The ‘golden tonsils’ of John Laws fall silent, aged 90

John Laws was one of the most influential, commercially successful yet polarising figures in the history of Australian radio broadcasting. He has died at the age of 90.

He was among a handful of pioneering presenters who swiftly took advantage of a critical change in the broadcasting laws in April 1967. Until then, regulations enforced by the Postmaster General’s Department and the Broadcasting Control Board prohibited telephone conversations being put to air.

Laws was at the Sydney station 2UE when this epochal change was made, and his deep resonant voice, combined with an instinctively combative style, gave him a competitive edge over his rivals. In his biography, Lawsie, Laws quotes Paul Keating as saying: “The most important thing to say about John Laws is he really made and created the medium of talkback radio in Australia.”

Keating, as federal treasurer and later as prime minister, understood the value of Laws and his connectedness to audiences all over the country. This was especially true in the western suburbs of Sydney, which contained then – as now – a number of marginal federal electorates. Keating also famously said: “Forget the press gallery. Educate John Laws and you educate Australia”.

The 1983 federal election, in which the Labor Party, led by Bob Hawke, defeated the Liberal-National Coalition led by Malcolm Fraser, became known in political circles as the “John Laws election”. This was because so many major campaign announcements were made by politicians on his show.

It was also on the Laws show that Fraser made a statement that was to go into Australian political folklore: that if Labor won, people would be safer keeping their money under the bed. This set up Fraser for Hawke’s equally famous riposte that there was no room under the bed because that’s where all the Reds (communists) were supposed to be.

Despite Laws’ substantial wealth, his listeners, who lived in far more straitened circumstances across Sydney’s “fibro” suburbs, were intensely loyal. This loyalty was based on a belief that Laws would stand up for them against government bullying and the depredations of criminals. One woman credited him with saving her son from the clutches of drug-traffickers by putting pressure on the local police to clean up the neighbourhood.

His was a voice for these otherwise voiceless people years before his great rival Alan Jones invented the term “Struggle Street”, using the platform of radio to put pressure on the powerful and creating a template for talkback that survives to this day.

The contrary view of Laws is captured in this passage from a communications academic, Glen Lewis:

[H]e foregrounds minority group negative stereotyping in his show … he specialises in moral crusades against the unrespectable weak – the unemployed, prisoners, homosexuals, anti-nuclear demonstrators – in the name of the upright citizen and honest taxpayer.

In November 2004, Laws and another 2UE presenter, Steve Price, were found guilty of breaking homosexual vilification laws after an on-air discussion about a gay couple appearing on a reality TV show in which they described the couple as “young poofs”.

Despite or perhaps because of this ugly side, Laws developed a high level of credibility among his listeners. This plus his distinctive voice – the “golden tonsils” – made him a highly-prized talent for the making of radio commercials. His voice became synonymous with a wide range of goods: cars, motor lubricants, pest sprays, dental products.

His endorsement meant millions – to the products and to Laws. This was fine so long as the endorsements were given in what were clearly advertising commercials. But then Laws and several other talkback hosts went too far. They began broadcasting what purported to be their own honestly held editorial opinions, but which were in fact paid endorsements. It became known as the “cash-for-comments” scandal.

In July 1999, the ABC TV program Media Watch broadcast an item alleging the Australian Bankers Association had struck a deal with Laws under which Laws would eliminate from his program negative comment about the banks in return for a consideration.

The Australian Broadcasting Authority announced an investigation but it had not even got off the ground before more allegations came to light, this time against Alan Jones, Howard Sattler in Perth and Jeremy Cordeaux in Adelaide.

The report of the investigation found that Laws had misled his listeners on numerous occasions, including in relation to Star Casino, the Trucking Association and the Australian Bankers Association.

Not that this did him any harm professionally or socially.

His program Laws ran on Foxtel from 1998 to 2000, and was part of a significant television career that continued on and off from the early 1960s, during which he appeared on programs including New Faces, Beauty and the Beast and Skippy. He also wrote poetry, some of which he set to music, recorded eight solo albums in the 1970s, and played a part in the production of a small number of films, including Ned Kelly. At the ARIA Music Awards in 2008 he was presented with a lifetime achievement award.

But it was the radio career that counted. In 2007, after 50 years at the microphone, he retired, but by 2013 he was back, this time at 2SM. The ugliness had not gone away. He asked a woman caller who said she had been the victim of sexual abuse whether she had been provocative. He told a listener who criticised him to “say something constructive, like you’re going to kill yourself”. This earned him and 2SM a rebuke from the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

This bullying-by-talkback had been a hallmark of his broadcasting style for years. It really created the “Sydney shock jock” phenomenon, a disfiguring feature of commercial broadcasting in Australia the resilience of which reflects the weakness of the nation’s media accountability mechanisms.

At the same time, for his ability to communicate with voters and so play an essential part in the democratic process, Keating called Laws the “broadcaster of the century”. That remained true until the end, for good and for ill.