tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/alan-jones-1074/articlesAlan Jones – The Conversation2021-11-04T09:27:12Ztag: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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1048796190970507264"}"></div></p>
<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>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hsaVpepMyA8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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>
<blockquote>
<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>
</blockquote>
<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>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411191/original/file-20210714-27-1c4ktsm.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">Scott Morrison often relies on sympathetic interviews on Hadley’s show to get his message across.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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>
<blockquote>
<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>
</blockquote>
<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/1387282020-05-15T04:26:39Z2020-05-15T04:26:39ZVIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the climb down the mountain, unemployment and Jobkeeper, as well as Anthony Albanese’s ‘vision statement’<p>Michelle Grattan talks with Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher (remotely) about the week in politics, including the fine line the government is walking between generating economic confidence and the sobering prospect of recession, Thursday’s unemployment figures, and the risk of a second-wave coronavirus resurgence.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gjCcpGvbOm8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138728/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>Michelle Grattan talks with Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher (remotely) about the week in politics.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed 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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hsaVpepMyA8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<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/1254992019-10-18T07:17:56Z2019-10-18T07:17:56ZVIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the government’s drought policy - and the trust divide in politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297637/original/file-20191018-56228-1skgije.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Michelle Grattan says the announcement of extra money for drought-stricken farmers "won't be enough" to alleviate pressure on the government on the issue of drought. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-view-outback-cattle-mustering-featuring-685560538?src=C0p882xNtazOmyUD-jpvnQ-1-5">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YBlft8hgzpg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Leigh Sullivan discusses the week in politics with Michelle Grattan. They talk about Alan Jones accusing Prime Minister Scott Morrison of failing the immediate needs of drought-stricken farmers, the IMF projecting growth rates for Australia to 1.7%, and the report from Democracy 2025 which revealed how politicians view the trust divide in politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125499/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>University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Leigh Sullivan discusses the week in politics with Michelle Grattan.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1223672019-08-27T00:52:09Z2019-08-27T00:52:09ZShoving a sock in it is not the answer. Have advertisers called time on Alan Jones?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289522/original/file-20190826-8845-hdujct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C100%2C5501%2C3567&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 50 advertisers have so far withdrawn from Alan Jones’ 2GB radio show, buoyed by social media campaigns naming and shaming those who remain.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Braven</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Alan Jones encouraged Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to “shove a sock down” the throat of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, it was not the first time he launched a broadside and <a href="https://www.wiredfocus.com/advertisers-boycott-australian-radio-host-over-ardern-sock-comment/">lost advertisers</a>. </p>
<p>This time, 52 advertisers have so far withdrawn from Jones’ 2GB radio programme, buoyed by social media campaigns by activist groups publicising a list of boycotting advertisers as well as naming and shaming those who remain, such as Virgin Australia.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1164665392729509888"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Messing with the wrong person</h2>
<p>When asked about Jones’ comment on a television morning news programme, Ardern said she didn’t engage and does not intend to respond because she doesn’t “have an opinion on every single person who says something about me.” </p>
<p>Ardern has risen to <a href="https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/new-zealand-becoming-known-overseas-its-progressive-prime-minister-marketing-expert-says">worldwide recognition</a>, particularly following her empathetic response to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/christchurch-mosque-shootings-must-end-new-zealands-innocence-about-right-wing-terrorism-113655">terror attacks in Christchurch</a>. Her fans have been quick to call out slurs on her character such as Jones’ comments, as well as any associated brands.</p>
<p>In today’s interconnected and increasingly more accessible world, brands are recognising the <a href="http://docs.business.auckland.ac.nz/Doc/JBR-Special-Issue-2009-article-An-evaluation-of-strategic-responses-to-consumer-boycotts.pdf">potential damage of not responding</a> to an incident like this. Brands are actually responding strategically by capitalising on the press attention, visibly and loudly disassociating themselves from <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJSMS-02-2017-0012/full/html?skipTracking=true">negative events or scandals</a>. </p>
<p>It is not primarily about the money. Between at least seven of the boycotting brands, the money they put towards Jones’ 2GB radio show accounts for <a href="https://www.adnews.com.au/news/alan-jones-shrugs-off-an-advertiser-boycott-is-he-right">less than 1% of their media budget</a>. But the long-term reputational and financial risk avoided by dissociating from Alan Jones is significant. </p>
<p>A toxic affiliation, even when that accounts for only a small piece of the marketing budget and media exposure pie, can have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.1998.10673543">disastrous effects on a brand</a>.</p>
<h2>When brands partner</h2>
<p>Like Jacinda Ardern, Alan Jones is a <a href="https://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/%7Emoorman/Marketing-Strategy-Seminar-2015/Session%203/Keller.pdf">brand</a>. People are aware of who he is and his name evokes certain associations (rightwing, shock jock). When companies choose to buy advertising space within his talk show, they are engaging in a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24099164_Brand_Synthesis_The_Multidimensionality_of_Brand_Knowledge">brand partnership</a>. </p>
<p>Once partnered, brands gain exposure to each other’s audiences and trigger the transfer of associations between brands (for example, George Clooney’s global status can be transferred to an instant coffee brand). But when one brand attracts bad publicity, it is not the only one that suffers damage to their image. All affiliated brands are at risk. </p>
<p>Tiger Woods lost US$22 million in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tiger-woods-lost-22-million-in-2010-endorsements-2010-7?r=US&IR=T">endorsement and sponsorship contracts</a> after his 2009 sex scandal. Accenture, AT&T and Gatorade dropped Tiger Woods, and the scandal <a href="https://gsm.ucdavis.edu/news-release/tiger-woods-scandal-cost-shareholders-12-billion">cost shareholders of brands</a> such as Nike and Gatorade US$12 billion. Similarly, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/102828907/how-sports-stars-and-reputation-feed-off-each-other">Sandpapergate</a> saw some major sponsors cutting ties with the Australian cricket team in 2018 for fear of the negative associations with cheating that accompanied the ball tampering incident. </p>
<p>Partnerships mean that the brands involved are not completely in charge of their narrative. People <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJM-08-2015-0612/full/html?skipTracking=true">encounter brands in various ways</a> and each encounter shapes perceptions, despite not being curated by the brand. </p>
<p>While boycotting advertisers such as ME Bank, Chemist Warehouse, Koala and Volkswagen knew that audiences would be exposed to their brand within Alan Jones’ radio show, they can’t control what else is happening at that time and what they are being linked to by virtue of association.</p>
<h2>Turning a negative into a double positive</h2>
<p>Advertisers have not only mitigated the spillover of misogynistic and violent connotations to their images, they’ve used this boycott as an <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJSMS-02-2017-0012/full/html?skipTracking=true">opportunity to drive up brand sentiment</a>. Walking away from Alan Jones not only firewalls them from his brand of outrage but signals their brand as principled, virtuous and willing to take a stand. </p>
<p>The incident has also highlighted the fact that these companies actually sponsored the show in the first place - a show which was known for its controversial viewpoints before this particular incident. Paradoxically, righting this wrong by boycotting could <a href="https://hbr.org/1990/07/the-profitable-art-of-service-recovery">enhance satisfaction with these companies</a> more than if they had never advertised with the programme in the first place.</p>
<p>This is particularly meaningful in a climate where consumers want to buy from brands that <a href="https://www.thenational.ae/business/comment/millennials-are-buying-your-values-not-your-products-1.885625">share their own values</a> and act on social and political issues. Yet consumers discern between brands that back up their messages through practice. They’re looking for brands to “walk the talk”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/woke-washing-what-happens-when-marketing-communications-dont-match-corporate-practice-108035">Woke washing: what happens when marketing communications don't match corporate practice</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/T_Cornwell/publication/49516132_Celebrity_endorsement_brand_credibility_and_brand_equity/links/00b4952f913bc2079a000000.pdf">Credibility</a> based on attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness is key. </p>
