By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - David Crossley was among the millions of Australians who waited, with varying degrees of anticipation, for multimillionaire broadcaster John Laws to face the prospect of jail this week.
Crossley, now in respectable middle age, felt the lash of Laws at his virulent best when, as a callow 18-year-old, he telephoned the Sydney talkback star's radio show about policemen receiving freebies at a McDonald's restaurant.
By a combination of abuse, humiliation and judicious use of the call button, Laws tore Crossley to shreds.
"I've hated that man ever since," he says with feeling.
But for every Crossley who silently urged Justice James Wood to send Laws to prison, there was at least one other Australian - possibly more - who cheered the judge's ruling that the broadcaster was too rich to be fined, too famous to be jailed.
While critics fumed about one law for the rich, another for the poor, the mass of dedicated Laws fans, who have made him the most highly paid radio host in the world, jeered journalists and cheered their hero as he emerged from court.
Instead of a prison sentence of up to seven years, a fine of up to $A110,000 or even periodic detention or community service, Justice Wood imposed a 15-month suspended sentence for what was Laws' second serious conviction in just over two years.
In March 1998, Laws was fined $A50,000 for contempt of court for attacking an accused murderer as "scum" and using similar invective during his trial, an action which one Appeal Court judge said deserved jail.
This time, Laws was convicted of soliciting information from a former juror who had opposed a majority not-guilty verdict for two alleged murderers, asking her such questions as: "Do you feel that you were browbeaten into making a decision that went against your conscience?"
Justice Woods was in no doubt that this was a heinous breach of the law, but could not bring himself to send the 65-year-old broadcaster to jail, or to even hit a man with a fortune in the vicinity of $A50 million in the pocket.
"It is obvious that Mr Laws is well able financially to pay a substantial fine, yet I do not consider that a fine, even up to the maximum ... would of itself provide sufficient by way of personal or general deterrence or by way of punishment for this offence," Justice Woods said.
"By reason of Mr Laws' high profile and his well-known stand on issues of law and order, I believe that he would face a significant risk of personal injury or worse if sentenced to periodic detention."
One-time rival and now Melbourne night-show host Derryn Hinch, who was jailed for one contempt of court and served 250 hours of community service for another, was among a battery of critics outraged at the sentence.
"In Laws' case, for a judge to say he's a wealthy man and a fine won't hurt him, well, that's even more reason why you jail somebody I suppose," he told ABC Radio.
But this is John Laws, the undisputed king of Australian talkback, the man who has Prime Ministers and Premiers queueing at his door, whom we are talking about. This is no ordinary mortal.
He has shaken Governments, rocked the financial world, befriended the fabulously wealthy and famous, lacerated and terrified even the most formidable of his enemies, sold his sponsors' goods with enormously profitable success for both them and himself, and shaped the views of a generation of middle Australia.
The Queen, on the recommendation of grateful Governments, conferred upon him first the Order of the British Empire, then elevated him to Commander of the Order.
It was on his show in 1986 that former Labour Prime Minister (then Treasurer) Paul Keating made his infamous banana republic comment that sent the currency into a tailspin, and it was also on his show that the Liberal leader (and now Prime Minister) John Howard made his disastrous call for lower Asian immigration which dogs him still.
In the mid-1970s Laws warned of the troubles of an unnamed financial institution. His listeners second-guessed him and sparked a $A14 million run on the St George Building Society.
When he failed to follow Keating's drift in a lunchtime chat, the then Treasurer summoned the Reserve Bank's most senior officials to the restaurant to give him a tutorial on the Australian economy.
With almost infallible instinct, Laws taps the vein of suburban Australians, sensing and articulating their fears and aspirations and manipulating them through a combination of arrogance, humiliation, contempt, charm and illusory omnipotence.
He has an enormous influence. Even with the number of stations receiving his syndicated three-hour morning show reduced this year from 74 to 63, he commands an immensely loyal nationwide audience of about 2 million, topped up by his nightly LAWS show on Foxtel pay television.
Advertisers clamour for his voice. Laws was the Mortein Man, promoted everything from wine to four-wheel-drive vehicles and drew 4 per cent of metropolitan radio advertising to his three-hour show in 1998.
He increased sales for one Toyota truck by 400 per cent, and can add thousands to newstand sales of newspapers with a banner bearing his name.
"Forget the press gallery in Canberra," Keating once said. "If you educate John Laws you educate middle Australia."
This has made Laws wealthy in his own right.
He earns more than $A11 million a year from his contract at 2UE and with Foxtel, from separate contracts with major corporations such as Toyota, Valvoline, Qantas and Hanimex and through property and share portfolios.
He has a mansion in Sydney's exclusive Woollahra, owns a 400ha property north of the city with eight houses, his own vintage car museum, cattle and deer.
Last year he survived the most concerted attack of all -the cash-for-comment scandal that came near to ending his 2UE contract and which, after dragging in other talkback stars, rewrote the rules on blending paid advertising with editorial comment.
Laws was caught out after reversing a strong anti-bank stand following a $A1.2 million deal with the banks to feed good publicity into his programme on the almost universally accepted premise that Laws can sell anything.
With a bundle of similar deals that also surfaced during six separate inquiries into the scandal, Laws was humiliated, satirised and pilloried by his enemies, a painful punishment now repeated in court for a man friends say agonises over his self-worth.
"Despite moments of aggravation, my overwhelming impression was one of a tormented soul," wrote biographer John Lyons. "He seemed to have a remarkably thin skin for someone so brutal to his listeners."
Fellow broadcaster and long-time colleague John Tingle told Lyons that Laws was "a quivering human being with a very strong sense of his own inadequacies ... screaming inside himself."
Justice Woods appears to have reached a similar conclusion: "As I review the matter, the most significant consequence for Mr Laws arising out of this case lies in the public humiliation of having been placed on trial ... "
Back on air, Laws had the last word.
"The point is there really is no story," he said, ending discussion on the matter.
Cheers, jeers as king of talkback dodges jail
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