Some (But Definitely Not All) Of The Worst Things Alan Jones Has Ever Said
Farewell, Alan. Don't ever come back.
Tomorrow marks the last day of radio for shock jock Alan Jones. The veteran broadcaster has enjoyed a radio career spanning 35 long years, during which time he wielded an unholy amount of power for someone with such terrible opinions.
He commanded an influential platform with his breakfast time slot — he celebrated his 226th ratings win last month — and often used it to spread populist, right-wing rhetoric covering a spectrum of racism, misogyny and general misinformation.
He lashed out at female leaders, dismissed climate change, downplayed coronavirus, demonised minorities and used unacceptably racist slurs.
Despite this, he was courted by politicians due to his reputation as a kingmaker who could help sway elections with his conservative fanbase. In this way, his platform helped to shape public policy in Australia for years.
There has been a lot written about the divisive legacy Jones is leaving, but now we’d like to simply let his comments stand for themselves.
(By the way, he’ll still be around on Sky News and writing columns for News Corp — so no doubt this isn’t the end of him being awful).
In honour of Jones’ retirement from radio, here are a list of some of his lowest moments.
[Editor’s note: This is by no means a comprehensive list. There’s just not enough time in the day for that]
Alan Jones On The N-Word
Alan isn’t shy about using the n-word. He’s used it multiple times. And, despite the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) ruling Jones breached their Code of Practice by saying the racist slur, he has never faced any disciplinary action for it.
On Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s loyalty during the 2018 Liberal leadership challenge:
“The n****r in the woodpile here, if one can use that expression — and I’m not going to yield to people who tell us that certain words in the language are forbidden — the person who’s playing hard to get is Mathias Cormann.”
On Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership ambitions, in 2012:
“Good stuff, Tony Abbott. You’re there not to buckle at the knees just because a few little media outlets and sympathisers to Julia Gillard want you to. There’s talk of Malcolm Turnbull, the n****r in the woodpile.”
He also used the phrase to describe the Commonwealth in 2007, Australia’s national cricket selector Greg Chappell in 2011, and Queensland’s then-deputy premier Jeff Seeney in 2013.
Alan Jones On Indigenous Australians
In 2016, Jones agreed with a listener who said children of the Stolen Generation were taken for their own good:
“We need stolen generations — there are a whole heap of kids going through the courts now, or their families, mums going through the courts, and dads – who are on top of the world with drugs, or alcohol, and suddenly they go back into an environment where children are brought up in those circumstances. Those children for their own benefit should be taken away.”
In 2000, Jones was accused of racial vilification for comments he made on a discrimination case involving a real estate agent and an Aboriginal woman. The prospective tenant was told there were no rentals available — but when she asked her white friend to go and enquire, the friend was shown a list of options.
On the case, Jones had to say:
“So the Aboriginal woman argued discrimination and she got an award of $6,000. I think that’s a joke, and I tell you why I think it is. I don’t care what colour he is, looking like a skunk and smelling like a skunk with a sardine can on one foot and a sandshoe on the other and a half-drunk bottle of beer under the arm and he wanted to rent the final property available and it was mine, I would expect the agency to say ‘no’ without giving reasons.”
In 1998 Jones was also found guilty of defaming Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson over a land rights conference that Dodson ran.
Jones said the respected leader “exploited his Aboriginality,” “had his snout in the public trough” and “grossly overcharged” taxpayers to run the conference. He also claimed that Dodson was “unprincipled” and only called people like Jones racist to deflect attention from their own activities.
Jones was also found guilty of racially vilifying a Muslim community leader in 2005.
Jones On Women
On thing we know about Alan — he really doesn’t like strong women, and he really likes a chaff bag.
On Julia Gillard, while discussing a carbon tax in 2011:
“The woman’s off her tree and quite frankly they should shove her and Bob Brown into a chaff bag and take them as far out to sea as they can and tell them to swim home.”
