The state funeral for John Laws will take place this Wednesday at St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney.
St Andrew’s Cathedral seats 800, John Williamson is expected to play, Russell Crowe is one of the speakers, Michael Jensen will give the address.
For those who can’t make it to the city funeral service, the Annandale Village Church will also have a commemoration and live stream of the state funeral.
St Andrews Cathedral State Funeral (main picture)
Cnr of George & Bathurst Streets, Sydney
When: Wednesday 19 November 2025 at 1.30pm
also
Villiage Church Annandale (pictured below)
122 Johnston Street, Annandale, NSW
followed by drinks at the Annandale Hotel
When: Wednesday 19 November 2025 from 1 pm
Pastor Domenic Steele, a former radio journalist, has organised a playout of the live telecast stream of the funeral especially for those who have worked in radio and may not be able to get to the city service. The Village Church seats about 40 people comfortably and has an auditorium with 150 seats.
2GB will also present live, comprehensive coverage of the funeral, ensuring listeners across the country can pay their respects and reflect on his extraordinary career.
The special broadcast will be hosted by Michael McLaren and John Stanley from 1pm AEDT and has been offered to the same network stations that syndicated The John Laws Morning Show for decades. So far 25 stations are taking the coverage.
The broadcast will take the official audio of the St Andrew’s Cathedral service, with a tams of reporters covering the service and providing commentary on this important national event. The coverage will feature highlights of John Laws’ seven decades in radio, celebrating his unique style, cultural impact, and the defining moments of his career.
Dominic Steele posted this tribute to Laws on social media when Laws passed away.
Mr Laws retired from radio, last November, after a radio career that spanned seven decades. This is a photo I took of John in the main 2UE onair studio in April 1988 when I was news editor during his program.
When I started in commercial radio at 2MO Gunnedah in 1984 my first job included panelling the John Laws show, which at that time was coming down the line from Radio 2UE in Sydney. My task was to add local adds to the program and to sync the end of our add breaks with the end of the Sydney add breaks.<
By 1986 I was working at 2UE as a journalist. Then in 1989 when 2UE launched it’s unbeatable Alan Jones breakfast / John Laws morning combination I had the privilege of being the first news editor for the breakfast / morning shift. My role was to lead the other rostered journalists in the news gathering task and to decide on the content of our bulletins.
John Laws was then at the height of his powers. Prime Minister Paul Keating later said ”Forget the [Canberra] Press Gallery; educate John Laws and you educate Australia.”
One of my standout memories was John taking a talkback call from a woman who was attempting suicide. She had taken sleeping pills and as the call went on was rapidly noticeably more drowsy. 2UE (and the 70+ stations who were networking the program) were supposed to be running 18 mins of adds an hour. But her life was in the balance. John hadn’t taken an add break for 40 mins.
John was asking her for details. She was gradually telling him where she lived, that it was a flat, eventually what flat number. It was totally gripping radio as the master broadcaster battled to save this woman’s life.
My behind the scenes task as duty news editor was to negotiate with the 2UE control room and decide what to do about our rapidly approaching 10am ‘top of the hour’ network newsfeed. We could see (without being told) that there was no way that John would break the phone call for the 2UE Sydney news bulletin. But the dilemma for us was ‘What were we to do with the networked program?’ Should we postpone the news for the network, or send them the bulletin as scheduled? There was only one audio line going out from Sydney to all our network stations.
While most of our network stations were taking the Laws program, not all were. We were contracted to provide a news bulletin.
As it happened the problem was solved for us.
At one minute to the hour, there was a crashing sound, the woman passed out, the phone line went dead. John went to a 30 second add break. There was commotion in the control room. The add finished. We had no idea if John would take the news bulletin or not. It was 25 seconds to the hour.
John came back on the air with the dead phone line. ‘Hello?’ A male voice came on the phone, ‘I’ve got her John!’ It was a listener who had broken down the door. John Laws said to the caller ’Well done!’
Then straight to the time pips and news. As if it was planned. I listen to broadcasters today and no one is in his league.