Graham Richardson died penniless, and the executors of his estate told his daughter there were no funds to pay the $10,000 legacy left to her in his will. Kate Ausden was also told she might like to contribute to the estate duties instead, after the former Labor senator and lobbyist’s remaining assets were wiped out by debt and expenses.
The estate was left $38,201.49 in deficit after Richardson’s credit card bill, legal and accounting fees and an $18,500 wake at the Golden Century restaurant were paid. The wake alone cost nearly twice what Ausden had been promised, a final bill that underlined how little was left behind by a man who spent years at the centre of politics, power and controversy.
Ausden, Richardson’s daughter from his first marriage to Cheryl Gardner, said she had not seen him since before the pandemic and only learned of his death through the media. She is now a solicitor in employment law. While going through her papers recently, she found a page of feedback Richardson had given her about 1994 for a school speech, a small reminder of a relationship that had long been strained.
Richardson was given a state funeral by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after his death, but Ausden said she would have objected if she had been consulted. “He was a complicated person,” she said. “He had a lot going on with a lot of different people, and I know enough to know that I hardly know anything.” She added: “I wanted his life celebrated to the fullest extent possible, but I know what’s in the public domain.”
For Ausden, the problem was not just the money. Richardson’s public life had already been marked by scandal, including the Marshall Islands affair and the Offset Alpine matter, along with allegations involving bribes, donations, retainers from property developers and Swiss bank accounts. “I’ve lived through these scandals, I know who he was,” she said. She described some of his behaviour as “the gaslighting Olympics.”
The executors’ finding that Richardson died penniless closes one part of the story and sharpens another: a man who remained a force in Australian public life left behind not wealth for his family, but debt, disputed memories and a daughter who learned of his death from the news. The state funeral gave him official honour; the estate records told a far harsher private truth.
