RIP Alan Jones ?

Its been an interesting week watching conservative radio bully boy Alan Jones getting a thorough trashing at the hands of normal Australians who have had enough of the bile he spews out every day (I'd always hoped the cash for comment affair could have done this, or even better the London loo incident, but sadly not).

This time round Jones' comments about the death of the Prime Minister's father managed to annoy enough people that there was a concerted effort led by various Facebook and Twitter users (in particular Sack Alan Jones and Destroy The Joint) to tell advertisers to either cease supporting his program or find themselves doing a lot of damage to their brands, with most of them promptly abandoning Jones to his fate and the program subsequently going advertisement free.

Alan Kohler at the BS has a good summary - Alan Jones: it’s about disintermediation.

Corporate leaders everywhere would be watching the predicament of Russell Tate and Robert Loewenthal, chairman and CEO of Macquarie Radio Network, with a mixture of fascination and horror.

A social media campaign against one their products, the Alan Jones breakfast programme, and directed at their business customers as well as their own company, has forced them to cancel all advertising on that show.

For those who have recently flown in from Mars, it started with a speech by broadcaster Alan Jones to the Sydney University Liberal Club dinner on September 22nd, eventually reported in the Sunday Telegraph, in which he said: “They [Labor] are indeterminate and compulsive liars. They’ll lie and lie and lie. Every person in the caucus of the Labor party knows that Julia Gillard is a liar. Everybody, I’ll come to that in a moment. 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.”

The suggestion that John Gillard died of shame has been widely and appropriately condemned, and Jones himself called a press conference last week to (sort of) apologise. Meanwhile 70 companies withdrew their advertising from his programme, either because they didn’t like what he said or because their social media monitoring services had picked up that their own customers didn’t like it.

Yesterday Russell Tate issued a long statement in which he announced the temporary suspension of all advertising in its Breakfast Show, blaming “21st century censorship, via cyber bullying”.

Also, the MC for the evening on September 22nd, Simon Berger lost his job as public relations and government relations manager at Woolworths, having apparently worn a chaff bag onstage to introduce Alan Jones (a reference to Jones’ frequent calls for Julia Gillard to be put in a chaff bag and thrown out to sea).

The “Sack Alan Jones” Facebook page has 15,486 “likes”, which doesn’t seem that many to have caused such carnage, but there has been a lot more to it than that.

There’s a petition on change.org with 109,962 signatories, another Facebook community called “Destroy The Joint”, after a statement by Alan Jones that women are “destroying the joint”, plus an uncountable number of tweets and hashtags on Twitter.

Russell Tate was both right and wrong in the statement that I quoted above: it is, indeed, 21st century censorship, but to call it bullying misses the point.

The digital revolution is only just getting going, and the social platforms, Twitter and Facebook, which has just passed a billion users, are only just starting to flex their muscle. There is a long way to go with this. Censorship up to the end of the 20th century involved community representatives – the church and then politicians – imposing limits on free speech. With social media, the community does it more directly and much more uncontrollably. ...

The essence of change that occurred between the 20th and 21st centuries is disintermediation. It is happening much more broadly than in censorship, but in that field of human endeavour, as it is everywhere, social media and the digital revolution generally, is simply and powerfully removing the intermediaries.

The organisation and expression of community disapproval has become incredibly powerful because it is spontaneous, immediate and clearly authentic.

That’s the difference between a social media campaign and a rap on the knuckles by the Australian Communication and Media Authority, the media regulator: you can argue about whether ACMA truly represents community opinion; with Facebook and Twitter you can actually see and feel it.

The SMH reports that Tony Abbott's replacement in waiting Malcolm Turnbull was happy to see Jones get a taste of his own medicine - Jones has not been bullied - Turnbull.

ALAN JONES has been ''given a dose of his own medicine'' with the online campaign that has stripped his station of sponsors, and is not the victim of ''cyberbullying'' as he has claimed, the Coalition communication spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, has said. ...

''Mr Jones has sought to lead 'people's revolts' for many years. But this was indeed a popular revolt against vicious and destructive public discourse … It is difficult not to believe that he is getting a dose of his own medicine …

''Mr Jones has complained that he has been the victim of social media bullying, saying that if it happened anywhere else in society, this kind of bullying or harassment or intimidation or threatening conduct, the police would be called in …

''But Mr Jones believes his association with certain products will encourage people to buy them … If other people take the view that an association with Mr Jones will lead them not to buy those products, why are they not able to tell the advertiser of their view and encourage others to do the same?''

The SMH had an earlier article from Peter Fitzsimmons describing the origin of the boycott campaign - Alan Jones has no shame.

Every time you think 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones has gone as low as he can go, he sets a new benchmark ever deeper in his now obviously bottomless barrel.

Not enough that he has already talked of putting the Prime Minister “into a chaff bag and hoisting her into the Tasman Sea,” or that he has said that the country needs to “bring back the guillotine,” to deal with her, and that across the country “women are wrecking the joint". Now, before an audience of Sydney University Young Liberals last weekend at the Watermark Restaurant at Balmoral he has referred to the grieving PM's late father, John Gillard – a man who was obviously very close to, and extremely proud, of his daughter – and said that he, “died a few weeks ago of shame".

The unspeakably vicious nastiness of it, the sheer bully-boy misogyny of saying such a thing, simply takes the breath away, even for those of us who spent fair chunks of time around the unvarnished Jones.