<p>A recognisable brand is one of the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1177/0092070305283356">most lucrative assets</a> on a company’s books. The Apple brand, for example, is worth US$214 billion. Partnering with an entity with characteristics that boost a brand’s credibility will also increase brand equity, which captures the value of the brand name alone.</p>
<p>Brand equity starts with people’s knowledge of the brand - what comes to mind when they hear the name. By cutting ties with 2GB, the boycotting companies have made sure it’s not Alan Jones, sock-shoving and misogyny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122367/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The advertising boycott of Alan Jones’ radio show highlights which companies advertised on it, but ironically, pulling out now could enhance their brand more than if they had never supported the show.Amanda Spry, Lecturer in Marketing, RMIT UniversityJessica Vredenburg, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed 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>
<blockquote>
<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>
</blockquote>
<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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<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/1134722019-03-17T13:24:51Z2019-03-17T13:24:51ZNSW election neck and neck as voters face a 1950s-style ‘I’ll see you and raise you’ campaign<p>On Saturday, March 23, the people of New South Wales will head to the ballot boxes for a state election. It is looking <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-12/no-minority-government-negotiations-happening-michael-daley-says/10891896">increasingly close</a>, with polls showing government and opposition neck and neck on about 50% of the two-party preferred vote. This is a decline in the Coalition vote of 4% compared to the 2015 election.</p>
<p>The current campaign is reminiscent of a 1950s “I’ll see you and raise you” one. Government and opposition are engaged in an auction to outbid each other in the amounts committed to schools, hospitals, transport and other basic services. The campaign is one of the quietest in a long time, with little excitement about the respective leaders and no major clash of visions for the future.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mark-latham-in-the-upper-house-a-coalition-minority-government-the-nsw-election-is-nearly-upon-us-and-its-going-to-be-a-wild-ride-113119">Mark Latham in the upper house? A Coalition minority government? The NSW election is nearly upon us and it's going to be a wild ride</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Mike Baird’s victory in 2015 laid the foundation for this. The then Coalition leader won a mandate to privatise the state’s electricity network, although sacrificing seats his successor would be glad to have in reserve. The mountains of money produced by this and other privatisations have allowed Premier Gladys Berejiklian to go to the election with a massive war chest. </p>
<p>In addition, the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-will-probably-start-to-slow-down-sydney-and-the-state-s-dream-economic-run-may-be-over-20190215-p50y2m.html">NSW economy is in good shape</a>, performing well compared to most other states. The budget is in surplus and predicted to remain there. Net debt is negative. Unemployment is at a record low.</p>
<p>The Coalition government has a large array of infrastructure projects in progress, including the Westconnex and Northconnex motorways, Sydney Metro – the largest public transport project in Australia – and the CBD and South East light rail. The amount committed for infrastructure over the next four years is just under A$90 billion.</p>
<p>Berejiklian’s pitch is: don’t jeopardise all this by electing Labor. She is keen to remind the electorate of the factional bloodletting, policy paralysis and corruption that marked the final years of the last ALP government in NSW. The <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/absolutely-innocent-ian-macdonald-walks-from-jail-after-his-conviction-is-thrown-out-20190225-p5105g.html">release during the campaign</a> of Ian Macdonald, another ex-ALP minister, after his conviction was quashed, assisted the government by putting their misdeeds back on the front pages.</p>
<p>The Coalition also has some significant problems. Overdevelopment is devastating many Sydney suburbs. Residents angry at the disruption to their lives are likely to turn against the Liberals. The premier will not be presiding at many opening ceremonies for infrastructure projects before the election. More apparent are cost over-runs, delays and short-term inconvenience.</p>
<p>The general unpopularity of the federal Coalition government is a handicap for its NSW counterpart. In rural NSW, a belief that the Nationals have neglected voters’ interests could cost the government seats. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/low-key-nsw-election-likely-to-reveal-a-city-country-divide-112968">Low-key NSW election likely to reveal a city-country divide</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Opposition Leader Michael Daley struggled at first to gain momentum and attention. His campaign ignited three weeks out from polling day when <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-05/michael-daley-threatens-to-sack-alan-jones-and-scg-trust/10870814">he took on influential radio commentator Alan Jones</a> over the Sydney stadiums issue. This has been a festering sore for the government since November 2017, when Berejiklian announced that both Allianz Stadium at Moore Park and ANZ Stadium at Homebush would be simultaneously demolished and rebuilt at an estimated cost of A$2.5 billion.</p>
<p>The public outcry at what was seen as wasteful expense was so great that she quickly backed off. The rebuilding of Allianz would proceed, but ANZ would now be renovated, saving A$1 billion. </p>
<p>Labor quickly seized on the issue, opposing the demolition of Allianz and coining the effective slogan of “<a href="https://www.nswlabor.org.au/schoolsandhospitals">schools and hospitals before Sydney stadiums</a>”.</p>
<p>Jones is a member of the prestigious Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, which controls Allianz and has lobbied strongly for its rebuilding. Daley attacked Jones and promised to sack him and most members of the trust. </p>
<p>Daley instantly became the people’s politician, unafraid to stand up to a powerful broadcaster and an elite board. He put the stadium issue back at the centre of the campaign. It crystallised the perception that the government is more concerned about developers and big business than the community. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/89TYOeOwkCw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But does Daley have anything more positive to offer? There is some policy differentiation. </p>
<p>Labor has promised there will be no more privatisations and will re-regulate the electricity industry. Labor also has stronger policies on the environment and climate change than the Coalition. It will be more generous to the public sector. But the main thrust of Daley’s campaign is: we will give you more of the same but do it better.</p>
<p>The government has 52 of the 93 seats in the Legislative Assembly. The opposition holds 34. A uniform swing of nearly 9%, just under what it achieved at the last election, would be needed for Labor to gain a majority in its own right.</p>
<p>A feature of this poll is the difference between Sydney and the bush. In 2015, Labor picked up most of the low-hanging fruit in Sydney and only a handful of seats are in play this time. In rural and regional NSW, the Nationals face a strong challenge from independents and minor parties.</p>
<p>If the government loses six seats, it will be in a minority. After appointing a speaker, its numbers would drop to 45. The crossbench would be in a crucial position. </p>
<p>Currently, there are seven crossbench MPs in the lower house: three Greens, a Shooter and three independents (Alex Greenwich, Joe McGirr and Greg Piper). The Greens have already indicated they would not support the Coalition. Greenwich is on the left and has close links with his predecessor, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. The other three are more conservatively inclined. The election of additional crossbenchers would add to the unpredictability.</p>
<p>Daley is hoping the electorate has forgotten about Obeid and that accumulated dissatisfaction with the government will translate into a victory for him. The result hinges on whether voters have lost faith in the Coalition to the extent that they are prepared to trust Labor again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Clune 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 the polls showing the main parties neck and neck, the question for NSW voters this Saturday is whether they have lost faith in the Coalition government enough to elect Labor again.David Clune, Honorary Associate, Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/681522016-11-03T03:51:01Z2016-11-03T03:51:01ZAlan Jones goes after wind farms again, citing dubious evidence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144308/original/image-20161102-27215-jgfvv7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Public rally against wind farms failed to really draw a crowd. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author Provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, Sydney radio announcer <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/webstore.2gb.com/audio/the-alan-jones-breakfast-show/201610/28-alan-jones---dr-mariana-alves-pe.mp3">Alan Jones lambasted</a> those concerned about climate change and what he called “renewable energy rubbish”. </p>
<p>Jones has been loose with the facts in the past, having been <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-coal-fired-power-cost-79-kwh-and-wind-power-1502-kwh-44956">Factchecked</a> in 2015 after confusing kilowatts with megawatts and quoting a cost for wind power he later confessed “where the 1502 [dollars per megawatt hour that he stated] comes from, I have absolutely no idea”.</p>
