Padraic P. McGuinness
4 November 1994
Sydney Morning Herald

[My italics]

THERE is clearly a lot of discomfort in the media, and especially in the Canberra press gallery, about the cynical confessions of Labor apparatchik Graham Richardson, a former senator and Cabinet minister. He has lifted the curtain off what really goes on in the snake pit of Canberra political-media relationships a little too much to please the gallery, which likes to pretend it is a collection of generally high-principled people at the centre of things.

The statement by Richardson which has received most attention is that politicians lie, and that they are obliged to by the gallery. This is so obviously true that only a gallery member would be shocked by it.

One has only to listen to the nagging of ABC radio and TV journalists in particular as they desperately try to trap politicians into gaffes or admissions which might be used to beat up a story embarrassing to them, or to their associates, to realise that it is the journalists who are usually responsible for the lying. There are only penalties for telling the truth.

One cannot be overcritical about all this, since it has become the style of so much Canberra reporting and it is difficult, even dangerous, to step outside the general flock being shepherded by government media managers. It is a high risk strategy which rarely brings immediate rewards. There are penalties: what Canberra reporter has not found, when holding him or herself aloof from the latest bout of group hysteria, or the latest shark attack, berated by head office - why didn't you have that story?

The response that it wasn't really a story anyway seems a lame defence when everyone else is trumpeting it as a deep crisis for the government and a turning point in Australia's political history.

The Richardson memoirs, or prolonged self-justification are, despite the lying issue, being treated for the most part much more gently than is deserved. There are one or two honourable exceptions to this, chief amongst them Alan Ramsey.

For Richardson displays all the worst traits of ignorant cynicism which mar the treatment of politics today. It is about power, about winning, about hard-fought factional struggles, about the creation and overthrow of leaders, about public clashes and private deals. The stuff of daily press gallery reporting.

Of course, journalists hate being lied to, even while they make it impossible for politicians not to lie, at least to the public.

There are plenty of moral and ethical justifications for the kind of lying which Richardson is being reproved for - no serious ethical system condemns lying when the motives of the questioner are not in themselves pure. That is, if you are asked by a court of law whether you have done something which is not improper in itself, but which you would prefer to keep secret, the ethical thing to do is to give an honest and open answer since this serves the cause of justice. If you are asked by a journalist whether you have done it when it would embarrass both you and your party, and that is the motive of the question, you are perfectly entitled either to refuse to answer it (why do not more politicians learn how to keep their mouths shut?) or to tell a lie which everyone knows to be one.

THAT is the questioner's, not the respondent's, moral transgression. Where there is much to criticise Richardson for, however, is the calm and glib manner of his admission to the moral enormities of party politics. His criticism of Bill Hayden, for example, treats Hayden as being some kind of social cripple because he would not stoop to the depths of the NSW Labor machine.

The Americans have a term for politicians of Richardson's kind - the "good old boys" who believe that every political issue is a matter of dividing the spoils in the smoke-filled backrooms over a whisky or 10. Certainly, Richardson's revelations (although there is really nothing new of interest in anything he writes) are refreshing by contrast with the high-minded but equally cynical preaching that comes from many on the Labor Left, and even more so the unadulterated tripe which comes from academics. But they constitute, nevertheless, a view of politics which leaves out the very purposes of politics, which are the reconciliation of conflict, good government and the making of policy.

Few it seems among Richardson's erstwhile antagonists and mates in the gallery have read a book like Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics, which sets out why democratic politics at its worst is still a desirable system of government. Instead, they take a view of politics which seems very similar to the behaviour that was attributed in my student days by the little boys in the football clubs to Catholic virgins.

These were reputed, once induced to abandon their virginity, to be unable to control themselves and to plunge into a life of reckless promiscuity. There are many in the gallery who seem to have come to it in a state of intellectual virginity, strongly attracted to the highest tenets of political and ideological purity and, once having abandoned their virtue by admitting that politics is not just about principle, they find it impossible to stop short of admiring the worst kinds of political immorality and the flashiest political whores.

There is, too, a lack of perspective. The things which Richardson has done and to which he freely admits are treated as if they are evidence of political skill when they are morally quite repugnant. The affair for which he was most berated, in the last great shark attack, the Marshall Islands affair, was a trivial matter. What has been rather horrifying is watching the very same people who led the Marshall shark attack treat Richardson on retirement as a figure worthy of admiration, and now his confessions are being treated as if they are an important source of information about Australian politics.

Perhaps they are for people who had hitherto barely heard of people such as John Ducker; but for no-one else.

Maybe it is time for someone to write a biography of "Bruvver" Ducker, the immigrant ironworker from Hull, convert from Communism to right-wing Labor politics and Catholicism, who rose to the peaks of Labor machine politics, and who is an infinitely more interesting figure than Richardson, who rose to power on his coat-tails.

Richardson freely admits this, in one of the flashes of honesty which, along with a larrikin charm, allow people to forget his much darker side.

As too often, Richardson is being berated for the trivial things, for which he is not responsible - the lies which are imposed upon politicians by a press and a public that wants to be deceived - and exonerated for the immense damage which he and his ilk do to the body politic.