‘So what, no pipis?’ Mourners left hungry at Graham Richardson’s wake

On Tuesday, CBD watched on as deceased Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson became the first Australian to receive a state funeral for services to lunch.

Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the late senator’s various sins – a Machiavellian approach to politics, the seedy behaviour with sex workers, unleashing the cancer that was Eddie Obeid on the Australian Labor Party – were all washed away in a vat of sweet and sour sauce. Those long lunches must’ve ruled.

After hours of mouthwatering tales of succulent Chinese meals, the great and good of Australian political life traipsed off to Crown Sydney, home to a postmodern reboot of Golden Century, the storied Chinatown institution where many a political hit was plotted.

The problem, though, was that there was no food. Or at least, hardly enough to feed the hungry masses. And so, a few hundred of the country’s most powerful people were forced to suffer the indignity of tackling each other for a stray spring roll.

Meanwhile, more anecdotes flowed inside Crown’s phallic tower.

Socialite Skye Leckie recounted a time when, before major surgery, Richo’s wife Amanda asked him for details of the notorious Swiss bank accounts.

He replied there was no Swiss bank account. Spooky.

Tangled Webb

Former police commissioner Karen Webb, who quit the top job in May, could never quite outrun a series of thudding media performances, no matter how many spinners she managed to cycle through (it was six in three years, by the way).

But look, at least Webb was never found beneath the balls of Goulburn’s Big Merino drunk, disorderly and in need of rousing with “powerful stimuli” after a night on the Limoncellos, like her successor Mal Lanyon.

That incident stopped Lanyon getting the police commissioner gig back in 2021, but he’s now firmly ensconced in the big chair after getting nice and chummy with the Minns government in recent years.

As for Webb, we hear she is working on a book, with the help of News.com.au chief reporter Cydonee Mardon. Finally, a chance to set the record straight, no doubt. And hopefully not cite any Taylor Swift lyrics while discussing a gruesome alleged double murder.

Meanwhile, Webb’s predecessor, Big Mick Fuller, was appointed director of Forensic Science Queensland by the Sunshine State’s LNP government. Although he was back in Sydney this week to sit in the front row at Richo’s funeral.

All’s Wells that ends Wells

Wednesday was meant to be a victory lap for Communications Minister Anika Wells, after the Albanese government finally banned under 16s from social media because the News Corp tabloids and a random shock jock told them to.

Instead, Wells’ moment in the sun has been tainted by a good old-fashioned expenses scandal. Though Wells hasn’t technically broken any rules, regular punters are now learning ministers can spend nearly $10,000 worth of taxpayers’ money to bring her husband to three AFL grand finals and two Boxing Day tests.

Wells’ husband Finn McCarthy, the great beneficiary of those rules around political perks and family reunion benefits, is a former staffer to ex-federal treasurer Wayne Swan, now living out a very standard post-political career as a government affairs manager at Suncorp.

All this scrutiny can’t be pleasant. McCarthy has, as of the past two days, set his Instagram to private. Perhaps given the government’s warnings about its corrosive harm, he might be compelled to act in solidarity with his wife’s world-first laws and delete it altogether.

Getting his Tanner on

A cheery CBD hello to Lindsay Tanner, the well-regarded finance minister in the Rudd Labor government, who quit federal parliament in 2010.

Tanner has done a reverse ferret, as we say in the trade. He was registered as a lobbyist in 2016, but it was only in 2024 that he took himself off the lobbyist register, to focus on his many board engagements.

But now he is back on the federal lobbyist register, working as a lobbyist for Gane Energy – a Melbourne clean-energy diesel producer.

Or is he?

Due to the strictures of the lobbyist rules, Tanner has been engaged by Gane, but doesn’t intend to do any lobbying.

“I am assisting a small alternative fuels company,” Tanner told CBD. “I won’t be doing any lobbying but the definition of lobbying is so broad if I happen to ask anyone employed by government a question, such as about funding bodies, that means technically I am engaged in lobbying.”

So what will Tanner be doing?

“Providing strategic advice.”

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