From a legal perspective, it is much safer to defame the dead than the living because luckily they cannot sue from the grave. On the other hand, the Latin phrase nil iisi bonum counsels us not to speak ill of the dead. My rule is to wait a short time for the mourning and grief, and then pour shit on those who I was too scared to slander when they were alive. Like John Laws and Graham Richardson.
But this column is actually only a sideways swipe at those two, with the main culprits being the very living and breathing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and our learned Premier Chris Minns. They gifted these grifters state funerals. What an abomination.
A state funeral means that the government pays for the whole shebang. Plus it says ‘we owe you the respect and honour because you were a really exceptionally great person and the community wants to say thanks’. Trying to find out the actual cost of this has occupied many of my sleepless hours, but it is likely to be in the millions. Such funerals were previously reserved for the likes of Bob Hawke or the Unknown Soldier, but now seem to be thrown around like confetti to sports people, comedians, and entrepreneurs. But the practice has now reached a new low when the likes of these two get the gong.
John Laws was a shock-jock commercial radio broadcaster known for his divisive language on everyone from gays to Aboriginal people to single mothers. The cash for comments furore was a watershed expose of the industrial-scale corruption of touting products and services whilst receiving undisclosed secret commissions. It was illegal, dishonest, and Laws’s raison d’etre.
His disregard for the rule of law was legendary – in 1998 he referred to an accused by name in the middle of the trial, calling him ‘scum’, leading to the jury being discharged with all sorts of pain for the victims and the defendant. He then went on in further contempt to interview a juror, resulting in being sentenced to a jail term of 15 months, which was suspended.
Laws once typically told a fellow with mental health issues – ‘Graham, for goodness sake say something constructive like you’re gunna kill yourself’. When a woman disclosed familial sexual abuse as a six-year-old he said ‘My god they were having a good time with you’, and asked if she’d been ‘provocative’.
His poetry, alone, is sufficient to disqualify him from any accolades in any part of his life or death. Bob Ellis generously called him the worst poet in the entire universe. Perhaps it is jealousy on my part, because five ‘poetry’ books sold in excess of 25,000 copies (mine sold three copies, thanks mum), making him the bestselling Aussie poet ever. Here’s a taste:
I love school girls
Not for the reason that you might think
Well maybe just a little
But I think we all do
As for Graham Richardson I worked with him on a by-election once, way back, and he was a disgusting pig to everyone around him the entire time. When he wasn’t slurping, burping, and farting like a trooper he was demanding to know where the closest whorehouse was so that he could ‘relieve himself’. I heard he walked into a bar and approached a group of women and said ‘does anyone want to f—k a fat ugly man who has lots of power?’ Staggeringly, one of them took the bait.
But that was just the surface. There have been whole books written about his involvement with Rene Rivkin, Alpine Press, Ron Medich, Tom Domican, Eddie Obeid, Gregory Symons, and Dr Geoffery Edelsten. He actually puts John Laws to shame, as Richo’s bribes were well, well hidden, for cash and for sex and favours. When he offered to help Leanne Edelsten get her husband off a murder charge for a ‘root’, she said ‘I love my husband. But not that much’, which has to be one of the best put-downs in history. He had dodgy extensions on his house built for free, a liberal clutch of Swiss bank accounts and had a political opponent from the left beaten to within an inch of his life.
So why on earth would convicted criminals and scoundrels ever get the honour of a state funeral? Both were worth squillions by the time of their deaths, so it was not to avoid a pauper’s service that’s for sure. I watched the services and there was not a single reference to Richo’s criminality and misogyny. Not a mention of Law’s victims or his bigotry or (thankfully) his dirge. They both put filthy lucre above all else.
Well, rest in peace fellas, and in future, let’s keep state funerals for those who at least have morals befitting. I know they’ll offer one to me, but I’m refusing. If you lie down with dogs…
♦ David Heilpern is a former NSW magistrate and is now Dean of Law at Southern Cross University.
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