Kate McClymont AM – One of Australia’s most fearless investigative journalists, Kate is renowned for exposing corruption, political scandals, and organized crime. A veteran of The Sydney Morning Herald, she has won multiple Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, for her relentless pursuit of accountability.
Anti-corruption body wastes time with a triviality by Geoffrey Watson Barrister
Sydney's top crime writer, Kate McClymont, reveals the highlights of her career
Kate McClymont reveals some of the more humorous highlights of a career spent chasing the nation's leading "colourful identities''. Sex was the theme especially linked to Richo - from Richo to Rivkin, from Obeid to McDonald, from Macquire to Berejiklian, from Thick Medic to Petroulias … to Adam Cranston and sea of money launderers …
Teflon Richardson has been involved in eight major scandals in his career from Balmain Welding to Swiss bank accounts…
Many alleged traffickers claimed they worked at Casey's Balmain Welding when they were actually in the Philippines arranging drug imports.
For Richardson, once nicknamed the Senator for Kneecaps, such deals and persuasion are an integral part of the modus operandi. Threats can be the flipside, particularly threats of factional retribution during his many years as the most powerful warlord of the NSW Labor Right.
"Richardson was often a thug when he didn't need to be," complains one former minister. "I had a couple of instances where if he had argued the case, I could have changed my position, because his case was reasonable. But he couldn't help himself; he would just bring out the axe."
When he wants to, however, he can turn on the charm like few others. He is genuinely good company, self-deprecating and wildly entertaining. Friends including the Sydney Roosters chairman Nick Politis and the Olympics chief John Coates remain loyal. A former political foe confesses: "After loathing him, I've come to like him a lot. He is a very good bloke, funny and highly intelligent."
Even his enemies concede Richardson undoubtedly achieved good things during the peak of his power as a minister in the Hawke government. As the environment minister he helped save the Daintree rainforest, braving outraged timber workers at ugly demonstrations, and forging an alliance with the green movement. As social security minister he fought the corner of pensioner groups whose incomes were under threat when assets tests were tightened.
"He loved power, loved being at the centre of it, and loved exercising it to win," one colleague recalls.
In his autobiography – the aptly-titled Whatever It Takes – Richardson describes the rush the first time he was Bob Hawke's numbers man in the caucus. "[I] felt a real charge, a surge of adrenaline; this was better than sex and almost as exciting as a good feed."
Food was always important to Richardson, a legendary luncher who shows no sign of slowing despite diabetes and a serious brush with cancer last year, which has left him facing six-monthly health checks .
Even in the 1980s, a former staffer recalls, the adviser accompanying the minister on electoral visits around the country would often be carrying a small bag stuffed full of Richardson's anti-cholesterol medication. "Sometimes he would say that he never expected to live long because his parents had died young, so he would live life to the full and enjoy it."
Another insider believes that, after Richardson left politics, this fatalistic attitude drove both his cavalier attitude to his health and his hunger for material wealth. "He has always loved bonking pretty women and making money, and he has done a hell of a lot of both," remarks another former colleague. "Once there was a genuine Labor heart in there ... But the Richardson of now? It's just about access and the perception that he's got access, and continuing to collect his retainers and success fees."
The level at which he collects those fees appears to be on the wane. He told Alan Jones this week he had knocked back offers to lobby for both sides in the Hunter Valley coal versus agriculture debate because "I've got a full book at the moment".
The High Court threw out the accused war criminal’s appeal last week, bringing to an end a seven-year legal saga and forcing his original backer to stump up millions.
Twice-jailed serial fraudster, former assistant tax commissioner Nick Petroulias, and his long-term associate, Hussein Faraj, a bankrupt chicken kebab shop owner, are being investigated over fraud allegations relating to their Australia-based cryptocurrency company.
The NSW Crime Command’s Cybercrime Squad told this masthead they were “aware” of the company NuGenesis, which was also co-founded by a businessman previously convicted of bribing foreign officials.
From latex puppets of Bob Hawke and Robert Holmes ร Court to wooden tribal masks and fetish figures from West Africa, a Melbourne auction on Monday will disperse two collections of remarkably diverse cultural artefacts.
The sale is Gibson’s live and online auction, Interiors | Art & Origins, presenting almost 450 lots drawn from the Bryan Collie Collection and the Hugh Jenkinson Collection. Bryan Collie is a former art gallery owner from Melbourne. Hugh Jenkinson is a Melbourne engineer whose work, mainly with BP Australia, took him to remote tribal locations around the world.
