source : the age
The autumn of 2019 was no more turbulent than any other period of Ray Hadley’s 20 years in talkback radio at 2GB, he told a court on Wednesday.
It was the season that a secret contract for him to take over Alan Jones’ breakfast slot on double his $2 million salary was rescinded, leaving him with the increased salary component without the 1.30am starts. “Inadvertently, Alan Jones had doubled my salary for doing the same job,” he cheerfully observed.
It was the time that he was accused of bullying, which he put down to the actions of a “double-dealing” producer in cahoots with Alan Jones, and stirred him to march into Jones’s office and give him “some partial advice”.
“Well, you told police that you went in and told Mr Jones that he was a c— and a dog,” Jones’s barrister Gabrielle Bashir, SC, clarified.
Hadley did not blink. “Yes, it’s quite likely I said things like that,” he replied.
It must have been a particularly challenging period, Bashir suggested. Hadley shrugged. “No more challenging than every other day, no.”
It was against that background that the complainant known as “C” tearfully disclosed to Hadley allegations that Jones had kissed him in an elevator and touched his penis in a car, the court has heard. Jones denies the allegations, has pleaded not guilty and the trial continues.
Hadley would put “C” in touch with Peter FitzSimons, a Herald columnist and former 2UE breakfast host who was “notoriously anti-Mr Jones”, in the words of Bashir. “Probably not as much as he was anti-me,” Hadley replied. Fitzsimons was researching a story on Jones.
Hadley’s evidence threw open the doors on the byzantine machinations between radio hosts at 2GB, a blistering, brooding workplace where treachery lurked behind closed doors. If on Tuesday he was warming up his tonsils, on Wednesday the motormouth took flight, and all the voices of his past careers came into play: the auctioneer, the greyhound race caller, the NRL commentator and the talkback radio host.
He told the court about afternoon radio host Chris Smith sweeping the cubicles in the office bathroom before confronting Hadley about whether he had been asked to take over Jones’s breakfast slot.
At that time, Hadley said, Macquarie Media co-owner John Singleton wanted to get rid of Jones due to all the defamation actions being brought, and a secret contract was drawn up for Hadley to take over the slot. But after Singleton sold out of the station, the top brass wanted Jones to stay in the slot. “They said, ‘if you don’t stand down, you’re going to cost Singo $80 million’,” Hadley said. “Singo was a friend of mine, so I said I’d stand down … but the value of the contract must be met.”
It was met, and that was how Jones doubled Hadley’s salary merely by staying put.
There was the episode of an assault allegation, which was unable to be substantiated with CCTV footage, prompting Hadley to call for the staff member who made the report to face repercussions. “I said, ‘What’s next? He’s made an assertion that could’ve cost me my career; surely, he’s got to be disciplined’,” Hadley said. He said he was told by a 2GB producer that Jones was the puppet master behind the allegation.
He said that producer was “a double agent” who “assured me that Mr Jones had marshalled the troops and said, ‘Dig up some dirt on Hadley’.”
More than a year after he left talkback radio – and with it his morning opportunity to wax lyrical – Hadley quickly warmed to the witness box, and his evidence was replete with pot-shots and free swings.
He even found a way to bring into evidence a recent death threat received by his former 2GB colleague Jason Morrison, who now works at News Limited, in the context of people being called “dogs” and “c—s”. But he later regretted his intemperance.
Bashir raised at every opportunity the fact that her client had more listeners and a more prestigious slot and that Hadley owed his ratings in part to the act that he followed on morning radio. “I wasn’t coveting anything,” Hadley said.
When Jones was unwell, Hadley offered comfort. “You know I love you,” he texted Jones. Then sent a second message: “Above ground”. That was rubbish, wasn’t it? Bashir suggested. Hadley demurred. “We had a tumultuous relationship but I didn’t wish him to be in ill health.”
But by the time the Herald exposed “C”’s allegations against Jones in 2023, the relationship was worse than ever. “That c— will be in the foetal position when he reads the story in the morning,” Hadley wrote to “C”. “It’s been 50 years in the making.”
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