The fall of Alan Jones
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Why was Alan Jones arrested and what are the main charges against him?
I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to 7am. This week, Alan Jones went on trial in Sydney, more than 20 months after his arrest. The once powerful broadcaster is now facing 22 charges of indecent assault and sexual touching involving six complainants. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and denies any wrongdoing. When we recorded this episode, Jones had just been charged with 24 offences involving eight complainants. Since then, the case has narrowed with a number of charges withdrawn or replaced before the trial began. Today, we revisit our conversation with investigative reporter and author of Jonestown, The Power and the Myth of Alan Jones, Chris Masters, on the fall of one of Australia's most powerful men and what it tells us about the nature of power itself in this country.
It's Sunday, August 9. This episode was first published in November 2024. Chris, thanks for speaking with me. Alan Jones has been arrested. Can you tell me why?
I understand that he's been arrested on various charges of indecent assault. I certainly have some knowledge of an inquiry that's been going on for some time. You know, the police came and interviewed me some time back and, of course, there were witnesses from the book that I wrote, Jonestown,
How did Chris Masters first become interested in investigating Alan Jones?
that was published back in 2006. And because I'm still in contact with them, I've heard that they've also been giving statements to the police. And in fact, one of them said to me last week, they thought that an arrest was imminent.
Police will allege these offences took place between 2001 and 2019 involving eight victims. The youngest of those victims was 17-year-old at the time when the alleged offence took place.
Of course, we're talking about allegations. Nothing has yet been proved.
Those offences include 11 charges of aggravated decent assault where the victim was under the authority of the offender. Nine charges related to assault with active indecency, two charges of common assault, two charges of sexual touching.
But, you know, there's been speculation about Joan's abuse of power and predatory behaviour that go back well before I wrote that book 20 years ago.
Chris, you've reported extensively on things like the military, on war crimes, most recently Ben Robert Smith, but you also developed a long-running interest in Alan Jones too. What first drew you to him as a subject?
Yeah, my interest began in the early 2000s. I'd been reporting a lot on police corruption and I was quite surprised when I came to recognise that Jones had some power in law enforcement when he engaged in kind of a long-running combat with the reformist police commissioner Peter Ryan. He was brought in from the UK because there were lots of concerns about institutional corruption in the New South Wales Police Force and Jones seemed to have a lot of allies that were anti-Peter Ryan and anti-the reform process.
What aspects of Alan Jones’s early life and education shaped his public persona?
And I wondered about that and I worried about that. And I went and saw Alan Jones and we had a bit of a discussion. He didn't want to do an interview with me, but it was all very polite. But essentially I came to the view that if my job was confronting abuse of power and I was seeing it in my own industry, then... At Four Corners in those days, you take a deep breath and the story you least want to do is the one you probably should do. I wouldn't have thought that when I began that in about 2002, I'd still be talking about it over 20 years later.
So you ended up taking a deep dive into Alan Jones's life. What can you tell us about his upbringing and how he became such a significant public figure in Australian life?
He came from fairly humble circumstances. He was the son of a South East Queensland farmer, had a very small, impoverished block really. His mother was a special person. She insisted that the children go to private schools, which must have been a stretch for them. And so Alan had this kind of cross-cultural background where on the one hand he aligned himself with the working poor But on the other hand, he also sort of seemed comfortable with the elites, which had something to do with that Toowoomba Grammar School upbringing, I think.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why was Alan Jones arrested and what are the main charges against him?
0:01–1:35
2
How did Chris Masters first become interested in investigating Alan Jones?
1:35–3:39
3
What aspects of Alan Jones’s early life and education shaped his public persona?
3:39–5:16
4
What were the allegations of misconduct during Jones’s teaching career?
5:16–7:18
5
Why did the ABC refuse to publish Chris Masters’s book on Alan Jones?
7:18–9:08
6
How did Alan Jones build and wield relationships with powerful political figures?
9:08–10:45
7
What does Chris Masters think Alan Jones’s legacy will be after his trial?
10:45–12:12
8
How does the ‘shock‑jock’ formula described by Masters impact Australian democracy?
12:12–13:36