Radio Kings Row About Pulling Australia's Strings

They have been described as the two most powerful men in Australia after the prime minister, dominating political debate for more than a decade.

Now the talkback radio kings Alan Jones and John Laws are embroiled in a row involving allegations of top-level political corruption.

Laws accused his rival of bullying the prime minister, John Howard, into reappointing David Flint as chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority.

Jones, he said, had boasted of going to Mr Howard's official residence and warning him that he would withdraw his support if the reappointment was not made.

The claim has led to demands for Mr Flint's resignation and an inquiry into Mr Howard's conduct.

The pair's influence is comparable to that of the editors of the Daily Mail and the Sun in Britain, and a number of key policy changes have been made after their on-air campaigning, on immigration among other issues.

Laws, a softly spoken presenter who has dominated Australian radio for more than 30 years, has had a prickly relationship with the brash Jones since the latter's rise to prominence in the early 1990s.

Laws' allegation of influence-peddling was made on his morning programme on radio 2UE yesterday.

He claimed Jones told him at a dinner party in 2000 that they both owed their positions to David Flint and to Jones's lobbying of Mr Howard.

"I made some mildly critical comment of the effete pretentious posturing professor, that being Mr Flint," Laws said. "Alan Jones happened to be at the same party, and he turned on me very quickly and said, 'I should be very careful. If it weren't for David Flint, God knows where we would be'."

Jones, he said, explained: "I was so determined to have David Flint re-elected that I personally went to Kirribilli House and instructed John Howard to reappoint David Flint or he would not have the support of Alan Jones in the forthcoming election."

Mr Howard rebutted the allegation. "I don't operate my government in that way and I don't deny a friendship with Alan Jones. I have friendships with a lot of people."

Nor did he deny having had face-to-face policy discussions with Laws, and inviting him to his house, but he rejected the claim that Jones had tried to pressure him about the ABA appointment.

Laws and Jones have long been controversial figures, especially since an ABA inquiry in 2000 into their sponsorship agreements with Australian companies. It found that they and several others had been paid millions of dollars to offer favourable on-air comments about company activities.

Presenters in the US can be imprisoned for such "payola", but the ABA merely ordered that 2UE broadcast commercial interest disclosures.

Politicians have called on Mr Flint to resign because of a conflict of interest, and the opposition leader, Mark Latham, has demanded an inquiry into Mr Howard's links with Jones.