Praise Alan Jones' work ethic all you want. It won't undo the harm

Always relying on the central contradiction of having friends in high places (James Packer once referred to Jones as being "like an aunt to me") and presuming to speak for ordinary Australians, his extraordinary transgressions - legal and moral - would never be enough to see him properly condemned by the politicians who understood their success to depend on his sympathies.

When Jones announced the impending conclusion of his 35-year radio career, the political elite fell over one another to call his program and offer congratulations; one final round of sycophancy. Scott Morrison told the broadcaster: "You've always done the right thing by your country and we're very proud of that."

Gladys Berejiklian said Jones should take pride in his legacy, proclaiming that "very few people get to choose the time of their departure at the top of their game".

Anthony Albanese admitted that "we have political differences, but on a personal level you're someone I respect". The Opposition Leader went on to praise Jones' charitable giving.

"I have to say I haven't solicited any of these calls," Jones simpered.

Tony Abbott, not unexpectedly, was the most extravagant in his adulation: "In many respects, you were the voice of middle Australia. You were the person who would stand up for the battler, the person who would articulate what millions of people were thinking but couldn't quite bring themselves to say."

The implication is that people couldn't bear to articulate these otherwise unspoken views because community consensus takes them to be intolerable, mistaken, cruel.

Despite voices of dissent, the coming weeks will see a steady stream of sanitising memorials for Jones' career. Among Australia's media and political classes, Jones' ratings, his influence, his work ethic, and his patriotism will be honoured; his racism, climate change denial, virulent misogyny, and petty vindictiveness will be discounted as aberrations rather than properly understood as traits fundamental to his philosophy and appeal.

The allure of commercial talkback is twofold: it offers a fantasy of intimacy and a fantasy of conviction. Jones masterfully conjures both: he's your furious ally and your generous friend. In Jonestown, Chris Masters described him as "both gullible and convincing". To listen to his program is to hear a man infatuated by his own capacity to hold court, unable to concede defeat, compelled only by the prospective triumph of his own self-righteousness.

His self-cultivation as what Abbott called "the voice of middle Australia" is an absurd fancy. Jones has been extremely wealthy for decades (he has long been attended by a butler and keeps both an inner-city apartment and country estate). And his pursuit of an incoherent politics functions to mask his power plays, using his significant platform to denigrate his chosen enemies.

In 2012, a tribunal declared that Jones had incited hatred seven years earlier when responding to an A Current Affair report by claiming: "If ever there was a clear example that Lebanese males in their vast numbers not only hate our country and our heritage, this was it. They simply rape, pillage and plunder a nation that's taken them in."

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In 2018, a judge ruled Jones had defamed a family he falsely accused of being responsible for and covering up 12 deaths resulting from a flood on their Grantham property. Jones' comments, the judge wrote, were "vicious and spiteful", and caused the plaintiffs "profound personal hurt".

Famously, Jones, regaling a room of baying Liberal Party members, suggested that Julia Gillard's father had "died a few weeks ago of shame. To think that he has a daughter who told lies every time she stood for Parliament".

Despite occasionally landing him and his radio station in hot water, the seething hyperbole has persisted because it is his engine. When he charms the politicians who call with back-slapping congratulations, he does so with the satisfaction of a man propelled by vigorous indignation, the kind that intimidates the powerful into mistakenly believing they need to bow and scrape before the man and his ratings.

But the broadcaster is a symptom. As Jones' legacy is secured, his misbehaviours excused, Australian politics will reshape itself around other shouting voices, elevating those who act as if they're holding power to account, while simply accumulating it for themselves.