Alan Jones apologises for latest Julia Gillard tirade

Australian talkshow host says PM's father died of shame at her 'lies', triggering a public backlash and sponsorship withdrawal

Public anger has triggered an advertising backlash in Australia after the country's best-known radio talkshow host said the Australian prime minister's father, who died last month, had died "of shame".

Alan Jones, who has a history of criticising the prime minister, told a Sydney University Liberal club dinner last week that "every person in the caucus of the Labor party knows that Julia Gillard is a liar… The old man recently died a few weeks ago of shame. To think that he had a daughter who told lies every time she stood for [sic] parliament."

In his tirade, Jones accused the conservative opposition party of being soft on the prime minister because she was a woman. "They've been brainwashed by the media to 'Oh … back off, she's a woman, go easy.'"

His comments follow other recent on-air criticism of Gillard, below, in which Jones accused her and other women in powerful positions of "destroying the joint". This provoked a social media campaign calling on sponsors of his high-rating radio programme to pull out.

A number of companies confirmed they were backing away from the presenter. Mercedes-Benz said it was withdrawing all Jones-related advertising and marketing. An investment management company, Challenger, and a furniture manufacturer also confirmed they had pulled advertising from the programme on Sydney radio station 2GB. Freedom Furniture tweeted: "You spoke, we listened. We do not support the comments made by Alan Jones. We have pulled our advertising off air."

Jones publicly apologised on Sunday and tried, unsuccessfully, to speak to the prime minister. "This was a throwaway thing at a private function, which I thought was a private function," he told a press conference. "The comments were, in the light of everything, unacceptable. They merit an apology by me."

During his speech at a Sydney restaurant, Jones said Gillard's recent improvement in opinion polls were the result of her tears. "Of course she's ahead in preferred prime minister [polls]," he said. "She cries because her father died, she's on the news every day."

Two weeks ago in parliament, Gillard choked back tears as she paid tribute to her 83-year-old father, who had brought the family to Australia from Wales when she was a child. She said her father had "felt more deeply than me … some of the personal attacks we face in the business of politics, but I was able to reassure him that he had raised a daughter with sufficient strength not to let that get her down".

More than 27,000 people have signed an online petition calling for sponsors of Jones's radio programme to withdraw their support.

Contributor

Alison Rourke in Sydney

The GuardianTramp

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