<p>Jones, who chaired the much hyped but <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/huff-and-puff-as-alan-jones-leads-wind-farm-protest-20130618-2ogd5.html">poorly attended</a> 2013 national rally against wind farms in June 2014 (see photo) told his listeners last week wind farms are “buggering up people’s health”. </p>
<p>He also said “harrowing evidence” had been given by sufferers to the 2014-15 Senate Select Committee on Wind Farms chaired by (now ex-) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0oHcEAF4BM">Senator John Madigan</a>. He along with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160306172254/http://www.senatorbobday.com.au/opinion-wind-turbines-inconvenient-truth/">Bob Day</a>, <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/anti-wind-climate-denying-crusader-behind-leyonhjelm-ret-campaign-73384/">David Leyonhjelm</a>, <a href="http://waubrafoundation.org.au/resources/senator-chris-back-speaks-alan-jones-graham-richardson-sky-news/">Chris Back</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYq8pO_5pZ0">Nick Xenophon</a> have been vocal opponents of wind farms.</p>
<p>Their <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Wind_Turbines/Wind_Turbines/%7E/media/Committees/wind_ctte/Final_Report/report.pdf">report</a> predictably savaged wind farms, while Labor Senator Anne Urquhart’s <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Wind_Turbines/Wind_Turbines/Final%20Report/d01">minority report</a> was the only one I found to be evidence-based.</p>
<p>Jones then went on to interview Dr Mariana Alves-Periera, from the private Lusophona University in Portugal (<a href="http://www.webometrics.info/en/Europe/Portugal?sort=asc&order=Impact%20Rank%2A">world university ranking</a> 1,805, and impact ranking 2,848) whom he described as a distinguished international figure. </p>
<p>She was “recognized internationally” and had published “over 50” scientific papers over 30 years, something of a modest output. Jones, who may or may not have read any of these publications, told listeners her findings were “indisputable”, there was “no opposing scientific evidence” and again in emphasis, “none of [her papers] have been disputed” to which Alves-Periera agreed instantly “no they haven’t”.</p>
<p>This is an interesting interpretation of the scientific reception that has greeted the work of the Lisbon group on the unrecognized diagnosis of “vibroacoustic disease” (or VAD), a term they have made their own.</p>
<p>I first encountered Alves-Periera when she spoke via videoconference to a <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/media/events/2011/wind-farms-and-human-health-scientific-forum-7-june-2011">NHMRC meeting</a> on wind farms and health in 2011. She spoke to a powerpoint presentation which highlighted the case of a schoolboy who lived near wind turbines. Her claim was the boy’s problems at school were due to his exposure to the turbines, as were cases of “boxy foot” in several horses kept on the same property.</p>
<p>Intrigued by this n=1 case report, I set out with a colleague to explore the scientific reception that “vibroacoustic disease” had met. We published our <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23731107">findings</a> in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 2013.</p>
<p>We found only 35 research papers on VAD. None reported any association between VAD and wind turbines. Of the 35 papers, 34 had a first author from the Lusophona University-based research group. Remarkably, 74% of citations to these papers were self-citations by members of the group. </p>
<p>In other words, just shy of three quarters of all references to VAD were from the group who were promoting the “disease”. In science, median <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0020885">self-citation rates are around 7%</a>. We found two unpublished case reports from the group presented at conferences which asserted that VAD was “irrefutably demonstrated” to be caused by wind turbines. We <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23731107">listed eight reasons</a> why the scientific quality of these claims were abject.</p>
<p>In 2014 Alves-Periera and a colleague defended their work in a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24690059">letter</a> to the journal and I <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24690060">replied</a>. They described themselves as the “lead researchers in vibroacoustic disease”. But as we had shown, they are almost the <em>only</em> researchers who were ever active on this topic, with self-citation rates seldom seen in research.</p>
<p>Other experts have taken a different view of the group’s work. One of the world’s leading acousticians Geoff Leventhall who also spoke at the NHMRC’s 2011 meeting, wrote in a 2009 submission to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin about the Lisbon group’s VAD work.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The evidence which has been offered [by them] is so weak that a prudent researcher would not have made it public. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12182225">Another expert</a> said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>vibroacoustic disease remains an unproven theory belonging to a small group of authors and has not found acceptance in the medical literature</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And most recently, the UK’s <a href="http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1265028759369">Health Protection Agency</a> said the:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>disease itself has not gained clinical recognition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leventhall concluded his review by saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One is left with a very uncomfortable feeling that the work of the VAD group, as related to the effects of low levels of infrasound and low frequency noise exposure, is on an extremely shaky basis and not yet ready for dissemination. The work has been severely criticised when it has been presented at conferences. It is not backed by peer reviewed publications and is available only as conference papers which have not been independently evaluated prior to presentation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jones told his listeners the reason wind turbines are not installed on Bondi Beach, down Sydney’s Macquarie Street or Melbourne’s Collins Street was because governments “know they are harmful to health”. His beguiling logic here might perhaps also be the same reason we don’t see these iconic locations given over to mining or daily rock concerts. Most people would understand there are other factors that explain the absence of both wind turbines, mines or daily rock concerts in such locations.</p>
<p>Jones has given <a href="http://www.2gb.com/article/alan-jones-anne-gardner">air time</a> to a Victorian woman who is a serial complainant about her local wind farm and who has <a href="http://pastebin.com/qMghJQWz">written</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Around the Macarthur wind farm, residents suffer from infrasound emitted by the turbines, even when they’re not operating.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At a time when we are seeing unparalleled increases in renewable energy and reductions in <a href="http://www.edie.net/news/9/UK-tops-G20-countries-on-average-carbon-reductions-over-15-years-in-latest-LCEI-report-by-PwC/">fossil fuels</a> all over the world, one wonders why this is still public discussion in Australia.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68152/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
At a time when we are seeing unparalleled increases in renewable energy and reductions in fossil fuels all over the world, one wonders why this is still under public discussion in Australia.Simon Chapman, Emeritus Professor in Public Health, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/590022016-05-08T03:24:39Z2016-05-08T03:24:39ZNegotiating the media minefields in a world where radio is no longer king<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121489/original/image-20160506-435-18rwmjy.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/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an eight-week election campaign stretches out ahead of us like a trackless desert, it might be useful to take a bearing on where the prime minister stands in relation to the conservative side of the media, elements of which play themselves into the election game as self-anointed kingmakers.</p>
<p>One such kingmaker is Sydney-based commercial radio talkback host Alan Jones.</p>
<p>Malcolm Turnbull has refused to appear on the Jones program for the past two years. This might reflect a strategy to differentiate himself from Tony Abbott, who was a Jones favourite, as well as a show of genuine contempt for Jones’ sense of self-importance.</p>
<p>The current tension dates back to the febrile political aftermath of the now-notorious Abbott-Hockey budget of 2014. Turnbull was communications minister, and it was in that capacity that he <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/transcript-interview-with-alan-jones-and-the-budget-and-relations-with-cliv">appeared on the Jones program</a>.</p>
<p>It didn’t start well:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jones: Can I begin by asking you if you could say after me this? “As a senior member of the Abbott government I want to say here I am totally supportive of the Abbott-Hockey strategy for budget repair”.</p>
<p>Turnbull: Alan I am not going to take dictation from you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And sometime later Jones says to Turnbull:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You have no hope ever of being the leader. You’ve got to get that into your head. No hope ever. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not the happiest of prognostications.</p>
<p>But time passes, elections loom, and mutual interests assert themselves. In the symbiosis between politicians and the media, Turnbull needs to reach Jones’ audiences, particularly in Western Sydney and in Queensland, and Jones needs the kudos that comes with having the prime minister on his program.</p>
<p>And so there is talk of rapprochement.</p>
<p>Not that Jones is demonstrating anything like a diminution in his sense of superbia. He is <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/feud-fighters-turnbull-and-jones-planning-talks-to-bury-the-hatchet/news-story/ce04e804de7b193b5be9296d63fe5b98">quoted as saying</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No-one has ever won an election by not appearing on my program.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A clever form of words.</p>
