Well received decency.Alan Jones Broadcast apology to Barbara Ramjan 2GB #auspol

“Yesterday I spoke to Michael Kroger on this programme about reports that circulated while I was away in relation to a matter involving a Barbara Ramjan and the Sydney university students representative council presidential election in 1977 and that Barbara Ramjan was saying 35 years on that she remembered the behaviour of Tony Abbott. The rest I am sure you are aware of. I have to confess when I heard all of this I actually believed that Barbara Ramjan was some lady from faraway places and distant times. In the media reports that led to my speaking with Michael Kroger he alleged that Barbara Ramjan had been quote a serial manufacturer of false complaints against her political opponents unquote and I repeated those comments. Now on this programme we try to be fair no matter who is involved. Since that interview yesterday it has been pointed out to me by several people that Barbara Ramjan is in fact a woman of distinction who, in whatever she says, deserves to be taken seriously. I now find she is a married to a former Supreme Court judge who was himself a former Royal Commissioner and the President of the Mental Health Tribunal the same Barabra Ramjan I now find out has an Honours degree from Sydney university in Philosophy. She is a Guardian of the Supreme Court and other courts. I wasn’t aware of any of this and most probably wrongly relied on comments made by others and reports in the Financial Review and The Australian newspaper. Perhaps it could be said by someone I was being used. I don’t think so but I have to say it was I alone who chose to interview Michael Kroger on the basis of his reported comments. I did not speak to Michael Kroger before I interviewed him but I have since discovered that Barbara Ramjan did believe that she received death threats at that time in student politics. Not I might add from Tony Abbott, but death threats which she believed were legitimate, which of course disputes the argument that she was some sort of scatterbrain, serial liar. Now what is most concerning, the reason I am saying this is that Barbara Ramjan in all these years, I found out yesterday has strenuously avoided having anything to do with politics. That’s since her university days. She now has been dragged through all off this and it may well be that incorrect assertions have been made about her. I have to confess if I had known what I now know about Barbara Ramjan I wouldn’t even have raised her name I am totally opposed to implicating people in the political battle who are not elected political representatives and have spent their life strenuously avoiding any involvement in that battle so if anything I have done has led to discomfort and concern for Barbara Ramjan then I do apologise and I want to assure her, I don’t know if she listens to the programme or not, as others know, that that’s not the way I conduct this programme”

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