“Without agitators there would be no advance towards civilisation” – Justice Lionel Murphy.
Paul Richards (b. 19 Aug 1946) passed away last week on 8 May 2025. I knew Paul Richards as a genial, easy-going, and friendly person. Our lives crossed paths in different ways. Paul was a lawyer with aboriginal legal aid in the early days of the Smash the Acts campaign. That was a long and difficult struggle and the required activism, accommodation, legal defence, a health service, solidarity, and organisation. A number of people went to jail. The black panthers in Brisbane were heavily involved in that campaign.
Deaths in custody
Paul represented the wife of a Kuku Yalanji man whose demise is yet to be explained by the perpetrator. Both police and coroner were not of much help to the family looking for answers. They never insisted that the perpetrator be asked to give evidence at the coronial inquiry.
It must’ve been very hard working under these circumstances in the early days of the legal service set up by Aboriginal leaders. There was a lot of black politics going on as well by Oodgeroo, Steve Mam, Mick Miller, Dennis ‘Bejam’ Walker, Sam Watson, Pastor Don Brady, Ross Watson, Maureen Watson, Don Davidson, Lionel Fogarty, the Whartons, and many others.
Union
Paul Richards was there at the beginning of the building workers superannuation scheme in the mid-1980s. He was a trustee for many years of what is now known as C-BUSS. This super scheme was outlawed by the Bjelke-Peterson government. Now, the entire union has been outlawed by the Albanese government and placed under administration by a Sydney barrister little-known in worker and union circles. The same could not be said of Paul Richards, who was a very well-known figure often to be seen at militant marches of the CFMEU and its predecessor, the BWIU.
Thespian
Paul didn’t start out as a lawyer, in the 1960s and early 70s he was an actor and led the Young Yeti Theatre.
At the end of 1968, the traditional roll call went out to potentially interested hirers of the Avalon for the following year. A new group, The Young Yeti Theatre, had appeared, led by Paul Richards, who was not a full-time student and so could only book the theatre in the holiday periods. An unusual and remarkable group, Young Yeti had a deliberately inclusive attitude towards those on the margins of Queensland society in the late 1960s: it consciously set out to involve Aboriginal performers and others, including the prominent transsexual Toy de Wilde. – A HISTORY OF THE AVALON THEATRE 1921-2007 by Nigel Pearn and Richard Fotheringham.
Land Rights
During the 1982 land rights demonstrations in Musgrave Park, Ross Watson introduced Paul Richards up to the microphone as the only white person that they would be willing to have address a crowd of mostly blackfellas and their supporters. Paul. said that one of the strengths of the land rights movement was when they were mass arrests, the movement was able to raise large amounts of money to bail people out of jail. Paul Richards, like a number of lawyers that followed him Wayne Goss, Matt Foley, Terry O’Gorman, John Curr, and many others was always at the pointy end of the criminal justice system that has been systematically used against Blackfullas over the past 50 or 60 years in Queensland.
Work
Paul conducted the early stages of my application for unfair dismissal the Howard government sacked me for union activities in the workplace. That case remains to this day she being the leading case on respect in the workplace. I remember a particularly tense encounter that Paul. had with one of the managers at the Australian tax office. Paul accused that manager of vindictiveness. As if to prove him right there manager summarily demoted me from executive level one down to Clark class five a considerable drop in pay. After that interview, the ATO sacked me and Paul and one of his associates were the only lawyers willing to take on my case. See ATO vs Ian Curr.
Kup Murri
For many years I remember Paul being at Aboriginal functions at Jagera Hall and at the men’s shed. We always had plenty to talk about with our aboriginal brothers and sisters. Those struggles continue.
Writer
Paul wrote his own memoir, Adventures with Agitators – Stories of indigenous Australia. One story in the book relates to the Rugby League grand final in the South Burnett region in about 1980. The game was between Kingaroy (Premier Joh’s hometown) and Cherbourg (the small Indigenous town just down the road). Two days before the grand final, the Magistrate and the police conspired to pervert the course of justice in order to lock up the star centre from Cherbourg. Clearly, they did this to try to help the big city team beat the small town team. Humanising the Queensland legal profession; one member at a time by Sheeto Deo.
Author Edwina Shaw, Bjelke-Blues describes: “Paul Richards brilliantly outs Joh’s blatant racism and corruption on the approach to the Rugby Final between Cherbourg and Kingaroy in his story “Even the Sportsmen Had to be put Down“
Vale comrade, we will miss you. My condolences to friends, comrades and family.
Ian Curr
15 May 2025