<p>It just means that every candidate for prime minister – win or lose – has appeared on his program.</p>
<p>It does not mean that those who won did so because they appeared on his program, though that’s clearly what Jones wants people to believe.</p>
<p>Jones is syndicated across more than 70 stations, mainly in NSW and Queenland, but to think that he can make and unmake prime ministers is absurd. His 2GB Sydney audience on May 6, 2016, for his interview with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was 167,000. His audience share in that city has been in steady decline for the past five years, from about 20% in 2010 to about 14% in 2015. </p>
<p>After being syndicated to 4BC in Brisbane in June 2015, his audience share there declined 1.2 points to 5.2% of the breakfast audience over the first two ratings periods.</p>
<p>So let us say on a generous estimate his total audience is 300,000, not all of whom are of voting age.</p>
<p>There are nearly 15 million voters in Australia, so Jones’ audience probably amounts to less than 2% of the voting population.</p>
<p>An analysis by Clive Hamilton in 2006 showed that Jones’ audience was far more likely to vote conservative than was the electorate as a whole: 65% of Jones listeners compared with, typically, between 48% and 52% at elections. So, to a large extent, he preaches to the converted.</p>
<p>His listeners were also disproportionately older – 68% over 50 compared with 37% in the over-14 population as a whole, and with a tendency to be on low-to-middle incomes. Although Hamilton’s analysis is ten years old, audience characteristics like this don’t change much.</p>
<p>So Jones might make a marginal difference in a few marginal seats, but kingmaker? No.</p>
<p>As for Turnbull’s relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp newspapers, another element in the conservative media with kingmaking aspirations, there are signs of it being not quite settled.</p>
<p>The Australian’s reception of the budget was no more than measured, and the Herald Sun’s was positively contemptuous. Its front-page headline was “A pop-gun budget”, with Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison depicted as a couple of hapless tommies like characters from Dad’s Army.</p>
<p>The Daily Telegraph, however, fell over itself in admiration, depicting Morrison as Superman and acclaiming him as the “hero of the hard worker”. With its heroic blue-sky backdrop, it was reminiscent of a 1970s propaganda poster from somewhere behind the Iron Curtain.</p>
<p>Rupert has always been careful about overtly claiming kingmaker status. When the egregious Kelvin MacKenzie, as editor of the London Sun, claimed “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” after the British Conservative Party’s win in 1992, Rupert was reported to have rejoiced privately but when confronted publicly with statements that it showed how influential he was, he deprecated the headline as unwontedly boastful.</p>
<p>Yet it suits Rupert that the perception of decisive influence persists.</p>
<p>However hard it might be to measure that influence, the fact is that in Australia he has a newspaper monopoly in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart, as well as the mass-circulation Herald Sun in Melbourne and Daily Telegraph in Sydney. The latter plays to much the same audience as Jones.</p>
<p>With these two elements of the conservative media, then, Turnbull has some work to do. And that’s before we even think what the combined forces of Peta Credlin and Mark Latham on Sky television might unleash.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
As an eight-week election campaign stretches out ahead of us like a trackless desert, it might be useful to take a bearing on where the prime minister stands in relation to the conservative side of the…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/449562015-07-23T03:37:47Z2015-07-23T03:37:47ZFactCheck: does coal-fired power cost $79/kWh and wind power $1502/kWh?<blockquote>
<p>80% of Australian energy comes from coal, coal-fired power, and it’s about $79 a kilowatt hour. Wind power is about $1502 a kilowatt hour. That is unaffordable. If you take that power and feed it into the grid, then every person watching this program has electricity bills going through the roof. – Broadcaster Alan Jones, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4256959.htm">panel discussion</a> on Q&A, ABC TV, July 20, 2015</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alan Jones has told The Conversation by email he acknowledges this comment was made in error and is not correct, saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think you have rightly highlighted a ridiculous mistake that I made… why I said kilowatt-hours and not megawatt-hours and where the 1502 comes from, I have absolutely no idea. What I can tell you is that I’ve used figures for some time now on this issue to merely confirm that renewable energy is many multiples dearer than coal-fired power[…] I previously used that $79 figure but as you can imagine, it’s based on the price of coal. Wind has always been, in my words, three or four times dearer than that.</p>
<p>[…] But if I’ve said that, that is wrong, and I’ll be writing to the ABC to that effect. I have no comment to make other than to thank you for pointing this out to me. I guess we all make mistakes and I’m always happy to correct them when I’m told about them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Electrical energy is usually measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh) or megawatt-hours (MWh). Kilowatt-hours are the unit generally used for metering and charging residential electricity consumption, and represents the amount of energy a device drawing one kilowatt of power would use in an hour. A megawatt-hour is 1000 times larger, and is typically used to measure large loads or generators. The price quoted (A$79/kWh) is about 300 times more expensive than the typical <a href="http://www.aemc.gov.au/Markets-Reviews-Advice/2014-Residential-Electricity-Price-Trends/Final/AEMC-Documents/2014-Residential-Electricity-Price-Trends-report.aspx">retail price of electricity</a> paid by residential customers around Australia (and about 2000 times more than <a href="http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/Data/Price-and-Demand/Average-Price-Tables">current wholesale prices</a>).</p>
<p>Mr Jones’ error in saying kilowatt-hours instead of megawatt-hours is an easy mistake to make.</p>
<p>A$79 per <em>megawatt</em>-hour is consistent with the range of costs <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/carbon-prices/report/carbon-prices.pdf">reported</a> by the Electric Power Research Institute for new coal-fired electricity in 2010, without carbon capture and storage or a price on emissions.</p>
<p>However, even with the right units, the figure of $1502 for wind power did not make sense. Mr Jones was not able to say from what source he got that figure of $1502 for wind power. So I decided to investigate. </p>
<p>The claim that coal-fired power energy costs $79 a kilowatt-hour and wind power costs $1502 a kilowatt-hour pops up a few times on websites of <a href="http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/?p=2063">groups</a> opposing the renewable energy target, <a href="http://www.au.agwscam.com/pdf/ComparingPowerGenerationCosts.pdf">climate sceptics</a>, and even in <a href="http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LC20110826037">Hansard</a>. Mostly, this claim is referenced to an unnamed Productivity Commission report released in 2010. </p>
<p>The source of the $1502 figure on sceptic sites <em>may</em> be a now-corrected Paul Sheehan opinion <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/labor-all-tied-up-in-red-and-green-tape-20110724-1hv8i#ixzz1oGUu4imp">piece</a> published by Fairfax in 2011. The correction there reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Correction: An earlier version of this piece misquoted energy figures. The Productivity Commission said the cost of electricity generated by wind was $150 to $214 per megawatt-hour, not $1502; and solar was $400 to $473 per MWh, not $4004.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>So what did the Productivity Commission actually say?</h2>
<p>The 2011 Productivity Commission report that the Fairfax correction appears to refer to was titled “<a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/carbon-prices/report/carbon-prices.pdf">Carbon Emission Policies in Key Economies</a>”.</p>
<p>Box 4.1 of that report, titled “The costs of electricity sources” is about the “levelised cost of electricity” (LCOE), a widely-used measure of the cost of electricity generation technologies energy that includes all lifetime costs and factors in the lower utilisation rates of wind power. Box 4.1 says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Electric Power Research Institute (2010) reported estimates of the LCOE of
various sources of electricity in Australia, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>coal-fired electricity (without carbon capture and storage) — A$78–91/MWh</p></li>
<li><p>combined-cycle gas turbines (without carbon capture and storage) — A$97/MWh</p></li>
<li><p>wind — A$150–214/MWh</p></li>
<li><p>medium-sized (five megawatt) solar PV systems — A$400–473/MWh.</p></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Without being certain, my best guess is that some of the groups or websites using the figures of $79 per kilowatt-hour for coal-powered energy and $1502 per kilowatt-hour for wind powered energy <em>may</em> have based their figures on the now-corrected Paul Sheehan opinion piece. </p>
<p>There is no credible economic analysis that reports wind power costs at A$1502 a megawatt-hour.</p>
<p>As he has readily acknowledged, Alan Jones’ figures on the cost of wind energy are not correct.</p>
<h2>Are those Productivity Commission figures up to date?</h2>
<p>The Commission’s <a href="http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/carbon-prices/report/carbon-prices.pdf">report</a> said that in 2010, the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that the levelised cost of coal-fired electricity (without carbon capture and storage) was between A$78 and $91/MWh. For wind, the figure was between A$150 and $214/MWh. At the time the Commision’s report was released (May 2011), these figures were already higher than <a href="http://www.energy.unimelb.edu.au/documents/renewable-energy-technology-cost-review">other reported costs for renewable energy technology</a>.</p>
