When the Oz comes down on Jones we just know Rupert is going for brand differentiation
Alan Jones’ greatest truckin’ songs
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Jack the Insider Blog | August 23, 2011 | 15 Comments
The Convoy of No Confidence rolled into Canberra yesterday, leaving everyone a bit underwhelmed.
I spoke with one of the organisers last week; National Road Freighters’ Association vice president, Darryl Pedersen. Pedersen was expecting up to 4000 protesters and with the 300 or so in attendance he would have been disappointed.
Pedersen spoke about the close contact his organisation had with the Australian Federal Police. The aim was to minimise disruption within Canberra. This is a thoroughly decent ambition from a protest movement and the organisers should be praised for it. But more of that later.
Pedersen detailed the loose coalition of lobby groups who had joined in the protest. Some were visceral with rage over the embargo on live cattle exports, others the carbon tax. Some were disturbed by Penny Wong’s impending parenthood. Pedersen also raised the spectre of asylum-seekers.
I asked Pedersen what he thought of the Malaysian Solution and the Nauruan Solution but he seemed disinclined to analyse the specifics, preferring a certain disgruntled air on the issue in general.
Overall, the group of protesters were downright angry with the government and the string that tied them all together was a demand for a new election.
All right, it was a forlorn protest but protests often are. In the Howard years, there were protests on the streets on a fairly regular basis, too. Gigantic papier-mache puppet heads were the rule back then. Offensive signs were a feature as they are now. On the ground, little has changed.
Alas, it is the fate of the modern protester to fall prey to Godwin’s law. The swastika was pointed at Howard then and it gets a run with Gillard from time to time now.
Just like the good old days when demos were dominated by shrill urgers from any number of left-wing loony groups, the protest movements on the right are prone to splinter and fragment along organisational lines and that old chestnut of grass roots protest, self-interest.
One of the convoy coalition groups, the Australian Long Distance Owners & Drivers Association, claimed the NRFA was trying to seize the moment for its own as yet undetermined political purposes. ALDODA vice president Bill Woodyard accused NRFA president Mick Pattel of seeking “to promote his own political agenda.”
People’s Front of Judea? Splitters.
Protests about the spooky business of world government came from the left then. Now they come from the right. When it comes to protest movements in Australia the political spectrum is not linear; it’s a perfect circle.
Or to paraphrase that old advertising maxim, you’ll never go broke in this country going long on tin foil hat futures.
But even the organisers of the Convoy of No Confidence were not falling for the stunt that broadcaster Alan Jones tried to pull yesterday.
Jones said the smaller-than-expected crowd was because “thousands” of people had been blocked from attending the rally and that “hundreds” of trucks in the convoy had been stopped at the border as they tried to enter Canberra from New South Wales.
The Australian Federal Police responsible for what Jones claimed was “the most disgraceful thing that has ever been done to democracy” were said to be “baffled” by the remarks.
Jones was wrong and anyone who has followed his career with more than a passing interest will note that this is a fairly common occurrence. Indeed if you did wish to catalogue Jones’ position on any range of topics over the last three decades, you’d find he’s got a strike rate not dissimilar to Australia’s slow bowlers since the retirement of Shane Warne.
Among the heaving catalogue of instances where Alan Jones has found himself on the wrong side of history, there is one that is truly memorable.
Back in the late 1980s, South Africa was set to explode. The apartheid regime was on the brink of collapse with economic and sporting boycotts isolating the country financially and culturally.
In this time, the world became almost inured to the horrors of “necklacing” - spontaneous public executions in the black townships carried out by forcing a tyre doused in petrol over the victim’s arms and chest.
Alan Jones became convinced that Nelson Mandela was at the heart of this evil, arguing long and hard on his radio program that Mandela was a terrorist. He even debated the claims in an interview with Mike Willesee on A Current Affair. Willesee ripped Jones to shreds.
That Mandela remained a prisoner of the apartheid regime until 1990 was of no consequence to Jones. Neither was the fact that the ANC officially condemned the practice of necklacing.
Presumably Jones would have Mandela banged up back on Robben Island. If so, South Africa would have burned.
Ultimately, Mandela and the apartheid National President, Frederik Willem De Klerk, negotiated their way to multi-party elections in 1994. Both men were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Mandela was elected president in 1994 and the cataclysm that was set to befall South Africa was avoided due to the skill and charisma of arguably the greatest politician of the late 20th century.
You don’t hear Jones talk about this much these days. His position then was shrill yet fired with the same moral absolutism that he displays daily now on a range of topics but most notably the carbon tax and a visceral loathing of the Gillard Labor government.
And there he was yesterday, at it again. But the organisers of the rally were having none of Jones’ dark conspiracies.
Mick Pattel explained the lower than expected truck numbers, saying organisers had worked well with police, confirming what his vice president had told me a week earlier.
“It was very important that we didn’t disrupt the lives of Canberra people,” he told ABC TV.
