Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Alan Jones was at home at his luxury Circular Key
Speaker 1: apartment yesterday morning when child Abuse Squad detectives arrived to
Speaker 1: arrest him. For nine months, police have been working on
Speaker 1: a top secret investigation that now charged Ellen Jones with
Speaker 1: twenty four offenses involving eight victims. Among the charges are
Speaker 1: eleven of aggravated and decent assault where the victim was
Speaker 1: under the authority of the offender. His arrest is the
Speaker 1: latest chapter in the downfall of one of Australia's most
Speaker 1: controversial figures, a man one of his alleged victims described
Speaker 1: as being more powerful than the Prime Minister. Today, investigative
Speaker 1: reporter and author of Jonestown, The Power and Myth of
Speaker 1: Alan Jones, Chris Masters on the fall of one of
Speaker 1: Australia's most powerful men and one it tells us about
Speaker 1: the nature of power itself in this country. This Tuesday,
Speaker 1: November nineteen, Chris, thanks for speaking with me. Alan Jones
Speaker 1: has been arrested. Can 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 some time back, and of
Speaker 2: course 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 elect. These offenses took place between two thousand
Speaker 3: and one and nineteen, involving eighth victims. The youngest of
Speaker 3: those victims a seventy year old when the time, at
Speaker 3: the time when it leads the heads to the face.
Speaker 2: Of course, we're talking about allegations. Nothing has yet been proved.
Speaker 3: Those offenses include eleven charges of aggravated decent assault where
Speaker 3: the victim was under the authority of the offender, nine
Speaker 3: charges related to assault with active and decency, two charges
Speaker 3: of 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 too. 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 the institutional corruption in
Speaker 2: the New South Wales police force, and Jones seemed to
Speaker 2: have a lot of allies that were Andy, Peter Ryan
Speaker 2: and Andy the reform process. And I wondered about that,
Speaker 2: and I worried about that, and I went and saw
Speaker 2: Alan Jones and we had a bit of a discussion.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to do an interview with me, but
Speaker 2: it was all all very polite. But essentially I came
Speaker 2: to the view that if my job was in front
Speaker 2: of abuse of power and I was seeing it in
Speaker 2: my own industry, than at four quarters in those days.
Speaker 2: You take a deep breath and the story you least
Speaker 2: want to do is the one you probably should do.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have thought that when I began that in
Speaker 2: about two thousand and two, I'd still be talking about
Speaker 2: it over twenty 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: had something to do with that. To warm but grammar
Speaker 2: school upbringing, I think he always was thought of as
Speaker 2: something of a boy genius, had youthful looks, and he
Speaker 2: became tertiary educated, you know, he got a teacher's 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 man. 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 something that happened with Alan quite
Speaker 2: a bit. In many respects, he was invaluable to the
Speaker 2: school because he was prepared to coach all of the
Speaker 2: sporting teams and to do the choir and drama and
Speaker 2: work late at night while other teachers with families were
Speaker 2: going home. So he became invaluable. And I think that
Speaker 2: became a bit of a trick over the years. Wherever
Speaker 2: he worked in politics, in broadcasting, or as an educator,
Speaker 2: he made himself kind 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 carre
Speaker 2: ruption experience, you know, where I sued for something like
Speaker 2: thirteen years, and I thought that the ogacy was absolutely fearless.
Speaker 2: It didn't turn out to be the case. My sense
Speaker 2: was that they decided that they were going to kill
Speaker 2: it by saying that it was just unpublishable. That the
Speaker 2: lawyer said that, you know, I couldn't back it up,
Speaker 2: But that wasn't the case. I kept providing their lawyers
Speaker 2: with 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 Nunman, 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 powerful
Speaker 1: friends and got what he wanted out of them. He
Speaker 1: did 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 belt 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, justin there, Ada in a complete clown.
Speaker 4: I just wonder whether Scott Morrison's going to be fully
Speaker 4: brief to shove a sock down the throat. I mean,
Speaker 4: she is a joke, this woman, and an absolute and
Speaker 4: utter lightweight.
Speaker 5: Go away, Juliet. We don't want to see you.
Speaker 4: We don't want to hear you climb into a chart.
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 then,
Speaker 2: in a battle of which a lot of them could
Speaker 2: easily take him on, Malcolm Turnbull did it famously on
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 5: budget repair.
Speaker 2: 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 opposing him. You
Speaker 2: came off worse up at the end of the day
Speaker 2: because to Jones's audience, you know, you were the enemy.
Speaker 2: It made me think that in one respect he retained
Speaker 2: his omnipotence because of that microphone. One of the chapters
Speaker 2: in my book Jonestown was called Dictators and Tigers, and
Speaker 2: I speculated way back then that Jones was writing a
Speaker 2: 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' 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, that it'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: Also in the news today, Independent Senator Lydia Thorpe says
Speaker 1: she'll use a paper copy of a censure motion against
Speaker 1: her the kindling the Senator ripped up the motion passed
Speaker 1: by the Senate and response to Thought's protest during King
Speaker 1: Charles's visit, Thorpe claims she's not concerned about the motion
Speaker 1: which passed without her in the room, and then when
Speaker 1: it came to protesting against the she would do it again.
Speaker 1: Also centured was Senator Ralph Babbitt, whose post celebrating Trump's
Speaker 1: election victory contained a number of racist and offensive terms.
Speaker 1: As three million Australians are at risk of homelessness, a
Speaker 1: stark sixty three percent increase compared to just eight years
Speaker 1: ago in twenty sixteen. The finding was published in a
Speaker 1: new report which also found a nearly ten percent increase
Speaker 1: and people who received an income being forced to sleep
Speaker 1: in tents or cars due to the cost and availability
Speaker 1: of private rentals. The report highlighted the ongoing crisis in youth,
Speaker 1: domestic and family crisis refuges. Many two under resource to
Speaker 1: weinswer phones, or emails, with some even closing their doors
Speaker 1: during opening hours in order to deal with the growing demand.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.