<p>More recent costs for <em>new</em> coal plants have been estimated by the former Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics in their <a href="http://www.industry.gov.au/Office-of-the-Chief-Economist/Publications/Documents/aeta/australian_energy_technology_assessment.pdf">Australian Energy Technology Assessment</a>.</p>
<p>This report provides a measure of the cost of a large range of generation technologies, now (or rather, in 2012 when the most recent report was published) and into the future. Using data from Table 5.2.1 of that report, the table below shows the “levelised” cost of energy for some coal and wind technologies. </p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/K9uaL/2/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="320"></iframe>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89433/original/image-20150723-22826-ujv6b2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Levelised Cost of Energy, NSW in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BREE</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The chart above, from the <a href="http://www.industry.gov.au/Office-of-the-Chief-Economist/Publications/Documents/aeta/AETA-Update-Dec-13.pdf">Australian Energy Technology Assessment 2013 Model Update</a> (Figure 8) also shows more current levelised costs of energy.</p>
<h2>Does 80% of Australia’s energy comes from coal-fired power?</h2>
<p>Nearly, but not quite. More than two-thirds of electricity is produced from coal, 19% from gas, and 10% from renewables with the balance from liquid fuels such as diesel, according to the government’s <a href="http://www.ga.gov.au/webtemp/image_cache/GA21797.pdf">Australian Energy Resource Assessment</a>.</p>
<p>In the National Electricity Market, supplying the eastern seaboard, brown and black coal supplied 76% of output last financial year, and <a href="https://www.aer.gov.au/sites/default/files/State%20of%20the%20energy%20market%202014%20-%20Complete%20report%20(A4)_0.pdf">74% the year before that</a>.</p>
<h2>Does feeding renewable energy into the grid drive electricity prices through the roof?</h2>
<p><a href="https://retreview.dpmc.gov.au/">Modelling</a> done by ACIL Allen Consulting as part of the government’s report of the expert panel on the Renewable Energy Target shows that renewable energy generation can represent a net saving to consumers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ACIL Allen modelling estimates that repealing the RET would initially result in lower retail electricity prices, however from around 2021 retail prices would be on average 3.1% higher for residential, commercial and industrial customers. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89116/original/image-20150721-12522-h4wxjf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Impact of the Renewable Energy Target on retail electricity costs</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ACIL Allen (prepared for the DPMC RET review, 2015)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>As he has readily acknowledged, Alan Jones’ statement on Q&A on the cost of wind and coal powered energy is not correct.</p>
<p>His claim that renewable energy is having a large impact on residential electricity bills also runs counter to <a href="https://retreview.dpmc.gov.au/">modelling</a> commissioned by the government. </p>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p>This is a thorough FactCheck article. Mr Jones’ cost estimate for coal (assuming it is per megawatt-hour, not per kilowatt-hour) is confirmed by the fact checker. This applies to new coal plant, not existing units.</p>
<p>With regard to the percentage of Australian electricity generated from coal, the FactCheck author is correct. Some people quote higher coal percentages. First, it used to be higher. Second, some people confuse the percentages of input fuel used to generate electricity (historically easier to identify from public data) with the share of electricity actually generated. Since coal plant is less efficient than some other options such as hydroelectricity, this approach makes its share look bigger. </p>
<p>In terms of impacts on future electricity prices, all estimates are based on assumptions. For example, if more old coal generation capacity is retired than some models have assumed, baseline electricity prices could be higher because new generation options of all kinds are typically more expensive than old existing power stations.</p>
<p>Further, the costs of renewable electricity generation are falling, as discussed above. For example, a 2014 Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics <a href="http://industry.gov.au/Office-of-the-Chief-Economist/Publications/Pages/Asia-Pacific-Renewable-Energy-Assessment.aspx">study</a> shows 2013 estimates for wind energy cost of A$63 to A$107 per levelised Megawatt-hour of electricity – 6.3 to 10.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, lower than earlier estimates (Figure 19, p.67). – <strong>Alan Pears</strong></p>
<hr>
<p><div class="callout"> Have you ever seen a “fact” that doesn’t look quite right? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dylan McConnell received funding from the AEMC's consumer advocacy panel.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Pears AM provides advice to a range of sustainable energy and community groups. He and his superannuation funds own shares in the renewable energy industry. He sometimes receives funding from sustainable energy industry organisations and individual companies although, at present he is not receiving such funding. He is a member of ARENA’s advisory panel. </span></em></p>Broadcaster Alan Jones told the Q&A audience this week that coal fired power costs about $79 a kilowatt-hour, while wind power is about $1502 a-kilowatt hour. Is that right?Dylan McConnell, Research Fellow, Melbourne Energy Institute, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365062015-01-22T19:01:44Z2015-01-22T19:01:44ZCould the Constitution protect farm water from coal seam gas?<blockquote>
<p>The Australian Constitution says residents have the right to water from the rivers for irrigation and conservation purposes but governments have brought in laws that are restricting this – One Nation’s <a href="http://m.qt.com.au/news/hanson-out-of-blocks-in-race-for-lockyer/2508779/">Pauline Hanson</a>, campaigning for the January 31 Queensland election.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Concern about <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/coal-seam-gas">coal seam gas</a> exploration and its impact on groundwater has become a crucial issue in many electorates across regional Australia, including in the current Queensland election. It’s one of the few issues in the campaign that unites minor parties and independents from across the right and left of politics, including <a href="http://www.kattersaustralianparty.com.au/policies/climate-and-environment.html">Katter’s Australian Party</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-18/palmer-uniter-party-launches-campaign/6023618">the Palmer United Party</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-17/greens-launch-solar-panel-strategy/6022918">the Greens</a>. </p>
<p>Queensland-born radio host <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/alan-jones-one-of-the-lefts-biggest-villains-has-suddenly-become-a-bit-of-a-hero-how-about-that-eh/story-fnj4alav-1227192242463">Alan Jones has also weighed into the campaign against coal seam gas projects</a>, encouraging Queensland voters to support “salt of the earth people with integrity” including <a href="http://www.2gb.com/article/dr-peter-wellington">independent MP Peter Wellington</a>.</p>
<p>Former federal MP Pauline Hanson is standing as the candidate for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/qld-election-2015/guide/lock/">Lockyer</a>, currently a safe rural Liberal National seat west of Brisbane, where she has been <a href="http://m.qt.com.au/news/hanson-raises-csg-as-lockyer-election-issue/2505453/">campaigning on coal seam gas and water</a>.</p>
<p>But has Hanson got it right on the Constitution and landholders’ rights to water?</p>
<h2>Water rights in the Constitution</h2>
<p>Water rights are of particular concern to farmers who have farms close to coal seam gas mining operations, as they rely on the groundwater to irrigate their crops or for livestock. A commonly expressed fear is that coal seam gas extraction could <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-governments-control-of-coal-seam-gas-a-welcome-relief-12782">deplete groundwater supplies and contaminate the aquifer</a>.</p>
<p>Hanson’s claim that the Constitution provided some protection for farmers seems to rely on <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s100.html">section 100</a>, which contains the only reference to the rights of residents to water in the Constitution. It states: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Commonwealth shall not, by any law or regulation of trade or commerce, abridge the right of a State or of the residents therein to the reasonable use of the waters of rivers for conservation or irrigation.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Limits on constitutional protection for water</h2>
<p>Despite the fact that water is such a scarce resource in Australia, there have been very few legal cases involving section 100. Prior to the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1983/21.html">Tasmanian Dam Case</a> in 1983, the wording of the section had not been considered directly by the High Court. Since that decision, the Court has only had examined section 100 on <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2010/3.html">one other occasion</a>.</p>
<p>There are a number of difficulties with relying on section 100 to protect farmers’ water rights and prevent any state government in Australia from allowing further coal seam gas exploration. </p>
<p>Among the reasons why the Constitution may not provide as much protection as Hanson hopes is that section 100 only applies to Commonwealth laws or regulations – and not to state laws or regulations. </p>
<p>Section 100 entitles a State or its residents to the reasonable use of “the waters of rivers”. In the case of coal seam gas mining, the primary concern is with the impact it could have on groundwater.</p>
<p>But in 2010, the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2010/3.html">High Court drew a distinction</a> between groundwater and rivers, and held that section 100 applied only to the water flowing in rivers, which further limits section 100. </p>
<h2>What other protections are there?</h2>
