Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. This week,
Speaker 1: Alan Jones went on trial in Sydney, more than twenty
Speaker 1: months after his arrest. The once powerful broadcaster is now
Speaker 1: facing twenty two charges of indecent assault and sexual touching
Speaker 1: involving six complainants. He's pleaded not guilty to all charges
Speaker 1: and denies any wrongdoing. When we recorded this episode, Jones
Speaker 1: had just been charged with twenty four offenses involving eight complainants.
Speaker 1: Since then, the case is narrated with a number of
Speaker 1: charges withdrawn or replaced before the trial began. Today we
Speaker 1: revisit our conversation with investigative reporter and author of Jonestown,
Speaker 1: The Power and the Myths of Alan Jones, Chris Masters,
Speaker 1: on the fall of one of Australia's most powerful men
Speaker 1: are what it tells us about the nature of power
Speaker 1: itself in this country. It's Sunday, August nine. This episode
Speaker 1: was first published in November twenty twenty four. Chris, thanks
Speaker 1: for speaking with me. Alan Jones has been arrested. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me why.
Speaker 2: I understand that he's been arrested on various charges of
Speaker 2: indecent assault. I certainly have some knowledge of an inquiry
Speaker 2: that's been going on for some time. You know, the
Speaker 2: police came and edited me sometime back, and of course
Speaker 2: there were witnesses from the book that I wrote, Jonestown,
Speaker 2: that was published back in two thousand and six, and
Speaker 2: because I'm still in contact with them, I've heard that
Speaker 2: they've also been giving statements to the police, and in fact,
Speaker 2: one of them said to me last week they thought
Speaker 2: that an arrest was imminent.
Speaker 3: Police will elite. These offenses took place between two thousand
Speaker 3: and one in twenty nineteen, involving eighth victims. The youngest
Speaker 3: of those victims a seventy year old when the time,
Speaker 3: at the time when the elites the heads took place.
Speaker 2: Of course, we're talking about allegations. Nothing has yet been proved.
Speaker 3: Those offenses include eleven charges aggravated vicent assault where the
Speaker 3: victim was under the authority of the offender, nine charges
Speaker 3: related to assault with active and decency, two charges of
Speaker 3: common assault, two charges of sexual touching.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's been speculation about Jones abuse of
Speaker 2: power and predatory behavior that go back well before I
Speaker 2: wrote that book twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Chris, you've reported extensively on things like the military on
Speaker 1: war crimes, most recently Ben Roberts Smith. But you also
Speaker 1: developed a long running interest in Alan Jones two. What
Speaker 1: first drew you to him as a subject.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my interest began in the early two thousands. I'd
Speaker 2: been reporting a lot on police corruption and I was
Speaker 2: quite surprised when I came to recognize that Jones had
Speaker 2: some power and law enforcement when he engaged in kind
Speaker 2: of a long running combat with the reformist police Commissioner
Speaker 2: Peter Ryan. He was brought in from the UK because
Speaker 2: there were lots of concerns about institutional corruption in the
Speaker 2: New South Wales police force, and Jones seemed to have
Speaker 2: a lot of allies that were Andy, Peter Ryan, and
Speaker 2: Andy the reform process. And I wondered about that, and
Speaker 2: I worried about that, and I went and saw Alan
Speaker 2: Jones and we had a bit of a discussion. He
Speaker 2: didn't want to do an interview with me, but it
Speaker 2: was all all very polite. But essentially I came to
Speaker 2: the view that my job was in front of abuse
Speaker 2: of power, and I was seeing it in my own industry.
Speaker 2: Then at four quarters in those days, you take a
Speaker 2: deep breath and the story you least want to do
Speaker 2: is the one you probably should do. I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: thought that when I began that in about two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, I'd still be talking about it over twenty
Speaker 2: years later.
Speaker 1: So you ended up taking a deep dive into Alan
Speaker 1: Jones's life. What can you tell us about his upbringing
Speaker 1: and how he became such a significant public figure in
Speaker 1: Australian life.
