They came to mourn Richo, but one of the ‘mates’ was missing

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They came to mourn and farewell Graham Richardson.

Some, you might venture, came to be sure he was finally gone.

They came from the Labor Party and the Nationals and the Liberals.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Tony Abbott and Blanche D’Alpuget.

Good lord, former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott stood at the pulpit and said it was Richardson’s “rare gift of fair-mindedness that I came to like in him, very much indeed”.

At least one, Barnaby Joyce, late of the Nationals, came from One Nation, to which he had defected only the day before.

He declared, in what sounded distinctly like admiration, that Richardson would be remembered for “ruthlessness – absolute and utter ruthlessness”.

Graham Richardson’s coffin arrives at St James’ Church.

A line-up of old mates were endlessly admiring of Richardson’s ability to while away many, many long hours at lunch, usually at a Chinese restaurant or at the perfectly named Machiavelli, making deals and relating tales of high intrigue over copious amounts of wine.

“When it came to fighting political battles, Graham’s choice of weapon was the chopsticks,” Richardson’s former chief of staff David Tierney said. “He was a master of the dark art of soy sauce diplomacy.”

Richardson himself might have had reason to rejoice that he made it to the age of 76.

He suffered cancer for many years, and in 2016, during an 18-hour operation during which his heart stopped three times, he famously lost his prostate, bladder, bowel, rectum, part of a hip bone and sciatic nerve.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets with D’Arcy Richardson ahead of the funeral service beginning.

Earlier, the fear of early mortality haunted him right through his peak years as a political numbers man, fixer, backroom deal-maker and long-luncher.

Richardson’s deepest anxiety, expressed often to colleagues, was that because his father had died at 49 and his mother at 42, he too was destined to die before he was 50.

Instead, he lived to a quarter of the way into the 21st century, and pursued a career as political commentator on TV, radio and print after he quit 11 years of “whatever it takes” parliamentary politics in 1994.

Only the good die young, he might have quipped to himself.

In fact, he was not at all ready to be finally going, insisting “it’s not my time”, his wife Amanda told mourners.

Of all the extraordinary twists and turns in Graham Richardson’s life, one of the more unexpected, surely, was that he was granted a state funeral by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who delivered the eulogy.

“He was nearly as much a Sydney landmark as the Harbour Bridge,” Albanese said of Richardson. “He loved and lived all of what politics can be.”

Albanese allowed that there was “no escaping the fact that Graham’s life was very colourful”, but he said that his role in saving the Daintree rainforest as environment minister was “an act so comprehensive and lasting that in hindsight, we have almost come to take it for granted.

Anthony Albanese delivers Graham Richardson’s eulogy.

“We have Graham to thank for this, and more broadly, the way in which the protection of the environment has become a fundamental Labor value. They are achievements that will endure as a living, breathing reality for time beyond measure.”

But yes, “it’s no secret that he played his politics hard – very hard,” said the prime minister.

Quite.

Albanese’s own Labor faction, the NSW Hard Left, suffered something close to ruin at the hands of Richardson, one of the hard-charging “Mates” who gave no quarter in their efforts to win power for the NSW Right, particularly during Richardson’s reign as general secretary of the NSW branch of the party from 1976 to 1983.

Former NSW premier Bob Carr arrives at the funeral for Graham Richardson.

The “Mates” were defined in a 1991 book by the author Fia Cumming as Richardson, Paul Keating, Laurie Brereton (a Labor Minister in both the NSW and federal parliaments), Leo McLeay (who became Speaker of the House of Representatives) and Bob Carr.

Of the “Mates”, Carr, formerly NSW premier and later federal foreign affairs minister, Brereton and McLeay were at Richardson’s funeral. One was missing.

Few really expected Keating to turn up.

There was a time when Keating had no more useful mate than Richardson, who is widely credited with ensuring Keating was installed in late 1991 as prime minister, which involved rolling the most successful PM Labor has ever had in Bob Hawke.

Later, when Richardson took the political exit door and joined Kerry Packer’s media empire, the mateship with Keating, who loathed Packer, was over. Richardson had taken “30 pieces of silver”, Keating famously declared.

All this history, plus a hair-raising telling of Richardson’s career of chicanery as told by chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont, could hardly have been far from the minds of many of those attending Tuesday’s funeral at St James Anglican church.

But none of it was about to be spoken out loud, funerals being events where it is deemed offensive, or at least unwise, to speak ill of the dead.

Instead, there were cheering words by Albanese and Abbott and a video appearance by Deputy PM Richard Marles (“Graham, you were magnificent”) and another by former Nationals frontbencher Keith Pitt from his embassy at The Holy See. There were celebratory addresses by family and leaders of Sky TV, the Seven Network and the former president of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates, who considered Richardson the ideal mayor of the Olympic Village in Sydney in 2000.

Graham Richardson as the mayor of the athlete’s village for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

It was left to Richardson’s son, D’Arcy, 18, to deliver an unambiguously moving tribute.

He said his father had told him years ago that he would be expected to speak at his funeral.

“But even though I knew that every day since his marathon operation in 2016 was a gift, nothing could have prepared me to race to St Vincent’s Hospital in the evening after I finished my final HSC exam, an experience that has left an indelible mark on my life,” he said. The son sat holding his dying father’s hand for seven hours as the end came, his mother told mourners.

D’Arcy spoke of “unforgettable” stories he’d heard from his dad, particularly of sitting next to the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, at lunch during Expo 88 in Brisbane.

Amanda and son D’Arcy Richardson at the funeral.

Thatcher asked Richardson what he thought of her speech.

He told her it was “pretty terrible” and guessed she hadn’t written it herself.

Asked his advice for her next speech, Richardson said, “Just get up there and tell them what you believe in. Tell them what makes you get out of bed every morning,” D’Arcy related.

“And I think that advice sums up why dad found so much success in broadcasting after his Senate career. He believed in using direct language that left the mob in no uncertain terms about what he thought, and crucially, never telling his audience what or how to think.”

Mourners did not hear from Richardson’s daughter and son from his first marriage. Neither Kate Ausden, an employment lawyer based in Western Australia, nor barrister Matthew Richardson, SC, were mentioned at all.

And so, as the casket was borne from the church, ended the complicated journey of Graham “Richo” Richardson, almost as Sydney as the Harbour Bridge.