Graham Richardson was a very successful operator of the Labor Party from the late 1970s who was distinctly short on redeeming virtues.

He may have had a role in its political success between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, but his achievements came at a terrific and lasting cost to the reputation, integrity and probity of the party. It was exemplified by the title of his autobiography, Whatever it takes.

That lasting pall has been obvious in the amazing and appalling decision by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to give the corrupt old villain a state funeral. No one knew better than Albanese, at one stage one of his most bitter enemies, what a bad man, as well as what a ruthless bastard, Richardson was.

Instead we got the syrup of someone who is, these days, almost the number two member of the faction he once existed to fight. Richardson was “often colourful, and sometimes controversial, but what lay at the heart of it was his sense of service, underpinned by his powerful blend of passion and pragmatism,” Albanese said. “He gave so much to our party, to our nation and to the natural environment that future generations will cherish.”

Such tosh says more about Albo than it does about Richo. It is all one with a government which has abandoned recent noble hopes of being a reformer of government and an oasis of integrity and transparency. Labor is now back to its good old days of secrecy, rorts, jobs for the cronies and hands in the till. These are the virtues the old scoundrel stood for. They will lay the party low sooner than many might think.

It was less of a surprise to hear Richard Marles, current head of the faction Richardson once ruled, describe Richardson as a true patriot and hero. Marles comes from the same robber baron tradition if without the personality, brain or cunning or policy achievements.

Albo was the sole representative of the Left in the New South Wales ALP headquarters. Richo played hard and tried to exclude the left altogether. Some of the ill turns done to Albanese might nowadays be forgiven by admitting they were now ancient history. But at the time, the battles mattered, and were won by abuse of power.

Albanese knew chapter and verse of Richo’s shenanigans. Many were deeply on the nose if not quite illegal. Albanese knew well that Richardson left politics to profit from and prostitute his close knowledge of how the party worked for a cabal of Labor enemies, such as Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch. That he was involved in corruption and fraud, mostly for developers and sometimes on his own account, as with a mysterious, if under-investigated fire at a Sydney printing works that paid nearly 10 times its value in an insurance payout.

A man well known to figures in organised crime and frequently mentioned when it came to the brutal bashing of a party activist on the Left by organised crime figures. A man accused of having a Swiss bank account, finally forced to settle with the tax commissioner in a, sadly, undisclosed deal. A man frequently named in public inquiries as having been supplied with prostitutes by various criminal and developer enterprises.

A man who gloried in using the seven deadly sins to his own advantage.

Normally one would not judge even a Richardson for his personal life, if only to avoid throwing first stones. But his adventures with prostitutes had a habit of becoming public, in news that shamed his party and various Labor governments, state and federal, as much as himself.

A man said to have taken an $80,000 bribe to put Eddie Obeid into a winnable seat in the NSW Upper House at the expense of Graham Freudenberg, the Whitlam and Neville Wran speechwriter, to whom Richo had promised the position.

Yet, as he often protested, a man who was never charged with breaching the law or convicted of it. In cases that seemed to go right to the edge but to suffer big problems of proof, not least after a lot of misleading evidence, lies and obfuscation. Richardson, even in boastful mode, hardly ever deliberately told the whole truth, or admitted everything that he knew. He made an art form of misleading his colleagues, friends and enemies, and in, as he himself put it, “playing with their heads”.

A charmer who could often persuade journalists that he was basically a lovable rogue, if an effective politician, and always (if only just) on the right side of the law or the pub test. In fact, he was dodging and diving virtually from the start, and on his own account as much as the party’s. A self-deprecator who could be very amusing. A trencherman with a great appetite for Chinese food. A player who could think laterally, the more effective because he never seemed to have much in the way of abiding ideals. A shrewd judge of character, who took lip reading lessons so that he could overhear conversations some distance away.

His political nous brought him into the senior counsels of the Labor Party as NSW party General Secretary when he was very young. Labor, at both federal and state level was in the doldrums. Richo was one of a group of able and ambitious players, including Paul Keating, Laurie Brereton, Bob Carr, Stephen Loosely and Leo Macleay who were mostly proteges of a previous leader of the NSW Right, John Ducker. The right was very tribal, with many members regarding themselves as being on a crusade to drive communists and left-wingers out of the party.

Richardson learnt early the link between power and money, and became a prodigious fund-raiser for the party, pioneering some of the ‘access for donations’ promises common on both sides of politics today. He always insisted that donations got you an audience, but no promise about the results of your lobbying. Over the years, however, it was often the party organisation, not ministers, who were brokering the deals donors were asking for. Richardson, whether as a minister, a party organiser, or, later a lobbyist, was a “fixer” who could parlay his access and his influence, and sometimes cash, into getting the decision wanted.