On Sydney Mayor Clover Moore trying to install cycleways, in 2011:
“Put her in the same chaff bag as Julia Gillard and throw them both out to sea.”
On a Pacific aid program to promote women in business, in 2012:
“She (then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard) said that we know societies only reach their full potential if women are politically participating. Women are destroying the joint – Christine Nixon in Melbourne, Clover Moore here. Honestly.”
While reading out an email from a listener named Colin, in 2011:
“Another one says ‘please, please don’t have that lying bitch on your program again, I had to move the dial to another station. I guess it was worth the once to show us all what a beep lying, beep backstabbing, beep treacherous, beep beep she is.’ Thanks Colin.”
On Julia Gillard’s recently deceased dad, in 2012:
“The 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.”
To Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Herron, who didn’t want to use the iconic sails as a “billboard” for Racing NSW in 2018:
“Louise I’m sorry, I think you’re out of your depth here. You should put your resignation on the table today. You don’t run NSW, Louise. I will be speaking to [NSW Premier] Gladys Berejiklian in about three minutes, and if you can’t come to the party, Louise, you should lose your job.”
This particular out burst caused outrage, and Jones was forced to apologise for his bullying.
On New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, when she told the 2019 Pacific Islands Forum that Australia has a lot to answer for on climate change:
“She’s a clown, Jacinda Ardern — a complete clown. Here she is preaching, preaching on global warming, and saying that we’ve got to do something about climate change. I just wonder whether Scott Morrison is going to be fully briefed to shove a sock down her throat. I mean, she is a joke, this woman.”
On the Sydney Cloud Arch, a $11.3 million artwork that Clover Moore commissioned in 2017 (He denied the below comment was advocating violence against Moore, but declined to say what he was referring to):
“You can guess what many people would rather hang 58 metres over George Street…and it’s not a Cloud Arch.”
On there being “no glass ceiling” for women in politics, in 2019:
“There was no glass ceiling for [former WA Premier] Carmen Lawrence, or [NSW Premier] Gladys Berejiklian, or [Queensland Premier] Annastacia Palaszczuk … I think we’re inventing things here. I’ve never heard anyone argue against someone because she was a woman. There have been very good women.”
Jones On Middle Eastern People
In 2005, racial tensions in western Sydney were flaring after a number of brawls around the Cronulla area — police even noted an “obvious racial prejudice against Middle Eastern males“. Things really kicked off after fight between three off-duty lifeguards and a group of eight men of Middle Eastern appearance.
Text messages soon began circulating around Sydney calling for a rally (or, as one text message that Alan Jones repeatedly read aloud said, “Leb and wog bashing day“). Jones happily hopped on the band wagon — and in 2007 the ACMA found he helped incite the Cronulla race riots by broadcasting material “that was likely to encourage violence or brutality and to vilify people of Lebanese and Middle-Eastern backgrounds on the basis of ethnicity”.
While discussing the “major problem” in north Cronulla:
“These are Lebanese gangs, simple. Forget all this nonsense about not saying who they are. And they are violent, and they hate.”
To a caller, who said she’d heard derogatory remarks about Middle Eastern people:
“Let’s not get too carried away … We don’t have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in western Sydney.”
On December 7, days before the riots began:
“The truth is they’re Lebanese gangs and the Lebanese leadership in this state needs to have something to say about it. When Peter Debnam, the opposition leader says that every night we witness gang violence, including stabbing, ram raids … drive-by shootings … let’s identify who these people are. You are telling me in your correspondence, they’re Lebanese gangs, and someone’s going to have to do something (about) it.”
While discussing the police action:
“I’ve got, I’ve just got a stack of emails in front of me, let me read you this one, “Alan, it’s not just a few Middle Eastern bastards at the weekend it’s thousands, Cronulla’s a very long beach and it’s been taken over by this scum, it’s not a few causing trouble, it’s all of them, it’s an attitude that you feel whenever you go there, it’s just straight out racism against the skippies, it will not go away, the police have their hands tied.”