Speaker 2: He came from fairly humble circumstances. He was the son
Speaker 2: of a Southeast Queensland farmer, had a very small, impoverished block. Really,
Speaker 2: his mother was a special person. She insisted that the
Speaker 2: children go to private schools, which must have been a
Speaker 2: stretch for them. And so Alan had this kind of
Speaker 2: cross cultural background where on the one hand he aligned
Speaker 2: himself with the working poor, but on the other hand
Speaker 2: he also sort of seemed comfortable with the elites, which
Speaker 2: it had something to do with that to warm but
Speaker 2: grammar school upbringing, I think he always was thought of
Speaker 2: as something of a boy genius, had youthful looks, and
Speaker 2: he became tertiary educated, you know, he got a teacher qualification.
Speaker 2: He taught at Ironsight Primary. He then went on to
Speaker 2: teach at Brisbane grammar, and that's where a lot of
Speaker 2: the problems began. Jones seemed to be unduly interested in
Speaker 2: the young men. You heard stories about allegations of grooming
Speaker 2: of Joanes, spending undue time with students, of Jones after athletics,
Speaker 2: massaging students, you know, having them shower, et cetera in
Speaker 2: front of him, that sort of thing. He wouldn't get
Speaker 2: away with it today. You know, you couldn't have a
Speaker 2: master in the car with a student and two o'clock
Speaker 2: in the morning, which is something that happened with Alan
Speaker 2: quite a bit. Respects. He was invaluable to the school
Speaker 2: because he was prepared to coach all of the sporting
Speaker 2: teams and do the choir and drama and work late
Speaker 2: at night while other teachers with families were going home.
Speaker 2: So became invaluable. And I think that became a bit
Speaker 2: of a trick over the years. Wherever he worked in politics,
Speaker 2: in broadcasting, or as an educator, he made himself kind
Speaker 2: of invaluable and in a way untouchable.
Speaker 1: In the process of writing that book, he witnessed Jones's
Speaker 1: influences firsthand. As the ABC decided not to publish the
Speaker 1: book at the last minute, all your recollections from that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a really shocking experience for me. I'm
Speaker 2: still a bit shaken by it, actually, because very proud
Speaker 2: of the ABC and I always thought the ABC was
Speaker 2: the place to go that would do the stories that
Speaker 2: others wouldn't do. I've been through the Queensland Police corruption experience,
Speaker 2: you know, where I sued for something like thirteen years,
Speaker 2: and I thought that the agacy was absolutely fearless. It
Speaker 2: didn't turn out to be the case. My sense was
Speaker 2: that they decided that they were going to kill it
Speaker 2: by saying that it was just unpublishable. That the lawyer
Speaker 2: said that, you know, I couldn't back it up, but
Speaker 2: that wasn't the case. I kept providing their lawyers with
Speaker 2: the evidence that proved that what I'd written was defensible.
Speaker 2: In the end, they just gave up and said, sorry,
Speaker 2: we're not going to go ahead with this. And as
Speaker 2: it turned out, I went to a commercial publisher, Alan
Speaker 2: and Nundman, and they published the book. Certainly he had
Speaker 2: friends in high places. Yes, a lot of influence was
Speaker 2: brought to bear.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break. How Alan Jones cultivated power
Speaker 1: for friends and got what he wanted out of them
Speaker 1: headed Ellen Jones cultivate these powerful friends. What did that
Speaker 1: look like in practice? Based on the research and reporting
Speaker 1: you did.
Speaker 2: I think it was it was more that people feared
Speaker 2: him than respected him. The politicians would go on his
Speaker 2: show and if he didn't play ball, he beat them up.
Speaker 2: The people who cowtowed to Jones, And honestly, they told
Speaker 2: me this up close plenty of times. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: not doing it, Chris because I respect him. I'm doing
Speaker 2: it because I fear him. He can go on air
Speaker 2: and built me up every day till the cows come home,
Speaker 2: and that's pretty much what he would do.
Speaker 4: She's a clown, just Indada in a complete clown. I
Speaker 4: just wonder whether Scott Morrison's going to be fully brief
Speaker 4: to shove a sock down the throat. I mean, she
Speaker 4: is a joke, this woman, and an absolute and utter lightweight.
