Wagners sued Alan Jones for paternal love, not money

For the Wagner brothers, taking on Alan Jones was never about the money. It was about their elderly father.

Neill, John, Denis and Joe Wagner in Brisbane. Picture: Annette Dew

For the Wagner brothers, taking on Alan Jones was never about the money. It was about their elderly father, Henry, and his pained bewilderment every time Jones got on the radio to take the stick to the wealthy Toowoomba family.

Jones’s noisy campaign, which yesterday turned into a very expensive liability for his employer, Macquarie Media, as well as majority shareholder Fairfax Media, started when he accused family members of lying about their plans for an old horse stud they had bought for $3 million outside their home town of Toowoomba.

Denis Wagner and brothers John, Neill and Joe said the land would be redeveloped into a business estate for light industry. Jones, who grew up in the area, ­insisted from the 2GB studio in Sydney it was a front for coal or gas mining.

When the brothers received approval to add on an airport in 2013 — arguing that the precinct wasn’t viable without the “connectivity” the $200 million hub would provide — Jones went to town, saying it was a con and no airline would touch it.

Five years on, the Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport handles 80 flights a week by Qantas and regional carriers to Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, Townsville and Cairns, as well as international freight services. And the Wagner men have had their day in court at Jones’s expense, securing damages of $3.75 million for defamation, principally over his discredited claims they had caused the deaths of 12 people in the 2011 Grantham flood disaster and conspired to cover it up.

Radio broadcaster Alan Jones arrives at the Supreme Court in Brisbane, in May. Picture: AAP

“Dad used to ring me every day, five minutes after Jones had been on,” Denis Wagner said.

“He’d say, ‘Have you heard what he said about us today? What are you going to do about it?’ And I’d say, ‘Dad, just turn him off, it’s not worth having a heart attack over.’ But … how do you explain to an 81-year-old man that you can build an airport in 20 months, you can pour concrete in Russia in -60C temperatures and you can bloody build bridge components in Toowoomba and install them in North America, but you can’t stop someone telling lies about you on radio?”

Mr Wagner, 55, said yesterday’s big win in court showed that a broadcaster of Jones’s standing was still accountable. “This ruling gives us enormous confidence in our legal system and we hope ­others who feel they have been defamed will not be left feeling helpless,” he said.

Of course, not everyone has the deep pockets of a family that controls a vast publicly listed construction and property concern spanning precast concrete products, trucking, property development and composite fibre technologies. The family company, with its 55 per cent holding in the listed business, continues to be headed by John Wagner, 61, an aviation buff who did the legwork on the Wellcamp airport.

Wagner Inc grew out of the concreting operation started in 1973 by patriarch Henry, a stonemason by trade. He sat through much of the seven-week trial with wife Mary by his side. In 2015, the Wagners ranked 14th on the BRW Rich Families List with an estimated worth of $955m — a sum that’s now a little larger.