Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s offer of a state funeral for the late Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson is an error of judgment that rewards chicanery, corruption and thuggery and devalues honouring people of national significance.

Late Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson.Credit: Sasha Woolley

Richardson, a former NSW ALP general secretary and NSW senator, and leader of the NSW Right and replete numbers man, was instrumental in Neville Wran’s second term and installed Bob Hawke as federal leader, and then dumped him in favour of his “mate” Paul Keating. He was a prodigiously able administrator, a spectacularly successful political fundraiser and a surprisingly wily and competent minister, but his penchant for wheeling and dealing eventually revealed him as a spiv, bagman and artful dodger clearly unworthy of high office, let alone a high funeral.

Kate McClymont, the........

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