'Shock jock' apologises for comments on Australian PM

AUSTRALIAN RADIO “shock jock” Alan Jones has been forced to apologise after being secretly recorded saying prime minister Julia Gillard’s father died of shame because of her political “lies”.

Mr Jones told a $100-a-head Liberal Party fundraiser in Sydney that “every person in the caucus of the Labor Party knows that Julia Gillard is a liar”.

“The old man died a few weeks ago of shame . . . to think that he had a daughter who told lies every time she stood for parliament,” Mr Jones said.

He also suggested during the speech, recorded on September 22nd and made public over the weekend, that Ms Gillard’s “tears of grief” for her 83-year-old father led to a recent improvement in Labor’s polling numbers.

John Gillard died suddenly on September 8th while his daughter was attending an Asia-Pacific economic co-operation summit in Russia.

Mr Jones, a former Australian international rugby coach, has a history of saying inciteful things about Ms Gillard on air, but in this case he was secretly recorded by a journalist from Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He has previously used his popular daily radio show to speak of putting the prime minister “into a chaff bag and hoisting her into the Tasman Sea”. He has also said, when talking about Ms Gillard, that the country needs to “bring back the guillotine”.

Mr Jones regularly refers to the prime minister as “Ju-liar” and recently said Ms Gillard and other women in power in Australia “are wrecking the joint”.

But the recording of him saying the prime minister’s father died of shame due to her “lies” unleashed an online storm of protest late on Saturday night, followed by condemnation from Ms Gillard’s Labor party colleagues yesterday.

Former primer minister Kevin Rudd said Mr Jones’s comments were the “lowest of the low” and that he should be banished from the Liberal party and future Liberal events.