a privileging of commercial concerns over the public good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Ruddock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Macquarie Radio Network Chairman Russell Tate’s decision to suspend all advertising on radio broadcaster Alan Jones’ 2GB Breakfast Show is an extraordinary testament to the conviction that commercial media…Andy Ruddock, Senior Lecturer, Research Unit in Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/99052012-10-02T01:08:05Z2012-10-02T01:08:05ZGillard takes a calculated risk in leaving Alan Jones adrift<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16065/original/bm925xq5-1349137059.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Broadcaster Alan Jones has been embroiled in a controversy over remarks he made on Julia Gillard's late father.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Warren Clarke</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The interesting part about this weekend’s kerfuffle over Alan Jones’ comments about the late John Gillard is not what Jones said. </p>
<p>After all, we’ve known about his combative - some would say offensive - nature since he <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/jones-guilty-of-breach-over-cronulla-riots-comments/story-e6frg6nf-1111113320313">incited ethnic violence at Cronulla in 2005</a>, and his <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/alan-jones-lets-rip-at-juliar-gillard-20110225-1b7km.html">antipathy towards the Prime Minister</a> has been evident since he called her “Ju-liar” to her face, live on air in 2011. </p>
<p>What <em>is</em> interesting is how the Prime Minister and politicians of all stripes (Tony Abbott notably excepted) have responded to his comments.</p>
<p>Although Jones says he has tried to make contact with Prime Minister Gillard to apologise, she’s not taking his calls. There’s been no public kiss-and-make up, no photo-op in which the two awkwardly share a cuppa and agree to let bygones be bygones. Some have interpreted the Prime Minister’s pointed silence as letting Jones know he’s gone too far this time, but I think it signals something much more significant. </p>
<p>I think the Prime Minister and the government have decided Jones just doesn’t matter that much anymore, and as a consequence, they’re no longer prepared to slavishly cultivate him in the way that all sides of politics have done for the past 15 years.</p>
<h2>The good old days</h2>
<p>It used to be said that Alan Jones could make or break governments — his breakfast show has enjoyed a long stretch as the number one ranking radio program in metropolitan Sydney and reaches thousands more around the country through syndication on rural and regional radio networks. </p>
<p>Paul Keating called Jones’ signature mix of outrage, political gossip, selectively-chosen statistics and man-on-the-street commentary “run of the mill fascism”, but for a period during the late 1990s and 2000s his was the show to be on if you wanted to be anyone in politics; his endorsement was the one you needed if you wanted to win over the taxi drivers, blue collar workers and pensioners of Australia. </p>
<p>The high-water mark of Jones’ influence was the latter end of the Howard years, when the Prime Minister would routinely snub “serious” media programs such as The 7:30 Report and Insiders in favour of yet another chat with Jones about how right his government was getting everything.</p>
<h2>A changing landscape</h2>
<p>Since the Howard government fell, Jones has attempted to maintain his influence by leading a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/convoy-of-no-confidence-runs-short-on-revs-20110822-1j6sk.html">vocal crusade</a> against the carbon tax and other key Labor initiatives, even going so far as to support (and then serve as MC for) the embarrassing “convoy of no confidence” protest which sputtered into Canberra in August last year. </p>
<p>Yet for all his continued bluster from behind the microphone, Jones’ influence has steadily been eaten away by one simple fact: the ranks of those who listen to the radio are getting smaller and greyer by the year.</p>
<p>In 2006, Jones commanded an <a href="http://www.themonthly.com.au/sydneys-talkback-titan-and-his-mythical-power-whos-breakfast-mr-jones-david-salter-216">average daily listenership</a> of 185,000 people in the Sydney catchment area alone. Six years later in <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/10/01/unsackable-why-alan-jones-can-say-what-he-likes/">2012 this number is down</a> to 151,000. His is still the number one rated show, but that’s <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/au/en/surveys/2012/SydneySurvey6-2012.pdf">because there are fewer people listening overall</a> — the June 2012 Nielsen survey shows that all Sydney radio stations averaged just 469,000 listeners between them, out of a possible audience of 4.1 million. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16066/original/tvcxgdff-1349137957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16066/original/tvcxgdff-1349137957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16066/original/tvcxgdff-1349137957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16066/original/tvcxgdff-1349137957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16066/original/tvcxgdff-1349137957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16066/original/tvcxgdff-1349137957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/16066/original/tvcxgdff-1349137957.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julia Gillard has been grieving for her late father John.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is also well known that Jones’ audience is older and more socially conservative than the general population — <a href="http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/Who_Listens_to_Alan_Jones.pdf">a 2006 study by Clive Hamilton</a> found 68% of his regular listeners were aged 50 or older, and 65% had voted Liberal at the last election. When there were still a lot of people tuning in this didn’t matter too much, as the remainder of Jones’ audience was made up of younger blue-collar workers in outer suburban areas — the classic swing voters every party hopes to woo. </p>
<p>But over the past ten years many of these people have joined the ranks of the over-50s too, and they’re simply not being replaced by many new listeners. Younger people now <a href="http://www.yacvic.org.au/policy/items/2009/01/259258-upload-00001.pdf">get their news and current affairs</a> primarily from television (both cable and free-to-air) and the internet, and there are a multitude of right-of-centre blogs, podcasts and news publications catering to those who would once have tuned in to Jones’ dulcet tones each morning.</p>
<h2>Can Jones evolve his act?</h2>
<p>Internationally, prominent US shock jocks such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have bridged this generational divide by becoming cross-platform media stars — streaming and podcasting shows online for the digital-savvy, appearing as commentators on like-minded cable talk shows, and maintaining their own blogs and social media profiles. Jones has done none of this (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1301762/">perhaps put off by his spectacularly unsuccessful 1994 talk show</a>) and so is gradually being marginalised by the march of time and media evolution. </p>
<p>If nothing else, the past weekend’s events suggest that Jones’ decline as a political force is now considered sufficiently terminal for the Prime Minister to take a principled stand against his foulness. </p>
<p>Where her predecessors may have thrown him a lifeline in the hope of building stronger relations — and therefore guaranteeing more favourable on-air treatment — Prime Minister Gillard has chosen to leave him adrift in the media storm his comments created. </p>
<p>Jones may not be a totally spent political force just yet, but if one of the most risk-averse and media-sensitive leaders Australia has ever seen is no longer scared of him, others aren’t likely to be for long, either.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Rayner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The interesting part about this weekend’s kerfuffle over Alan Jones’ comments about the late John Gillard is not what Jones said. After all, we’ve known about his combative - some would say offensive…Jennifer Rayner, Doctoral Candidate, Australian Politics, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.