Speaker 5: Go away, Juliet. We don't want to see you, we
Speaker 5: don't want to hear you climb into a charf bag.
Speaker 2: A lot of broadcasters, journalists, you know, we're supposed to
Speaker 2: stay in our lane, and most of them pretty much
Speaker 2: stick to the lane, but not Alan. Alan pretty much
Speaker 2: saw himself as a prime minister in front of the microphone.
Speaker 2: He would tell prime ministers and premiers what to do
Speaker 2: unhesitantly all the time. And I suppose he got away
Speaker 2: with it because they led him. But every now and
Speaker 2: then in a battle of whix, a lot of them
Speaker 2: could easily take him on. Malcolm Turnbull did it famously
Speaker 2: on one occasion.
Speaker 5: If you could say after me this as a senior
Speaker 5: member of the Abbot government, I want to say here,
Speaker 5: I am totally supportive of the Abbot Hockey strategy for budget.
Speaker 2: Repair Allan, I am not going to take dictation from you.
Speaker 2: I am a cabinet minister. I support But at the time,
Speaker 2: even though he might have vested Alan in front of
Speaker 2: the microphone, there was no upside in a you came
Speaker 2: off worse up at the end of the day because
Speaker 2: to Jones's audience, you know, you were the enemy. It
Speaker 2: made me think that, you know, in one respect, he
Speaker 2: retained his omnipotence because of that microphone. One of the
Speaker 2: chapters in my book Jonestown was called Dictators and Tigers,
Speaker 2: and I speculated way back then that Jones was writing
Speaker 2: a tiger, and as soon as he got off that tiger,
Speaker 2: it threatened to devour him, and of course that's pretty
Speaker 2: much the way it's panned out.
Speaker 1: One of the men who spoke about his experiences said
Speaker 1: he did so because he doesn't want Alan Jones to
Speaker 1: get away with it. That if people don't know about this,
Speaker 1: Jones is likely to get a state funeral. He'll get
Speaker 1: a prime minister at his funeral. What do you think
Speaker 1: Alan Jones's legacy will be.
Speaker 2: I think there's a book in that. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it's a really sad story. Actually, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, I think he was a very, very lonely man.
Speaker 2: I think it was awful for him to go back
Speaker 2: to that expensive apartment night after night and be essentially alone.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that he had a lot of friends.
Speaker 2: But I think the worst thing about him is his
Speaker 2: formula for success, the shock jock formula for success, which
Speaker 2: was to be strident. Never sit on the fence, he'd say,
Speaker 2: because it only gives you splinters. The reverse index of
Speaker 2: certainty is how I explained it. Alan Jones would be
Speaker 2: absolutely certain about issues where very little research was involved,
Speaker 2: and of course that was important. It was important if
Speaker 2: you were on air to be angry and forthright day
Speaker 2: in and day out, and that's an unfortunate formula for
Speaker 2: democracy and for our business. If we really believe in facts,
Speaker 2: and if we believe it's about the pursuit of truth,
Speaker 2: then you don't follow the Jones formula. But sadly, I
Speaker 2: think a great many people have.
Speaker 1: Chris Masters, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James, thanks for listening. Tomorrow on seven AM,
Speaker 1: as police probe the first ever far left attack to
Speaker 1: be investigated as terrorism in this country, we speak with
Speaker 1: Wally d Ali about why it's being viewed through that
Speaker 1: lens and where this attack fits in the broader context
Speaker 1: of growing acts of political violence and terrorism around the world.
Speaker 6: You don't wake up one morning and say, oh, let's
Speaker 6: blow something up. What usually happens is you begin with
Speaker 6: a dissillution, you decide there's no conventional way to deal
Speaker 6: with that disillusionment, and then you start to engage with
Speaker 6: ideas that begin to morally disengage from what we might
Speaker 6: call mainstream morality and an aversion to violence, and then
Speaker 6: start to engage with the possibility of violence as a
Speaker 6: moral political action. And once you hit that point, then
Speaker 6: things can accelerate fairly quickly. The evidence seems to be
Speaker 6: that more and more people are reaching that
Speaker 1: Point that'll be in your feed tomorrow