The name Charles Hughes Cousens is not one that has been canvassed at any time during the lamentable and often tawdry apology for debate and discussion that has characterised the more frenzied responses to the Alan Jones affair, but perhaps it should have been.
And so should have 'Section 80.1 of the Australian Criminal Code Act 1995 [which] makes it an offence to cause the death of, or harm to, the Sovereign, the heir apparent, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister'. And, while we're at it, add in, even more remarkably, a statute 'made at Westminster in the Parliament holden in the Feast of Saint Hilary in 1351, the Twenty-fifth Year of the Reign of King Edward the Third'.
As described by Ivan Chapman in The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Cousens, a graduate of the Royal Military College Sandhurst, was commissioned 'on 31 January 1924 and posted to the 2nd Battalion, Sherwood Foresters, in India'. The Foresters, however, lived too high for Cousens and unable 'to afford [their] expensive lifestyle ... he resigned his commission on 29 June 1927 and worked his way to Sydney'.
Various jobs followed, including some time on the wharves, a stint boxing preliminary rounds at a suburban stadium, and newspaper advertising, but he found his niche at last at a radio station — 2GB — and so his story becomes tenuously intertwined with that of Jones, who joined 2GB some 70 years later.
The quality of Cousens' voice, writes Chapman, and 'pleasing personality soon made him a popular announcer ... While uncommitted to any political viewpoint, he delivered a number of anti-communist broadcasts.'
As a Captain in the AIF in the Second World War, he was commended for his leadership but was captured during the fall of Singapore and ended up in the soon-to-be-notorious Changi Prisoner of War camp.
The Japanese, however, having discovered his radio experience, first tried to force him to do propaganda broadcasts then transported him to Japan where he wrote scripts, instructed Japanese radio announcers and worked with the infamous Tokyo Rose.
All this was done, as he always firmly insisted, under threat of torture. In any case the broadcasts were basically ephemeral and full of deliberate errors but also, on occasion, contained subtle information for Allied