Last mouth talking

Three entitled men had an outsized influence over Australia across the 1980s and 90s. Two, Alan Jones and John Laws, were Sydney radio hosts to whom many politicians prostrated themselves. The third, Graham Richardson, was a member of the Australian Senate and behind-the-scenes fix-it man for Bob Hawke's Labor government. Their lives intertwined at the nexus of power, politics and privilege on the air waves, at high-end restaurants when they wished to be seen and, when not, deep within political and business backrooms. All claimed to be on the side of the less powerful, the meek and the marginalised.

- Bernard Lagan

Each profited enormously.

In early November, both Richardson, 76, and Laws, 90, died. Jones is now a diminished figure who, in August 2026, will face a Sydney court to answer 27 sexual offence charges that include indecent touching of younger men. He denies wrongdoing.

With their demise ends a Sydney era when Zegna-suited, tassle-shoed politicians mixed profit, pleasure and politics alongside shock jocks who dripped wealth and spouted compassion.

"Richo" Richardson was one of the former. While the dead Labor grandee's family mulled the New South Wales (Labor) government's offer of a state funeral in the days after his death, The Sydney Morning Herald splashed across two pages one of the most excoriating accounts of a political career it has ever published.