Labor heavyweights, Anthony Albanse farewell political powerbroker in Sydney service
Master dodger, kingmaker, spiv, front-bar wit, gray respectability, raconteur Graham Richardson shaped the Australian Labor Party in his own image and when he was no longer useful to him, he blithely slept with his enemies the Packers and Murdochs and spent his final years fearlessly coming up with ideas for his new masters.
A former NSW ALP general secretary and NSW senator, as leader of the NSW Right, Richardson was instrumental in appointing Bob Hawke as federal leader and subsequently sacking him in favor of his “pal” Paul Keating.
Richardson once said that loyalty was the only virtue. He set the true value of forgiveness in politics at zero, and his winner-takes-all persona was so successful that he changed Labor’s default position from reform to pragmatism.
Yet he was an extraordinarily talented administrator, an extraordinarily successful political fundraiser, and a surprisingly shrewd and competent minister, until his passion for fraud and business ensnared him.
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