<p>In 2013, the Commonwealth Government amended the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (<a href="http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014C00506">EPBC Act</a>) so that where a coal seam gas development will have or is likely to have a significant impact on a water resource, the development <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/what-is-protected/water-resources">will be subject to</a> federal assessment under the Commonwealth EPBC Act. </p>
<p>But for those hoping that Hanson is right, and that the Constitution might give them some extra protection against coal seam gas impacting on their water supplies, I have to say I think she’s being too optimistic. </p>
<p>The “right” that section 100 refers to is a “right” against the Commonwealth. And as I’ve just explained, the Commonwealth (meaning the federal government) has a more limited role when it comes to coal seam gas and water.</p>
<p>Instead, the power to legislate on these matters falls largely to the state Parliament and the government of the day.</p>
<p>If Queenslanders do have any concerns about water and coal seam gas, they should certainly have their say. But it’s an issue mainly to take up with your state MP or candidates, rather than counting on the Australian Constitution to provide the solution.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Read more of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/queensland-election-2015">Queensland election 2015</a> coverage.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Webster is a member of Executive Committee of the Conservation Council of South Australia.</span></em></p>The Australian Constitution says residents have the right to water from the rivers for irrigation and conservation purposes but governments have brought in laws that are restricting this – One Nation’s…Adam Webster, Lecturer, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/364152015-01-19T02:58:15Z2015-01-19T02:58:15ZNewman ‘lied to me’: Alan Jones weighs into Queensland’s election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69319/original/image-20150118-5206-i1yqe8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An ad for Alan Jones's Queensland election special broadcasts.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">4BC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s loudest radio shock jock, Alan Jones, has <a href="http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/video-news/video-qld-news/lnp-are-prostitutes-jones-6177002.html">launched an extraordinary attack on the Queensland premier</a>, claiming Campbell Newman visited him at home at the urging of senior Liberals and promised to oppose <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-09/acland-coal-mine-liberal-party-donations/5440184">a major coal expansion</a>, which his government later <a href="http://www.dsdip.qld.gov.au/assessments-and-approvals/new-acland-coal-mine-stage-3-expansion.html">approved</a>. </p>
<p>In the first of Jones’s special one-hour Queensland election broadcasts on Brisbane’s 4BC radio station – airing each weekday in the primetime 8-9am talkback slot until <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/queensland-election-2015">the January 31 poll</a> – he also alleged Newman and senior Liberal National colleagues had lied to Queenslanders about mining deals, jobs and debt. </p>
<p>The Queensland-born broadcaster <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/alan-jones-broadcast-fairfaxs-brisbane-radio-station-state-elections-270720">came back from holidays early</a> to have his say on the state election. He plans to make further allegations against senior government figures in the days ahead, including one of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-queenslands-unofficial-premiers-in-waiting-35952">LNP’s top leadership contenders</a> if Newman loses his seat, Health Minister Lawrence Springborg.</p>
<p>Jones claimed that before the March 2012 election, Newman visited him at home and pledged to oppose stage 3 of the New Hope coal mine at <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/06/22/3250887.htm">Acland</a>, near where the radio host was born and grew up in the Darling Downs region. One week after Jones went off air late last year, the mine was approved.</p>
<p>“Campbell Newman lied to me. I have no reason to believe anything he says,” Jones said on 4BC on Monday.</p>
<p>Jones has been at war with the Newman government and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4069711.htm">the state’s major newspaper, The Courier-Mail</a> over the Acland mine for some time.</p>
<p>Soon after the broadcast, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/queensland-election-2015-alan-jones-attacks-campbell-newman-on-air/story-fnr8rfrw-1227189505342">Newman dismissed the attack</a> as old news, saying: “Alan Jones is a bloke from Sydney who has made all sorts of comments in the past and there’s nothing new about anything he’s said.”</p>
<p>The top-rating Sydney-based broadcaster could certainly have used some better local knowledge. Jones repeatedly said that the Newman government had <a href="http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/video-news/video-qld-news/lnp-are-prostitutes-jones-6177002.html">“78 seats out of 89”</a> in the Queensland parliament – which was true back in March 2012, but a spate of resignations and defections have since reduced the government’s numbers to <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-state-election-2015/queensland-election-2015-the-state-of-play-20150107-12iwmg.html">73 seats</a>.</p>
<p>The attack from Jones – who has long been seen as a political kingmaker, especially on the conservative side of politics – comes as the latest polls show the LNP government <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland-state-election-2015/galaxy-poll-shows-labor-in-with-a-good-chance-of-winning-queensland-election/story-fnr8vuu5-1227187634828">facing a double-digit backlash</a> in some key seats.</p>
<p>On Monday, Jones told listeners: “I’m not telling you how to vote. But I’m telling you a few things about this lot that you won’t hear anywhere else.”</p>
<p>While largely ignoring the Labor opposition, Jones praised “some excellent independents” and explained he felt compelled to weigh into the campaign because “once a Queenslander, always a Queenslander”.</p>
<p>But what impact Jones has on the conservative vote in Queensland over the next fortnight remains to be seen. While some 4BC listeners called to thank him for intervening, the LNP will be crossing its fingers that more Queenslanders agree with one Monday morning caller, Peter, who rang in to tell Jones: “I think the way you’ve ranted and raved this morning, you’ve done Campbell Newman a favour.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556936639109296131"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556937880535171073"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556938402998673409"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556939414480252929"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556941221264760832"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556943291799703552"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556946771734048768"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556946463561773056"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"556937633457131520"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p><em>Read more of The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/queensland-election-2015">Queensland election 2015</a> coverage.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>Australia’s loudest radio shock jock, Alan Jones, has launched an extraordinary attack on the Queensland premier, claiming Campbell Newman visited him at home at the urging of senior Liberals and promised…Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155952013-06-28T05:04:45Z2013-06-28T05:04:45ZEthical lapses by journalists contributed to Gillard’s demise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26357/original/9225f5yw-1372378577.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How much of a role did the media play in the political demise of Julia Gillard as prime minister?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tony McDonough</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>An integral power of the media is that of portrayal: the act of determining how people, events, ideas and organisations are described to the public, and therefore how they are perceived by the public. In this way, the media constructs for us our understanding of the world beyond our personal knowledge and experience.</p>
<p>For those of us who have never met Julia Gillard, our perceptions of her are based almost entirely on what we see, hear and read of her in the media. These perceptions are then reflected in public opinion polling, and the publication of these poll results tends to reinforce the perceptions. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.</p>
<p>Eventually, in this case, the poll results <a href="http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/482708/20130625/pm-julia-gillard-kevin-rudd-tony-abbott.htm">got so bad</a> that Gillard’s parliamentary colleagues <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/national/rudd_revenge_gillard_gone_oVg8nYB5lGzC2WkcTa346I">replaced her</a> as Labor leader with Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>So of course it is true to say the media played a part in the demise of Gillard as prime minister. The harder question is: did the media play a part that was ethically wrong?</p>
<p>Some elements of the media, notably commercial radio talkback shock jocks Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and Chris Smith, clearly did. Their depictions of, and remarks about, Gillard were disgustingly offensive. Not only were they sexist, extremist and malicious, but in Jones’s case involved encouragement of the idea that the prime minister should be <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsaVpepMyA8">dumped at sea</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26374/original/px4f2rjx-1372385738.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Age newspaper’s editorial on June 22 called on Julia Gillard to resign.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And then, of course, there was the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/pr-sacks-host-over-gay-grilling/story-e6frg996-1226664133319">infamous question</a> about the sexual orientation of the prime minister’s partner Tim Mathieson. In the world of commercial radio talkback it was open season. </p>
<p>Portrayals of Gillard by other elements of the mainstream media, especially the newspapers, were generally less grotesque. But they raised important ethical issues just the same. </p>
