‘So what, no pipis?’: Mourners left hungry at Graham Richardson’s wake

December 10, 2025
6:14 pm

But look, at least Webb was never found beneath the balls of Goulburn’s Big Merino drunk, disorderly and in need of rousing with “powerful stimuli” after a night on the Limoncellos, like her successor Mal Lanyon.

That incident stopped Lanyon getting the police commissioner gig back in 2021, but he’s now firmly ensconced in the big chair after getting nice and chummy with the Minns government in recent years.

As for Webb, we hear she is working on a book, with the help of News.com.au chief reporter Cydonee Mardon. Finally, a chance to set the record straight, no doubt. And hopefully not cite any Taylor Swift lyrics while discussing a gruesome alleged double murder.

Meanwhile, Webb’s predecessor, Big Mick Fuller, was appointed director of Forensic Science Queensland by the Sunshine State’s LNP government. Although he was back in Sydney this week to sit in the front row at Richo’s funeral.

All’s Wells that ends Wells

Wednesday was meant to be a victory lap for Communications Minister Anika Wells, after the Albanese government finally banned under 16s from social media because the News Corp tabloids and a random shock jock told them to.

Instead, Wells’ moment in the sun has been tainted by a good old-fashioned expenses scandal. Though Wells hasn’t technically broken any rules, regular punters are now learning ministers can spend nearly $10,000 worth of taxpayers’ money to bring her husband to three AFL grand finals and two Boxing Day tests.

Wells’ husband Finn McCarthy, the great beneficiary of those rules around political perks and family reunion benefits, is a former staffer to ex-federal treasurer Wayne Swan, now living out a very standard post-political career as a government affairs manager at Suncorp.

All this scrutiny can’t be pleasant. McCarthy has, as of the past two days, set his Instagram to private. Perhaps given the government’s warnings about its corrosive harm, he might be compelled to act in solidarity with his wife’s world-first laws and delete it altogether.

Getting his Tanner on

A cheery CBD hello to Lindsay Tanner, the well-regarded finance minister in the Rudd Labor government, who quit federal parliament in 2010.

Tanner has done a reverse ferret, as we say in the trade. He was registered as a lobbyist in 2016, but it was only in 2024 that he took himself off the lobbyist register, to focus on his many board engagements.

But now he is back on the federal lobbyist register, working as a lobbyist for Gane Energy – a Melbourne clean-energy diesel producer.

Or is he?

Due to the strictures of the lobbyist rules, Tanner has been engaged by Gane, but doesn’t intend to do any lobbying.

“I am assisting a small alternative fuels company,” Tanner told CBD. “I won’t be doing any lobbying but the definition of lobbying is so broad if I happen to ask anyone employed by government a question, such as about funding bodies, that means technically I am engaged in lobbying.”

So what will Tanner be doing?

“Providing strategic advice.”