RICHO COUNSELS THE WARRIORS

Are you a social justice warrior who – like most of your kind – simply cannot contain your temper? Does every perceived injustice provoke instant fury? Is rage your default emotion?

Graham Richardson and Paul Keating

Are you a social justice warrior who – like most of your kind – simply cannot contain your temper? Does every perceived injustice provoke instant fury? Is rage your default emotion?

If so, former Labor senator Graham Richardson has some kindly advice:

My mentor was John Ducker — and if anyone can properly research him and produce a study of how an ­unimposing Yorkshire ironworker could accumulate such enormous power, they will be doing us all a very big favour.

Among the many valuable lessons he taught me, there is one that really stands out. In those days of the late 70s, Labor required mayors and aldermen to use only workers who were members of the Municipal Employees Union. When Botany Council sacked its garbos, I called the mayor and his fellow aldermen in for a chat with Ducker and myself. After the mayor, who painted bus shelters for a living, informed me that he regarded himself as the chairman of the board of a big conglomerate, I lost it. I gave this bloke a two-minute character reference and I felt good about it.

When the council members had left, Ducker turned on me. He berated me for losing my temper. His wisdom shone through. He told me that temper was a real weapon. If you only lost your temper on very rare occasions, people would know you were serious and would be wary. If you lost your temper as I had just done, even­tually no one took you seriously.

And thus we have Clementine Ford.