<p>The most common, and in some ways the most difficult to pin down, concerned the passively neutral way in which they covered the grossly disrespectful public attacks on her. </p>
<p>An egregious example was the coverage of the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3171851.htm">rally outside Parliament House</a> in 2011. The Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, gave licence to sentiments such as “ditch the witch” and “bitch” by allowing himself to be photographed in front of placards bearing those words.</p>
<p>Of course the media had to cover that: it was news. The ethical challenge, which the media in general failed to meet, was to provide context that might have de-legitimised such crudity. They could easily have done so by obtaining, and giving substantial prominence to, voices of authority on such topics as political discourse and sexism.</p>
<p>Eventually, when the opportunity was handed to the media to call this behaviour for what it was, most outlets blew it completely. It was left to the international media to recognise the significance of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOPsxpMzYw4">“misogyny speech”</a>, in which Gillard assailed Abbott for his attitude towards her as a woman and his licensing of the crude language on the rally placards. </p>
<p>The Canberra press gallery could not see the context at all. For them it was all about the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3171851.htm">political entrails</a> entangling Gillard and the then-Speaker, Peter Slipper.</p>
<p>This failure to provide contextual completeness was one of the recurring ethical weaknesses in the media’s coverage of Gillard’s leadership, and was most evident in the way the media reported the relentless undermining of her leadership by Rudd’s backers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/26362/original/by87ks6k-1372382576.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">Talkback radio host Alan Jones accused Julia Gillard’s father of ‘dying of shame’ among other invective comments about the former prime minister.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAp/Tracey Nearmy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/special-features/labor-mps-admit-they-have-begun-packing-their-offices-ahead-of-an-anticipated-election-wipeout/story-fnho52jp-1226658298358">media stunt</a> by two of Rudd’s supporters a couple of weeks ago in packing up their parliamentary offices because, so it was said, they were in despair at their re-election prospects, was a prime example. Nothing in the coverage suggested the contextual truth: that this was a media stunt by Rudd supporters to further undermine Gillard’s leadership.</p>
<p>The media can say that it is their job to impartially report what people say and do. This is true. But it is a failure of impartiality to suppress relevant available facts – in this case the known nature of this office-packing activity.</p>
<p>Impartiality is not achieved by passive neutrality. It is achieved by giving as full an account as possible, fairly and on the basis of an independent-minded assessment that gives due weight to all the available evidence.</p>
<p>The News Limited newspapers, especially The Australian, long ago gave up any pretence of impartiality in the coverage of national politics. They provided a regular diet of content calculated to turn voters against the former prime minister.</p>
<p>The Fairfax newspapers generally tried harder to be impartial, but there was a remarkable turnaround last week. The Age – as if its own pre-occupation with polls and personality politics had nothing to do with it – came out with a vacuous and hypocritical <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/for-the-sake-of-the-nation-ms-gillard-should-stand-aside-20130621-2oo6e.html">front page editorial</a> saying that Gillard had to go, otherwise the voters would have no chance of focusing on the issues. Really.</p>
<p>While the mainstream media were thus engaged in their own systemic failings, <a href="https://theconversation.com/misogynists-and-nut-jobs-gillard-stares-down-blogosphere-9045">elements of social media</a> were sordid beyond description, wallowing in pornographic depictions of the prime minister and making slurs of the most degrading kind. </p>
<p>Fortunately the mainstream media kept well away from this material, but it showed how the licensing of vulgarity in public debate can lead to magnified crudity in social media. This, in turn, can create an atmosphere in which even lower standards of public debate are tolerated.</p>
<p>The media’s role in the demise of Julia Gillard as prime minister was complex. Part of it was a consequence of the media just doing its job. But part of it also was the result of ethical failures. These included crude abuse and incitement to hatred on commercial radio talkback, while among other mainstream media the failure of impartiality, failure of contextual accuracy, and the willingness to exploit rather than challenge debased public discourse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15595/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>An integral power of the media is that of portrayal: the act of determining how people, events, ideas and organisations are described to the public, and therefore how they are perceived by the public…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/102122012-10-18T03:05:40Z2012-10-18T03:05:40ZA very naughty parrot: ACMA sends Alan Jones back to school<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16667/original/h6zyd99c-1350528404.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">2GB staff involved in producing Jones' show will have to attend training in factual accuracy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alan Jones will have to go to accuracy school. Reread that sentence a few times. Still can’t quite believe it?</p>
<p>Today the Australian Communication and Media Authority released the <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_600069">terms of its agreement</a> with 2GB in the light of serious findings against the station over the last two years.</p>
<p>It’s taken months for these measures to emerge as 2GB tried to negotiate its way out of what can only be described as a humiliation for the talkback station. </p>
<p>Now 2GB’s licensee has agreed to overhaul the way it verifies facts. It has also committed to present significant alternative views. That doesn’t mean Alan Jones will now have to broadcast those who support the carbon tax without hitting the pause button – but it does mean that across the station, there will have to be what used to be called balance.</p>
<p>And to make that work, all 2GB staff involved in broadcast, production and news, must attend training on the concepts of factual accuracy and what ACMA calls “significant viewpoints”.</p>
<p>This training is a direct result of breaches of ACMA’s Commercial Radio Codes of Practice by the station in the last two years on climate change and the management of native forests; and those breaches related to accuracy and presentation of alternative viewpoints.</p>
<p>What 2GB found when it went looking, were serious shortcomings in the research practices on the Alan Jones show. From now, those who work with Mr Jones will be forced to check third-party claims which Alan Jones has broadcast without checking in the past.</p>
<p>In March last year, the licensee could not prove to ACMA that material presented as factual matter had been checked. Mr Jones prepared his own script and did not fact-check or verify facts. He did not provide the script to the 2GB research team.</p>
<p>Around the same time, Mr Jones made several claims around native vegetation. But he never presented an alternative viewpoint or gave reasonable opportunities to present more than one view.</p>
<p>Should the broadcaster breach today’s agreement, ACMA will then impose standards. From there, the regulator imposes much more rigorous compliance processes.</p>
<p>As sources at ACMA say, the regulator often requires reporters to do extra training. Usually, it’s the newbie on a tabloid current affairs show who might not know all the ropes.</p>
<p>But no-one at ACMA or elsewhere can ever recall a senior broadcaster such as Mr Jones being required to go to accuracy training. It’s a blow for a radio announcer whose credibility is now in question.</p>
<p>Over the past month, he has been fined for comments about <a href="http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/15017261/tribunal-upholds-that-jones-incited-hatred/">Lebanese Muslims in Australia</a>, mocked for his comments about women “destroying the joint”, shamed by his cruel comments on the reasons why the Prime Minister’s father died. His advertisers have left in droves because of a campaign to make Jones accountable.</p>
<p>In the meantime, and according to <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/national/jones_has_fewer_options_in_shock_F2cytT80OO0kqo5E3sNg3O">Neil Chenoweth’s story</a> in the Australian Financial Review on Monday, Alan Jones’s options are now worth around $2.56 million, from a value of nearly $4 million a year ago; and Macquarie Radio Network shareholders approved “a variation that linked the options more closely to Jones’s [radio] shift”.</p>
<p>The profitability there has taken a hit too as the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/DestroyTheJoint">Destroy the Joint</a> campaign has taken off.</p>
<p>It will force significant changes on the way Jones broadcasts – and of the way the host station will have to broadcast issues.</p>
<p><em>Disclaimer</em>:
I am one of 20,000 women and men involved in Destroy the Joint, a Facebook page set up after Alan Jones’s comments in late August that women were “destroying the joint”. This campaign matters to me for a range of reasons; and sexism and misogyny are just two of those reasons. Last week, on behalf of the campaign, I went on Chris Smith’s program to talk about the Destroy the Joint campaign, which does not call for the sacking of Alan Jones. I suggested Mr Jones go to re-education. Mr Smith discounted the suggestion. Now he finds that the ACMA decision covers his program as well and the regulator has imposed these rules on behalf of all of us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I write freelance opinion columns for The Canberra Times, which is owned by Fairfax. I also own a handful of shares in Fairfax which are now worth not much at all. Fairfax owns 2UE which is a rival of 2GB. I am closely affiliated with facebook.com/destroythejoint and destroythejoint.org. Sign the pledge.
