John Lehmann: Graham Richardson I knew for 25 years of politics, wine and illness
I first met Richo when I called for his sacking. He saw that off pretty easily, invited me for coffee — and we kicked off 25 years of shared history that spanned politics, wine and his mighty battle with cancer, writes John Lehmann.
I first met Richo when I called for his sacking.
Australia was in uproar. The tickets for the 2000 Sydney Olympics had just been offered for sale to the public through a ballot but now we were learning that thousands of the best tickets to the best events had been reserved for VIP packages.
Graham “Richo” Richardson, the backroom wheeler-and-dealer, maker of prime ministers, adviser to the rich and influential, was a member of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and the man in charge of its ticketing committee.
As a young journalist recently appointed to The Australian as its Olympics correspondent, I’d not yet become fully acquainted with Richo, although I had followed closely his political career as a Hawke and Keating government minister and “fixer” to be feared.
After days of ticketing scandal, my Editor suggested someone like myself should muscle up and call for Richo’s head.
Agreeing that someone at the organising committee should take responsibility, I obliged and awoke the following day to see my “opinion piece” on Page 1.
I also flicked on Sydney’s 2GB radio where Richo was then a morning show host and listened as this legendary headkicker of Labor’s NSW Right returned serve.
“Who is this John Lehmann anyway?’’ he scowled. “You couldn’t pick him in a line-up if you tried. His editor should give him the sack.”
When he got off-air I was waiting in the foyer of the radio station and told him that I thought it was about time we met.
I was expecting a brush off but to my surprise, Richo invited me in and boiled up a cup of coffee.
I was soon learning my first lesson about Richo. His reputation as a deal-maker was often described through the terms of political thuggery but there was also a shrewd set of skills lurking behind his “whatever it takes” creed.
“You don’t need to fight that often,’’ he would tell me.
“I talk to people non-stop, hundreds of calls every week, and you work out what they want. You can’t make deals if you don’t know what they want.”
In the lead up to the Games, our relationship remained that of journalist and news subject. Richo saw off my calls for his sacking easily enough and after the Games, I began work as a journalist at the New York Post in Manhattan.
It wasn’t until six years later, when I became Editor-in-Chief of the Packer family’s Bulletin magazine in Sydney, that our paths crossed again.
Richo had run in to far bigger problems than Olympic ticketing ballots in my absence, being involved in a long-running Australian Securities and Investments Commission investigation into trading through secret Swiss bank accounts in a company called Offset Alpine, partly owned by his friend and convicted insider trader, Rene Rivkin.
(Richardson later agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to end a $2.3 million dispute with the Australian Taxation Office.)
In the run up to the 2007 federal election and Kevin Rudd’s ascension, The Bulletin was looking to expand its coverage of Labor politics, so I reached out to my one-time sparring mate to see if he was keen to re-enter the fray as a political commentator.
I soon saw why he had been regarded as a numbers man par excellence as he shared with our readers each week behind-the-scenes machinations of how the Labor machine was preparing its battle plan to end John Howard’s prime ministership.
His pre-election column predicted Rudd’s Labor would pick up 23 seats. He was bang on.
It was the start of Richo’s revival as a political commentator and election-night specialist.
For me, however, I was forced to shut down The Bulletin in early 2008 under the orders of a new private equity owner.
I headed off to run a wine business for a family friend in Queensland for several years.
As a favour, Richo would come up from time to time to appear at wine dinners as an extremely colourful guest speaker.
Who needed good wine when you had Richo? They would become the most popular dinners we held.
When I returned to the journalistic fray at The Daily Telegraph some years later, I heard the old political warhorse was facing the fight of his life.
He agreed to sit down with me – over one of his favoured Chinese lunches, of course – to conduct an exclusive interview detailing a devastating medical prognosis.
He’d been battling chondrosarcoma, a rare bone cancer, for almost as long as I’d known him. Over the years, he’d had five major tumours removed in three operations.
Only days before my call, he’d received the news he’d always feared, being told he would need to undergo radical surgery known as “pelvic exenteration”.
“They say it’s all got to come out – bowel, bladder, prostrate, rectum – the lot,’’ he said, with his wife Amanda looking on.
“There’s no magic wand you can wave over me – I think the technical term is ‘f..ked’.
“You’re talking 15 hours under the knife and, let’s be honest, I’m no spring chicken.’’
It was February 2015 then and Richo was 65 years old.
His youngest son D’Arcy was seven at the time and Richo told me he would do everything in his power to be there for his 21st birthday.
It proved to be a powerful motivating force: Richo managed to hang on for another 10 years and saw D’Arcy finish high school and get a start in his life.
Richo and I would still catch up for lunch occasionally in these later years. I’d marvel at his ability to keep going through the pain.
“It’s pretty simple mate,’’ he’d say. “I just don’t want to bloody well die.”
John Lehmann is News Australia’s NSW managing director
Join the conversation
Downer: The little parasite in our pockets killing community spirit
Read more
Why I can’t support plans an e-bike licencing scheme
Read more