{"id":269926,"date":"2025-11-08T00:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T00:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/269926\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T00:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T00:39:08","slug":"former-labor-senator-and-party-powerbroker-dies-aged-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/269926\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Labor senator and party powerbroker dies aged 76"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Graham \u201cRicho\u201d Richardson, the longtime former Labor senator, party powerbroker and media commentator, has died at 76.<\/p>\n<p>He died at 3.50am on Saturday, following weeks of influenza and pneumonia, his wife and son told 2GB Breakfast host Ben Fordham, who announced the news.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDarcy and Amanda have asked me to share the news with everyone that sadly Richo has passed away in the early hours of this morning,\u201d Fordham said.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Famed Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson has died.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/626af0b1f53f15a8c48166663f735afb70662f35.jpeg\" height=\"390\" width=\"584\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Famed Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson has died.Credit: Ben Appleton<\/p>\n<p>Richardson served as a NSW senator in federal parliament between 1983 and 1994. He was, at the time, the youngest elected senator, aged 33 when he first arrived at parliament.<\/p>\n<p>He served as a cabinet minister under prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, variously as minister for social security, transport and communications, health and the environment.<\/p>\n<p>Loading<\/p>\n<p>After leaving politics, he became a political commentator. He appeared on Channel 7\u2019s election night coverage for years, and since 2011 hosted Richo, an evening commentary program on Sky News. He also led Richo + Jones, a joint program with former broadcaster Alan Jones.<\/p>\n<p>The outspoken Labor veteran had battled cancer for years, but remained active in the media until as late as September this year.<\/p>\n<p>Fordham recounted: \u201cWhen he had his big health challenge, he said to his wife Amanda, \u2018I\u2019m going to live till I see Darcy finish exams and his HSC\u2019. Darcy did his last HSC exam on Thursday, which was his French exam. And Richo died this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graham \u201cRicho\u201d Richardson, the longtime former Labor senator, party powerbroker and media commentator, has died at 76. He&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-269926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}