While reading out another listener’s letter:
“My suggestion is to invite one of the biker gangs to be present in numbers at Cronulla railway station when these Lebanese thugs arrive, it would be worth the price of admission to watch these cowards scurry back onto the train for the return trip to their lairs … Australians old and new shouldn’t have to put up with this scum.”
Jones On Coronavirus
For the last few weeks Alan has been broadcasting from his Southern Highlands home, where he’s been isolating during the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, he’s continued to try and downplay the virus for his listeners, many of whom are in the more vulnerable age bracket.
On pandemic “alarmism”:
“Unless I’m moving in different circles, the almost universal reaction I am getting is that we have gone mad. And in this modern world, at the slightest provocation it seems, we revert — in spite of all the money spend on education — we revert to hysteria and alarmism. We now seem to be facing the health version of global warming. Exaggeration in almost everything. Certainly in description, and certainly in behaviour.”
On NSW’s social distancing restrictions:
“Coronavirus can’t be allowed to destroy democracy. This order in NSW, by a Liberal government, should never have been gazetted. It’s badly thought out, it’s undemocratic, it’s hopelessly un-Australian, it treats us as if we’re all either completely stupid or servants of the state.”
Jones On Climate Change
Alan Jones does not believe in man-made climate change, and he’s not shy about expressing that opinion.
On green groups who have an “agenda”:
“If they can prove there’s an Armageddon on the way, they’ll get money. Like much associated with the global warming hoax, truth was the casualty.”
On the Great Barrier Reef, in 2016, after the government’s Marine Park Authority identified climate change as one of the greatest threats to the reef:
“These global warming alarmists will stop at nothing, and they now want to seize on the Great Barrier Reef as a means to stop coal mining. The Barrier Reef’s fine — there are any number of reputable entities who will be looking after it and making sure it continues to be fine and looked after.”
The Barrier Reef is definitely not fine.
On Treasury modelling that showed real national income would grow under Gillard’s carbon tax, in 2011:
“Look you can’t take these people seriously. It is rubbish, and it’s a hoax.”
There are just way too many examples of Alan Jones’ climate denialism for us to reproduce here. But it’s safe to say that Alan Jones is one of the key reasons Australia has failed to take adequate action on climate change for decades now.
Jones On George Pell
On defending Pell in 2016 during the Royal Commission into child sex abuse, where it was revealed Pell didn’t act after hearing reports of abuse:
“I think there has been a fairly unfortunate focus on Pell in the sense that he was 28 years of age in 1969 when all this happened. And there is a presumption in the way in which this has happened that then Pell was the Cardinal and should have done something. I hope they don’t ask us what we were doing at 28 years of age. I can’t even remember what I did last Monday.”
On comparing George Pell to Jesus, after the disgraced Cardinal had his convictions for child molestation overturned:
“I couldn’t help but feel that this was happening, as you would know Father Mark, in Easter week, where the Easter is about crucifixion and resurrection. This man is almost a living metaphor.”
We now know that George Pell was aware of child abuse in the church for decades.
Jones On “Integrity”
In 1999, Jones became embroiled in the cash for comment scandal after admitting he had secretly accepted massive payments from corporations — including banks, casinos and even Qantas — in exchange for favourable coverage.
In unrelated news, Jones once had this to say on “integrity”:
“Money is not worth two bob if your integrity is up for grabs.”
Alan Jones On His Critics
Alan Jones is no stranger for criticism — and in 2011, he had this to say to them:
“It’s called the Alan Jones show. Much of my stuff is opinion. I’m a broadcaster. I don’t pretend to be a journalist and I don’t know what that means anyway — they’ve got a certificate or something.”
“These are all critics from people who are losers. They can’t do what you do so they want to have a potshot.”
There you have it. Goodbye Alan Jones, and may you never return to radio.