Alan Jones has denied claims he bullied Opera House boss Louise Herron during a testy on-air confrontation over plans to promote a horse race on the sails of the World Heritage listed building.
The top-rating radio host on Friday attacked Ms Herron and repeatedly told her she should be sacked after she ruled out allowing words or branding highlighting The Everest race to be projected onto the Opera House because "it's not a billboard".
"Who do you think you are," Jones repeatedly asked Ms Herron. "You don't own the Opera House ... I'm telling you I will be speaking to (NSW Premier) Gladys Berejiklian in about five to three minutes and if you can't come to the party you should lose your job."
Within hours Ms Berejiklian had intervened to allow Racing NSW to promote the Everest, which is the richest horse race on turf in the world, on the Opera House.
"There'll be no logos or names - the only words on there are the words on the trophy itself," she said.
Jones on Monday said Ms Herron had been going on with "nonsense" about the Opera House's heritage when he wanted an answer.
"Yes, I did say I believed her job should be on the line. She might have been representing some people but not the wider public," he said on radio 2GB.
He denied telling the premier to get rid of Ms Herron, who currently retains her position as chief executive.
As of Monday morning, more than 120,000 people had signed a change.org petition to "protect" the iconic building from "Alan Jones and his Gambling mates at Racing NSW".
Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'landys on Monday told Sky New he and his staff had received death threats.
He also revealed Racing NSW had been negotiating with the state government for more than a year and initially wanted to use the Sydney Harbour Bridge to promote the race.
"The Opera House was the alternate venue put forward by the NSW government, which wanted to support the promotion of the event internationally, as it had done for other sporting events," he wrote in an opinion piece published in The Sydney Morning Herald.
"We are promoting a unique Sydney event, The Everest, not gambling."
Mr V'landys also said a "vast majority" of the negotiations happened before Jones got involved last week.
"Call me naive but I certainly didn't expect there would be such a reaction to us using the Opera House sails for 10 minutes to promote The Everest event internationally."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison weighed into the stoush saying he had no problem with the building being used to promote the race because such events generated economic benefits.
He told Jones on Monday he didn't understand why people were tying themselves "up in knots" about it.
"It's not like they're painting it on there. I mean, it's sort of lights flashing up there for a brief moment in time and that goes all around the world and they do it for other things," Mr Morrison said.
Former Opera House CEO Michael Lynch called on Ms Berejiklian to pull the plug on allowing the Opera House to be used to promote "a shoddy horse race".
"This corrupts the way the Opera House works .... and the artistic integrity of the building," he told ABC radio.