Monetising inside knowledge and access

Richardson was far from the first politician to retire (early, and in some scandal) and to set himself up in a job as a lobbyist. Not merely a gun for hire, helping a businessman to put a winning submission to government, smoothing through a licence or a planning matter, or acting as a political intelligence service warning clients of matters coming up for political decision which affected their interests. He was immediately more than that.

He was as much the adviser and the strategist, the person who shaped some proposition as much as crafted the winning arguments. A person with access to all levels of government – prime ministers and ministers. Top bureaucrats. Party officials all over the nation. People who owed him favours. People like himself in the same business, such as Brian Bourke in Western Australia and some of his successors in the NSW state political organisation who had followed Richardson in his career movements – party official to safe seat in parliament, then off into lobbying and profiting from the contacts and expertise acquired while on the public payroll.

It was not just knowing the right people. It was a knowledge of process – how decisions were made in Canberra – and of the pressure points. About trading favours and inside knowledge and putting information acquired in one setting to good use in other settings. Of still playing the politician and old mate who had the personal numbers of prime ministers and premiers and knew their trigger points.

The Liberal and National Parties have developed the same lines into government. Some firms have ex-politicians from both sides. They often remain actively engaged in party politics, including preselections and work as volunteers in election campaigns. Often ministers would not know whether they are being formally lobbied on behalf of a client or whether the old mate is over for a yarn and a plot about party business. The answer will usually be both. It is often in both side’s interest if there is some ambiguity about the meeting and parties can later deny that favours were being asked. This sort of ambiguity has long been a speciality on both sides of politics in NSW, and hardly anyone could better exemplify it than Richo.

I do not doubt that Richo had sometimes good advice to offer Labor. He was a shrewd man with an eye for trouble. But it is simply not true that he dedicated his life to public service and the interests of his party. Richo served himself first, and often in ways that embarrassed and compromised the party and took it in wrong directions.

His right to credit for a significant achievement – Labor’s embrace of the conservation movement and its role in winning Labor the 1990 election – is also in dispute, not least because Richo himself drafted the legend about himself.

Robert Hogg, then federal party secretary, insists that the election was not won by Richo’s brilliance but was instead threatened by his love-in with Bob Brown and the Greens. The Kakadu and Daintree world heritage listings were great achievements, but involving Brown was a major mistake, according to Hogg. Many stuck-on Labor voters were by then pissed off with Labor and felt encouraged to shift their votes with no certainty they would come back in preferences. Hogg told Hawke, who “snarled” that he supported Richo’s strategy.

Hogg called a “seminar” of Labor MPs and advisers. “As I walked down the aisle to speak, Graham appeared beside me: “Mate, mate, we are fucked. We can’t win this one.”

“We’ll see, said I, and left it there.”

The research was showing a big leakage of traditional supporters: “This cohort had always followed the Labor ticket. Problem is it wasn’t our ticket they were going to take.”

“… I went to Hawke and said we need to forget the primary vote and acknowledge that the loyal Labor voter was pissed off with us and we had to run a second preference strategy. Risky, yes. But Hawke was facing defeat and his gambling instincts kicked in. He said, go ahead."

Labor’s appeal to traditional supporters said, in effect: “However you vote, make sure you put the Liberals last.”

“… [Arch] Bevis asked the question: What happens if we don’t run a second preference campaign? I replied, ‘Nothing much, Arch, you’ll just lose your seats’. The debate ended.

The Democrats and Greens had open tickets.

“On polling day, we got around 80 per cent of Green and Democrat preferences. The Dems and Greens combined had around 23 per cent of the primary vote. We were below 40 – around 37 or 38. The lowest for that period of a Labor government.

“Graham didn’t win that election. He almost cost us a loss”.

Labor is always vulnerable to accusations of governing for insiders and mates.

The problems are much increased in the modern day when more politicians have come from their party’s “professional” ranks – as suits working as minders or advisers, in the party organisation, in major lobbies and pressure groups and think tanks closely associated with the party, and in employer and union groups.

Many such people have never worked out of the political circle. They have spent their entire working lives preparing for a political career followed by a lobbying one. Albanese has himself always worked exclusively within the party but once pretended to be a grass roots reformer. Nowadays he has no voice to speak of Labor ideals, no call to action, and no road map for the future.

He has right now a record majority and the advantage of an opposition seemingly determined to commit suicide. His short term position is probably unassailable.

The biggest risk to a continuing Labor government comes from itself, and it will not be from overreach, excessive ambition or being caught with his pants down. It will be from inertia, complacency, corruption or incompetence. And by public impressions that the government is not listening to ordinary voters, but is paying attention to insiders, mates, and high-paid lobbyists.

These are vices of the sort which always flourish when the party has been infiltrated by crooks, urgers and chancers. And by people like Richo manipulating the idealism of people who actually want to serve the people, rather than their own pockets.

An updated version, originally published in The Canberra Times, 15 November, 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.