AARON PATRICK: Broadcaster Alan Jones’ arrest will end power over politics

Broadcaster Alan Jones’s arrest at his Sydney apartment on Monday morning will end his power over conservative politics in Australia — an influence that persisted beyond his departure from the mainstream airwaves three years ago.

The 83-year-old was charged about six hours later with 24 offences against eight men, including aggravated indecent assault, sexually touching another person without their consent, and common assault.

The allegations were first reported by Jones’s media nemesis, the left-leaning Sydney Morning Herald, last year.

The left has long despised Jones for his contempt for progressive politics, uncompromising social attitudes and influence over national and state politics.

In 2021 Jones was pushed out of 2GB, the Nine-owned radio station where he dominated AM talk-back radio for almost two decades.

Advertisers and editors had become wary of a man who seemed to endorse violence against female political leaders, including Julia Gillard and New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

Conservative politicians continued to offer their respects to him, though, attracted by his Trump-like beliefs and oratorical skills. To mark his final 2GB show, former prime minister Tony Abbott turned up at his country home, where he operated a private studio, with champagne.

He endorsed Angus Taylor, the shadow treasurer, and struck up a friendship with Mark Latham, the Labor leader-turned-One Nation senator. They even published a cook book together.

Deciding elections

“There is a widespread belief amongst Australia’s political elites that Alan Jones can decide elections,” left-wing academic Clive Hamilton wrote in 2006.

Whether that was true was questionable, given Jones’ listeners were mainly old, religious and conservative, but no other media figures on the right sought to influence Liberal politics so bluntly, including Paul Kelly, Andrew Bolt or, more recently, Peta Credlin.

In 2014 he told Malcolm Turnbull, on air, he had “no hope ever” of leading the Liberal Party and “you’ve got to get that into your head.”

Turnbull became prime minister a year later.

The left always considered him an enemy. He seemed impervious to their complaints.

Everything changed in December, when the Herald published several long articles.

Among the sources was a former 2GB employee who accused Jones of groping him during 10-minute drives to work.

A former schoolboy from the Kings School, where Jones was a rugby coach in 1970s, said Jones put his hands in the boy’s shorts when he complained of a stitch.

The articles were seen as dangerous, legally, to both sides.

Jones hired a defamation lawyer, who said Jones denied the “scandalous, grossly offensive and seriously defamatory” allegations.

But no lawsuit arrived, prompting speculation Jones was more worried about the police than the paper.

The Nightly does not suggest that publicity of those old allegations suggests that Jones is guilty of the charges he now faces only that they were made.

More witnesses?

While detectives searched his apartment at 1 Macquarie Street, also known as The Toaster, on Monday, police commissioner Karen Webb gave a press conference. She revealed she had recently visited officers working for the Child Abuse Squad to hear about Task Force Bonnefin, the investigation into Jones.

Meanwhile, Jones was driven to a police station near Darling Harbour, wearing a green tracksuit top over a blue business shirt. He held his head high, presumably knowing the pointlessness of hiding his famous face.

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