Who deserves a state funeral less? Lawsie or Richo?

It’s nice for John Laws that so many people remembered him when he finally shuffled off his golden coil, even if they were lining up to piss on his grave, and it’s nice too that he died so close to Graham Richardson, laying up an easy ask for your columnist. Who deserves a state funeral less? Lawsie or Richo?

Arguably, the grave pissers had good reason for their urinary desecration. Laws was awful in a way that a whole class of people were, and remain, awful. His views on women, gays, and minorities were unremarkable when he started in broadcasting in 1953, but he insisted on delivering them unchanged in every decade since. Seventy years of talkback radio, and not a single new thought.

Because we are, of course, all about balance in this column, and because fairness compels even the faintest hat-tip to the devil’s better days, let us acknowledge that John Laws wasn’t always a gold-leafed turd in the cultural punchbowl. In the 1950s, Laws bootlegged a lot of early rock-n-roll discs from the US into Australia months before their official release. Did I mention he introduced Dame Edna Everage to a wider audience? He had an on-screen role in Skippy (a cultural high-water mark, depending on your elevation), and spent decades waging bitchkrieg on Alan Jones. Most redemptively of all, in December of 2007, during a long lunch at Otto on the harbour in Sydney, he learned that rival broadcasters Derryn Hinch and Bob Rogers were in the house. Laws confronted them, full of $90 squid ink risotto and pinot-fueled rage, yelling that they were “the two most despicable cunts in radio.”

So, he wasn’t all bad.

But he was pretty bad.

The University of Canberra’s Communications lecturer Glen Lewis wrote of Laws:

He sets the agenda by complaining vigorously about something, lays down the line for the day, then accepts calls which mostly reflect his own viewpoint... he mostly gets the restatement of cliched views [from callers]... Technically, he foregrounds minority group negative stereotyping in his show. Informally, he specialises in moral crusades against the unrespectable weak – the unemployed, prisoners, homosexuals, anti-nuclear demonstrators – in the name of the upright citizen and honest taxpayer.

Perhaps the most indefensible aspect of Laws’ long public life was his studied cruelty toward the victims of sexual abuse. Not content with dismissiveness, he developed what can only be described as a performative disdain, a recurring bit. One woman, who recounted being raped throughout her childhood, was interrogated about whether she had been “provocative.” A male survivor, attempting to share his experience of abuse, was waved off as a “wet blanket,” advised with the oily bonhomie of a grinning sadist to “lighten up.” It wasn’t merely bad taste. It was sociopathy as programming.

From our present-day moral mezzanine, John Laws appears as cruel, bigoted, unfeeling, and arrogant. And yet, these were not deviations. They were his credentials. In this, he was no more than the perfect avatar for a culture that rewarded him so handsomely for accurately reflecting some of its worst vices back at itself, but through a lens that distorted them into the selfless virtues of ‘just telling it how it is’ and ‘simply saying what everyone is thinking.’

He was then, in his own words, a despicable cunt.

But was he worse than Richo? It’s a bit like asking whether typhoid is worse than dysentery, but fine, let’s have a go. As the immaculate Kate McClymont began her recent obituary of Graham Frederick Richardson, it’s hard to know where to start. So, naturally, she went with the hookers. These weren’t incidental, mind you; they were Richo’s go-to gratuity. His version of a company-branded pen. Ultimately, it was the kind of casual bribery—two $4000 sex workers at the Hyatt Sanctuary Cove—that nudged him out of Parliament.

While the Commission concluded that Richardson had indeed availed himself of the proffered sex workers, it found itself less certain as to precisely which benefactor had sent them, an ambiguity not entirely surprising, given that over the span of his long career, the catalogue of shady operators eager to dispatch expensive companionship in his direction was significantly longer than the list of those who refrained.

Described by his former factional enemy, the Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, as “a remarkable Australian and a giant of the Labor Party,” Richo was indeed remarkable, if only for his giant appetite for graft and a remarkable ability to survive scandals that would straight up kill a lesser man.

He might charitably be described as a lovable rogue, but he would more accurately be indicted as a fucking criminal who somehow schemed his way into high political office. If his many, many, many crimes were merely sexual indiscretions performed with consenting women paid adequate recompense for what must have been a harrowing civic engagement, then lovable rogue he might be.

But Richo’s co-conspirators were not always known as the Honourable This or Senator That. He was often found in league with Sydney’s more, ahem, colourful identities, a milieu he seems to have navigated with ease and, one suspects, pleasure. If Richo’s legendary powers of persuasion didn’t move you, perhaps a visit from one of the city’s legendary underworld psychopaths would.

He wasn’t the messiah and, let’s be honest, he wasn’t just a very naughty boy either, though one suspects he preferred the latter brand for its marketable rakishness. In truth, he represented a grave threat to the liberal-democratic order, which rests, however tenuously, on the rule of law and the transparent functioning of responsible government. His career, by contrast, was an extended meditation on how best to subvert both.

In his defence, for purely partisan reasons, he dragged environmental issues to the centre of Australian politics in the late 1980s. And yes, he once slapped Mark Latham around on Sky News, which was great telly. Not quite the same as the hospital-grade curb-stomping that rival ALP figure Peter Baldwin got from some of Richo’s, er, more enthusiastic associates. But still. 5 stars, would rewatch.

So, who deserves a state funeral less? I’d vote for Richo, and he wouldn’t need to twist my arm. Laws was contemptible, but he operated mostly within the confines of the law and the theatre of his own egomania. His cash-for-comment scandal aside, he did all of his damage out in the open. He was a sadist, yes, but honestly so.

Richardson, on the other hand, dealt in shadows. His offences were not merely personal but institutional. He didn’t just degrade individuals, he debauched entire systems. A state funeral should honour those who served the common good. Laws never pretended to, and Richardson actively assisted in its corruption.

Of course, a workable compromise would be to fire both of their rancid carcasses into the sun.