Graham Richardson fires up at Bob Hawke barb

An angry Graham Richardson has rejected “utterly and completely’’ Bob Hawke’s claims about the portfolio fiasco of 1990.

Then prime minister Bob Hawke and then environment minister Graham Richardson on an early-morning stroll along a creek bank near Renmark, SA. Picture: Alan Porritt

An angry Graham Richardson has rejected “utterly and completely’’ Bob Hawke’s claim he was barred from holding the transport and communications portfolio because of something transport magnate Peter Abeles told the former prime minister in confidence.

Mr Richardson, a longtime Labor powerbroker and key member of the Hawke ministry, said he would detail events of 25 years ago — including Mr Hawke’s fin­ancial arrangements with Abeles — in a book published later this year.

And he suggested Mr Hawke might have spoken out of malice or amnesia. “I intend to detail the exact financial arrangements that ever occurred between me and Peter Abeles,” he told Sky News.

“I’ll be making some statements about the financial ­arrangements between Bob Hawke and Peter Abeles at the time. Suffice to say, I reject utterly … everything (Mr Hawke) has had to say this ­morning.”

The quarter-decade-old feud erupted afresh yesterday after the media published details from a briefing session ­arranged by the National ­Archives to mark the embargoed release of the 1990-91 cabinet ­papers. When the archives released the documents to journalists in Sydney early last month, Mr Hawke was there to pass on his recollections about the times.

Amid discussion about the leadership feud with Paul Keating and the fears cabinet held for the crews of warships it sent to the first Gulf War, Mr Hawke let drop an offhand comment that he could not appoint party powerbroker Mr Richardson to the transport portfolio because of something he’d been told by his good friend, Sir Peter. Mr Hawke said Abeles had told him “something concerning Graham which in my judgment precluded him from properly being in that position’’.

He said he could not comment further because he had great affection for Mr Richardson, who was unwell and “not in great shape”.

He told The Australian later he had been almost certain he would face a leadership challenge after he refused to give Mr Richardson the transport and communications portfolio because he “had had his heart set on’’ the job.

In her book Hawke: The Prime Minister, Blanche d’Alpuget, now Mr Hawke’s wife, said for months Mr Richardson had been telling colleagues and journalists that after the 1990 election, he would be minister for transport and communications, but Richardson was told the only job left for him was social security.

Despite years of speculation by journalists, it was not the communications side of the portfolio that influenced Mr Hawke’s attitude to Mr Richardson, but the transport wing. Abeles had told Mr Hawke that Mr Richardson, already boasting he would be the minister if the government were returned, had asked for a meeting in Abeles’s Sydney office. He arrived for the appointment dressed in a manner TNT staff found astonishing for a cabinet minister. He was wearing a suit and tie, and a shirt of royal blue satin.

His reason for meeting Abeles turned out to be, in the latter’s view, as inappropriate as his shirt. Abeles rebuffed him.

Transport was a tough and highly competitive industry. Abeles told Mr Hawke other transport companies in Australia would be willing to oblige a minister in ­virtually any desire, d’Alpuget said. Mr Hawke, for his own sake, should have confronted Mr Richardson about what Abeles had said, but he kept silent.