Political lessons of Jones, Laws showdown

Bob Briton

Tensions between rival Sydney radio outfits reached a new peak 
last week when a spat between AM jocks Alan Jones and John Laws 
spilled out on the airwaves. A trivial matter, you would think. 
However, caught up in the war of words were none other than Prime 
Minister John Howard and the chairman of the Australian 
Broadcasting Authority (ABA), Professor David Flint. The injured 
list has swollen to include Veterans Affairs Minister Danna Vale 
and others are sure to be added.

While the wriggling, squirming and hissing of these conservative 
public figures have provided an entertaining spectacle, their 
greatest value has been to expose the close, normally secret 
connections between government and the media. These are links 
between the political apparatus and one of the major ideological 
apparatuses of the state.

This latest instalment in the "cash for comment" scandal is 
highly instructive — it reveals just how important the control 
of media comment is to the functioning of modern day capitalism. 
It gives away some of the detail as to how this manipulation of 
the media can continue under the nose of an industry watchdog 
that is supposedly safeguarding the public interest.

"Cash for comment" entered the Australian vocabulary nearly five 
years ago when the cosy arrangement between the Australian 
Bankers' Association and John Laws became public knowledge. The 
Bankers' Association paid Australia Street Consulting $1.35 
million to have a more positive spin put on the behaviour of the 
banks in the media. Up until that time, Laws had been reflecting 
the community view that the banks were ripping the public off 
with excessive fees and the like. After a $500,000 payment to the 
announcer, Laws was singing the praises of the banks, their 
generous tax contributions and so on.

In 2002 another chapter was added when a deal between Telstra, 
Jones and Laws was exposed. In Jones' case, $1.2 million ($5,000 
a day!) was handed over in return for 12 months' worth of a more 
enthusiastic depiction of the giant telco on air. Jones had 
previously been signed up to a deal with rival Optus and had a 
reputation for putting the boot into Telstra. Jones soon changed 
his tune, however.

Money talks

Laws was the beneficiary of a similar deal. Telstra would keep 
the good news stories coming and the AM jocks would weave them 
into their shows a specified number of times per week, not as ads 
but as part of their banter or during talk back. By now Jones who 
had been at 2UE, was working at rival station 2GB in which he had 
(and still has) a 20 per cent stake. Laws stayed at 2UE. This 
became an important difference when the ABA finally became 
involved.

The Authority was dragged into all these issues thanks chiefly to 
the pressure generated by the investigations carried out by the 
ABC program Media Watch.

2UE was eventually found guilty of breaches of ABA codes and 
standards for failing to disclose on air the deals it had made 
with corporate heavyweights like Telstra and NRMA. 2GB was 
cleared in circumstances that have been the subject of further 
Media Watch investigation.

Jones was absolved of the charges because he had not received a 
payment directly from Telstra. The cash was given to 2GB. No 
importance is given to the fact that Jones is a major shareholder 
in the radio station in the final ABA report on the matter. 
According to the ABA assessment, Jones had no obligation to make 
on air announcements of any personal benefit from the Telstra 
deal.

During the investigation of these issues by the ABA, Professor 
David Flint was forced to step down from his presiding position. 
While the controversy was still raging, the professor had gone on 
air with the two embattled presenters in a gesture that was 
widely viewed as a one of solidarity.

However, upon Flint's return to his post the ABA report on the 
Jones matter underwent a transformation. The original concluded 
that Jones had indeed breeched the codes set down for media 
behaviour by the ABA. The final report dropped all these adverse 
references and Jones was "cleared". While it appears that Flint 
was able to retrieve what he could for one of the right-wing 
mouths-for-hire on a technicality, the fact that the charges were 
made to stick to Laws aggravated a rift between the two 
presenters.

Last week the tiff assumed national significance. Laws claimed 
that his rival announcer had interrupted him at a dinner party in 
2000 while he was criticising the "pretentious, posturing 
professor". Laws then recalls Jones turning on him: "Careful what 
you say about him. If it wasn't for him, God knows where we'd 
be."

It was then that Jones is meant to have boasted that he had been 
to Kirribilli House to demand from the Prime Minister that David 
Flint be reappointed as head of the ABA. Failure to do so would 
have caused Jones to withdraw his support for the coalition at 
the 2001 Federal elections.

Jones and Howard have now both denied having had any such meeting 
or conversation. Their statements have been strengthened from the 
generic and ambiguous (of the "I do not recall any such 
conversation taking place" sort) to emphatic denial when it 
became clear just how serious the issue had become.

It is worth noting that neither Jones nor the PM is talking about 
defamation proceedings against their accuser. Laws claims to have 
several witnesses to the alleged outburst from Jones.

So who is David Flint and why should his stewardship of the 
nation's media watchdog be the subject of such terse, high-
powered conversations? All seven members of the board of the ABA 
are appointed, including Professor Flint. They were to represent 
the range of political and social opinion within the Australian 
community. However, the successive governments have narrowed this 
"spectrum" of opinion and moved it to the right to the point 
where someone with Professor Flint's credentials can be appointed 
as chair for two successive terms.

David Flint was Dean of Law at the University of Technology in 
Sydney. He was also the Chairman of the Australian Press Council 
from 1987 to 1997 and is an Associate Member of the Australian 
Competition and Consumer Commission. He was appointed Chairman of 
the ABA in 1997 and again in 2001.

He is a leading light in the Australians for Constitutional 
Monarchy and has catalogued his cranky beliefs in a manifesto 
published in 2003 called Twilight of the Elites. In the time-
honoured right-wing tradition, the staunch defender of the 
establishment would have us believe that left leaning "elites" 
dominate academia and the media. Political correctness and the 
black armband view of Australian history are choking our cultural 
life, according to Flint.

He is a supporter of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, welfare 
"reform", "free trade" and a host of pet projects of the 
international ruling class. He wrote at least one letter to Alan 
Jones (on ABA letterhead!) praising him for his staunch support 
of these worthy causes:

Dear Alan,

You have an extraordinary ability of capturing and enunciating 
the opinions of the majority on so many issues.

This of course annoys those who have a different agenda. I 
suspect it is extremely irritating to them that you do it so 
well.

Keep up your considerable contribution to the widening of our 
national debates.

Sincerely, David

Not surprisingly, Flint stands squarely behind the Coalition 
of the Willing in Iraq. In fact, with the media focus now 
squarely on the rarely examined workings of the ABA, and in view 
of his fixed position, the Professor has agreed not to chair the 
Authority while it considers former Communications Minster 
Richard Alston's accusations of bias against the ABC during their 
coverage of the war in Iraq last year.

Another "extremely annoying" feature of this whole saga for the 
establishment is that it exposes just how politically charged 
senior appointments in the media are.

The choice of a Chair for our public broadcaster, the ABC is 
another ideological battlefield where the right deploys a lot of 
its forces. The labour movement must defend the remaining 
independent voices within the ABC to prevent the whole of the 
mainstream media being turned over to the political agenda 
pedalled by Flint and Howard. Support for the alternative media, 
including the working class, press must be strengthened.

Another demand must surely be the immediate dismissal of the ABA 
Chairman and a review of the makeup of the board of the Authority 
to ensure that it genuinely reflects the range of views in the 
community.