I am also a feminist, academic and journalism educator and very much hope that when 2GB selects an organisation to provide accuracy training for its staff, it selects UTS. I am not (and never have been) a member of any political party.
</span></em></p>Alan Jones will have to go to accuracy school. Reread that sentence a few times. Still can’t quite believe it? Today the Australian Communication and Media Authority released the terms of its agreement…Jenna Price, Senior lecturer, University of Technology SydneyLicensed 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.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/25422011-07-27T04:33:38Z2011-07-27T04:33:38ZAnders Breivik, Australian anti-multiculturalists and the threat to social cohesion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/2506/original/PIC_-_Jaku_Norway.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Norwegian soldiers stand in front the government building bombed by Anders Breivik.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The discovery of an Australian link to the horrifying murders of dozens of people by Anders Breivik in Norway has demonstrated the reach of connection in today’s globalised world.</p>
<p>As a result of the ability of a disturbed young man in Oslo to read Australian papers and publications online, our own anti-multicultural ideologues sometimes get caught up in situations not of their own desire. </p>
<p>Before Anders Behring Breivik was arrested as the Oslo killer, he had sent out a manifesto to some 5700 contacts. </p>
<p>The document, grandly titled “<a href="http://www.kevinislaughter.com/wp-content/uploads/2083+-+A+European+Declaration+of+Independence.pdf">2083- A European Declaration of Independence</a>” and circulated under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick, offered a compendium of every extremist White Power fantasies current among such groups. </p>
<p>The central tenet of the argument (summarised in the <a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=89a_1311444384">video of the book</a>) is a simple equation: promoting the saving of Europe through the annihilation of cultural Marxism, multiculturalism, and the Islamic threat. </p>
<p>Cultural Marxism supposedly harbours a relativism that undermines western culture; in support of this view Berwick/Breivik draws on the writings of an anonymous blogger called <a href="http://fjordman.blogspot.com/">Fjordman</a>, who quotes British libertarian theorist Roger Scruton, followed by author Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame, and then Sydney ex-Marxist and now neo-liberal writer <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/charge-of-deadly-provocation-is-false/story-e6frg6zo-1226102316185">and columnist</a> for The Australian Keith Windschuttle, as evidence for his claim. </p>
<p>He further argues that cultural relativism underpins multiculturalism, which has almost doomed the West as its governments flail against but cannot prevent the influx of Muslims. </p>
<p>Here the quoted armoury of support includes former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard and his Treasurer Peter Costello, as well as Australian Roman Catholic Cardinal George Pell, all hailed as exemplary heroes defending white Christian civilisation from its combined erosion by Marxists and Muslims, presented as a particularly perfidious alliance against which western Christianity has struggled for decades/centuries. </p>
<p>Leaving aside Breivik’s image of himself as the reincarnation of the leader of mediaeval Christian order, the Knights Templar sent to rescue Christendom from its enemies, the litany of White Power fears and aspirations he has systematically assembled contribute to a not-unfamiliar case for exclusion and suppression of non-Christian elements in Western society.</p>
<p>For such people, internal fifth columns made up of Marxist academics and secularist liberals march to the beat of the jihadist drum, destroying their own societies as they engage in the self-delusion of multiculturalism. </p>
<p>Much of the Manifesto comprises clips from the blogs of this “Fjordman”; Fjordman is described in his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjordman">Wikipedia</a> post as an “anonymous” blogger, who also posts to Atlas Shrugged and <a href="http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/">Gates of Vienna</a>, well known anti-Muslim and libertarian right-wing sites. </p>
<p>His own site was open for a year in 2005, but has now closed with pointers to many other places he posts. As one reads these many posts and counter-posts (we now have one conspiracy running that Breivik was a possible Mossad agent or drone), the current extent and depth of the European hostility to Islam and Muslims becomes ever more apparent. </p>
<p>While Breivik’s own psycho-pathology may have prompted his specific acts, he was swimming in a sea of hate that bolstered his sense of purpose and justification. Fjordman has posted a denial that he is Breivik, and has distanced himself from the killer’s actions, though not his ideology.</p>
<p>As a critical (erstwhile Marxist) friend of multiculturalism, a liberal, a secularist and an academic (and a Jew, I forgot that one though Breivik surprisedly does not pursue a Protocols of the Elders of Zion conspiracy as part of his tome, and is described elsewhere as a Super Zionist), I have personally experienced many of these critiques. </p>
<p>Unfortunately Breivik is far from isolated in his vision of the approaching Armageddon, nor alone in his world-view about its causes. What Breivik had that these other lesser lights lack, was a sustained energy and discipline that he invested in the construction of his conspiracy view of the world. </p>
<p>He then followed it through with a cruelly and coldly calculated plan of attack, becoming an avenging Angel of his benighted God who touched the lintels of the households and then personally dispatched the first-born within. </p>
<p>His Australian “mini-me” versions can be found all over the place. Some of his paranoias about Muslims can be found in the public utterances of radio shock-jocks and populist newspaper and television commentators, or indeed in the sometimes unrehearsed statements of politicians such as Howard or Costello. </p>
<p>Others lurk on Internet chat sites and blogs railing against Jews, communists, multiculturalists and Muslims, promoting comments that read like out-takes from Mein Kampf. Still others have taken the opportunity of the current Parliamentary inquiry into migration and multiculturalism, to contribute their raves as submissions (<a href="http://aph.gov.au/house/committee/mig/multiculturalism/subs/sub456.pdf">see this for example</a> among far too many others in the 482 submissions). </p>
<p>A recent paper by Australian sociologists of Muslim faith canvases “<a href="http://jos.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/03/09/1440783310386829.abstract">what Australia’s Muslims really think</a>”. </p>
<p>Based on interviews with over 400 Brisbane Muslims at the Eid festival in 2009, the findings indicate strong support for democracy, though low confidence in the Australian media and the Australian government, especially over support for Israel. </p>
<p>Research undertaken by my UTS team for the Australian government, also using 2009 Eid interviews and school interviews of Muslim youth, produces similar outcomes – pointing to a strong moral conservatism but also an alienation from the practices of the political system, though not the values it espouses. </p>
<p>One of the implications for Australia of the Oslo murders will be how Australia’s Muslim communities interpret the events, and the impact on their sense of security and safety; that will depend heavily on Australia’s media and political responses and the lessons taken from those horrific events. </p>
<p>On past history, the prognosis is not great.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/2542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Jakubowicz received funding from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship for research with colleagues at UTS. However the Department has no connection to this article.</span></em></p>The discovery of an Australian link to the horrifying murders of dozens of people by Anders Breivik in Norway has demonstrated the reach of connection in today’s globalised world. As a result of the ability…Andrew Jakubowicz, Professor of Sociology and Codirector of Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.