Judge allows date range changes in Alan Jones criminal trial after conflicting timelines

The judge in radio broadcaster Alan Jones's criminal trial has allowed changes to the date range of alleged indecent assault offences in the second week of proceedings, after witnesses gave conflicting timelines.

The 85-year-old has pleaded not guilty to 20 counts of assault with act of indecency and two counts of sexual touching relating to six alleged victims between 2003 and 2020.

Prosecutors had alleged the first complainant to give evidence, Complainant J, had been 18 or 19 when Mr Jones allegedly kissed him and touched him on a trip to Fitzroy Falls, the broadcaster's NSW Southern Highlands property.

Charges relating to the trip to Fitzroy Falls are alleged to have occurred at some time in 2004, according to the Crown's original case.

But prosecutors have successfully argued to expand the possible dates of some of the alleged offending to any time between 2004 and April 2006, meaning Complainant J may have been between 18 and 21 years old.

Mr Jones was given an early mark from the NSW Local Court on Wednesday, and witnesses were sent home as lawyers argued about changing the offence date ranges.

The court had heard Complainant J, who was an emerging athlete at the time, did not remember the date he allegedly confided in his then-girlfriend that Mr Jones had been "touching" him.

He said he thought the visit to Fitzroy Falls, where he alleged Mr Jones asked him to wear a "robe and nothing else" before kissing and touching him, was around 2004.

But his ex-girlfriend has since given evidence that Complainant J came to her house and told her about the alleged offending straight after the Fitzroy Falls trip, which she said was in 2005 or early 2006.

Dates of alleged offending expanded

Prosecutors argued that "time is not of the essence" in relation to the charges, and that the Crown's case was simply that the offending had occurred.

But Mr Jones's barrister, Gabrielle Bashir SC, pushed back, telling the court she had prepared and argued a case based on alleged offences happening in 2004.

"What is the Crown's case?" she said.

"We were not asked to prepare a case in relation to those events at Fitzroy Falls happening in 2005 and 2006."

She said the Crown had known about the inconsistencies in its witnesses' evidence and chose to raise them part-way through the trial, instead of at the beginning.

But Judge Glenn Walsh said he did not believe the time of alleged offences mattered much in this trial.

"The defendant's case is that it doesn't matter when it is said these things occurred, they never occurred," he said.

"I cannot see that this application wields any unfairness."

He said it was common in summary hearings in his experience, that witnesses differed in their evidence about the timing of alleged events.

The court had previously heard Complainant J initially told police in a statement that Mr Jones gave him a mobile phone as a schoolboy.

Under cross-examination, and after being shown Telstra phone records, he accepted he must have been given the phone after he had left school, and that he was recalling historical events to the best of his memory.