Richo’s redemption tour
How a lifetime of Sussex Street sleaze ended with wild applause. And more Rampart developments.
I was extremely amused to land back in Australia on Monday morning to the onslaught of bipolar obituaries to Labor 'powerbroker' Graham Richardson.
It was apocryphally Bette Davis who, learning of her archrival's demise, said succinctly, "We should only speak good of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good." The Australian Financial Review went significantly further with its editorial, which was sent to me by at least half a dozen people who I wouldn't have pegged as religious readers of the AFR's editorial page. Richo's long-time bête noir Kate McClymont was also unmissable.
All of this, for me, evoked the quite shocking death notices in 2006 for prominent gay criminal lawyer John Marsden, a similarly complex and similarly venal Sydney character. His obits were shocking for the laundry list of his appalling conduct but also for their incontrovertible undertones of homophobia. Nuance is even closer to extinction in public debate today than it was then, but you should not even discriminate against a scumbag on the basis of his sexuality.
Richo was a throwback to the kind of Australia the Sky News brigade clings to a nostalgia for but which the rest of us are delighted to have outgrown; the variety of backwater not powered by mobile capital, sophisticated services and a highly educated workforce, but by parish-pump spivs in trite restaurants dividing its spoils over fifteen bottles of wine and a round of knee-tremblers at closing time.