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Turnbull: Honesty Is The Best Policy (when it comes to debating climate)

The SMH reports that Malcom Turnbull is taking a few discreet (and well deserved) swipes at idiot Liberal party leader Tony Abbott - Honesty is the best policy: Turnbull swipes at state of politics and 'deficit of trust'. It remains a mystery to me how Abbott can actually have a lower approval rating than PM Julia Gillard and still remain Liberal leader - the country will be a complete laughingstock if he's still in place after the next election (which I expect the Liberals will win in spite of his presence).

Malcolm Turnbull has decried the state of political discourse in Australia, saying it had deteriorated to such an extent that the nation suffered "a deficit of trust" and there was an urgent need for honesty in politics.

If you love your country, have an interest in politics or policy, and care deeply about our nation's future, there's nothing more certain to arouse your fury and invite your contempt than listening to an entire House of Representatives question time.

In comments that are bound to be construed as critical of the style of Tony Abbott, as well as Julia Gillard, Mr Turnbull cited his own keen area of interest, the science of climate change, as a victim of what passed these days for political debate.

Delivering a lecture in Perth last night, Mr Turnbull said it was an inescapable fact that greenhouse gases caused the earth to warm. "Politicians and shock jocks, scientists and coal barons, all of them can argue for as long as they like, but they cannot change the physical reality," he said. "I won't linger on climate change – the hopeless, confused, hyper-partisan nature of the debate is too well known to rehearse."

Mr Turnbull also revisited the republic debate, a cause he fought for and lost at the 1999 referendum, saying "the next big watershed will be the end of the Elizabethan era".

He said republicans must not allow themselves to be split into two camps by the monarchists, as happened 13 years ago when monarchist strategists – including Mr Abbott and John Howard – "delightedly, if cynically, exploited the division by promising the direct electionists that if the parliamentary model was defeated at a referendum, they could have another referendum on a direct election model within a few years".

"Those republicans who voted 'No' expecting another vote in a few years, this time on their preferred model, should reflect on how comprehensively they were deceived by the trickery of their opponents and their own self-delusions, in equal measure."

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Australian Carbon Tax Law Introduced To Parliament

The Australian Parliament has commenced debating the new carbon tax law (dubbed Australia's Clean Energy Future - nice title !).

The debate isn't highlighting anything new - the opposition thinks the world will end when it is introduced, the government and greens think it an essential step forward (which is true, though it doesn't go far enough) and the media is by and large producing almost no useful analysis of the various claims being made.

Still - it should go through regardless - the only interesting question is will Malcolm Turnbull tell Abbott to get stuffed and cross the floor to vote with the government. Fingers crossed.

The Climate Spectator has an article on a PwC report into low carbon growth - Down to business on carbon.

The sudden evaporation of a goodly portion of the federal opposition's sitting members on Tuesday as the Prime Minister began introducing the bills of her government's Clean Energy Future package might betray a lack of consensus on carbon pricing among Australia's politicians, but it seems big business is well and truly present on the issue. A new major global report has found that the world’s largest listed companies are increasingly embracing climate change policies, regardless of – and even in spite of – broad-ranging uncertainty in politics. The 10th annual Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Global 500 report, put together in conjunction with global accountancy firm PwC, has examined the carbon reduction activities of the world’s largest listed companies through an in-depth analysis of 396 of the world’s largest companies, and has found that 68 per cent have climate change at the heart of business strategies, up from 48 per cent in 2010.

The report, Accelerating Low Carbon Growth, which is due to be released Wednesday, also shows a significant rise in the number of companies reporting reduced greenhouse gas emissions as a result of various emissions reduction activities (45 per cent, up from 19 per cent in 2010). A correlation was also established between higher stock market performance over time, and representation on CDP’s Carbon Performance Leadership Index (CPLI) and the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI). Companies with a strategic focus on climate change provided investors with approximately double the average total return of the Global 500 from January 2005 to May 2011.

CDP's Director for Australia and New Zealand, James Day, said the results highlighted that, despite all the debate in Canberra, emission reductions are being made in large companies throughout the world.

And the SMH notes the carbon tax plan will allow polluters to buy permits from abroad (and that the Abbott alternative plan is hopelessly impractical) - Abbott plan 'would double carbon cost.

TONY ABBOTT has described the carbon tax as ''the longest political suicide note in Australian history'' and a ''completely pointless exercise'' because it would allow Australian companies to buy some greenhouse gas emission reductions overseas.

But the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network - which represents mining and manufacturing industries - said it agreed with the federal Treasury that Mr Abbott's plan of achieving 5 per cent emission reductions domestically would at least double the cost, whether done with a carbon price or through his proposed ''direct action''. ...

But Michael Hitchens, the chief executive of the industry network, said if Australia wanted the cheapest way to cut emissions, ''we should have full flexibility to purchase international units''. ''We understand from Treasury modelling that the cost of abatement might double if we try to achieve the full abatement domestically. We think those figures are about right,'' he said.

Treasury modelling found that domestic-only reductions would cost an average of $69 a tonne between now and 2020, compared with $29 a tonne under the government plan, which allows some overseas permits. The Coalition has budgeted $15 a tonne in its ''direct action'' plan and says this is capped.

Rob Oakeshott, who with fellow crossbenchers Andrew Wilkie and Tony Windsor will ensure the bills pass the lower house, told Parliament the Coalition's plan did not make sense because it assumed ''the ongoing ability to buy a product [greenhouse abatement] at one third of its price''. …

The former Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull said he had not yet decided whether to speak on the bills, which will be voted on in the lower house on October 12. He said the Gillard government scheme had ''a lot in common'' with the Rudd government's emissions trading scheme, which he had agreed to pass.

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