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Former 2GB broadcaster Jason Morrison has told a court he would have confronted Alan Jones if he had seen him touch a young man under the table at a lunch in Sydney, and he feels “terribly” for the alleged victim.
Morrison, now chief of staff at The Daily Telegraph, was grilled at length on Friday in Jones’ indecent assault and sexual touching trial and denied omitting evidence about what he had seen and heard at the lunch almost 20 years ago.
A man known as complainant “C” has told the Downing Centre Local Court that Jones put his hand under the table at the lunch and touched him on the penis over his clothing. Jones, 85, has denied the allegations.
Morrison, who was working alongside Jones at the time at 2GB, has told the court there were jokes at the lunch about Jones and “C” looking like a “great couple” because the broadcaster put his arm across the complainant’s shoulders while talking about him.
The lunch was attended by guests from Jones’ professional and personal life, the court has heard, and they did not all know each other.
Morrison rejected suggestions by prosecutor Georgina Wright, SC, that he had given a deliberately “harmless” account of the jokes that was “far-fetched and implausible”.
“I feel, in these proceedings, very sorry that [‘C’ is] going through all of this, but I’m here to give evidence about whether I saw it or heard about it, and I didn’t,” Morrison said of the alleged indecent assault.
“I feel terribly for the guy that he says he’s gone through this.”
Morrison said it was “a very difficult thing to be put in the middle” as a witness, and he did not take his obligation to give truthful evidence lightly.
“Do you fear blowback in your media career if you give evidence that might be perceived as harming the defendant’s defence?” Wright asked.
“I don’t fear blowback,” Morrison said. “Mr Jones is no longer in the industry; I haven’t worked with him for aeons.”
Morrison said that if he had seen the alleged assault, “I would have said something to Alan.
“I wasn’t a backwards person. I would have done something about it. I didn’t know about it, and I didn’t see it, and so I couldn’t do anything about it.”
A report by The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont about allegations against Jones was published in late 2023, and Jones was arrested in November 2024.
Morrison was shown a text message he sent Jones after a further Herald article in May 2024, which referred to the allegations against Jones and to his attendance at a reunion of old boys from The King’s School. Jones had been a teacher and a sports coach at King’s in the 1970s.
Morrison said in the text that “these people are f—ing relentless with the smear” and referred to McClymont as “a nasty piece of work”.
Wright put to Morrison that he was seeking to ingratiate himself with Jones.
“No, I’m just saying to a friend, ‘I’m sorry you’re dealing with this’, because he’s been unwell,” Morrison said.
He said he regarded the report as a “nasty-toned article” and a “disgraceful smear”.
“I thought it was quite an appalling suggestion to sort of link that Jones, who had a connection with that school historically … [with] the wink and nudge innuendo of … a schoolboy reunion,” he said.
Asked if he regarded the reports on the allegations as a smear, Morrison said: “At that stage they were nothing more than accusations that people were making, and they’ve obviously got substantially more serious, given they’re in this court.”
Morrison agreed he had informed Jones that he had been contacted by McClymont in November 2023 about allegations relating to Jones, before the first of her articles was published.
“You did that because you were on his side, weren’t you?” Wright said.
Morrison rejected that suggestion. He was friends and colleagues with Jones, he told the court, and he believed that telling him was the “decent thing to do”.
Morrison agreed he had told McClymont positive things about Jones, but he said that “they were my experiences with him”. He was annoyed he wasn’t quoted in the first article, he said.
The court heard Morrison was quoted in a later article.
Wright put to Morrison that he couldn’t know the truth or otherwise of allegations made by people he didn’t know.
“You judge a person by what you know of them and your dealings with them,” Morrison said. “Just because somebody says something, and it’s in a newspaper, doesn’t mean I straightaway … mark that person down.”
“C” has told the court he confided in broadcaster Ray Hadley about his allegations.
Morrison agreed that he did not have a favourable view of Hadley based on his “lived experience”.
Hadley was one of the “greatest sportscasters this country has ever had”, Morrison said, but he had been “horrible to people who didn’t deserve it and often were very young”.
“I’ve seen very decent people taken to the point of tears or worse through dealings with him.”
Morrison said he was contacted months before McClymont’s call by author, journalist and Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons about allegations against Jones. It was “quite an aggressive call” and “almost a lecture”, Morrison said.
“He wasn’t asking; he was telling me,” Morrison said. He characterised it as “innuendo and long-term gossip I’d heard for years about Jones and his reputation”.
“It was not my experiences of the man, so I … let it go into the zone of innuendo and rumour.”
Morrison said the experience of giving evidence had left him “somewhat traumatised”.
The prosecution had initially sought to question Morrison by referring to a transcript of McClymont’s 2023 interview with him. However, it withdrew any reliance on the transcript after Morrison gave evidence that he did not consent to any recording of the conversation.
Morrison returns to the witness box on Monday.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491.
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