Make your life count for something – that was my parents’ view. They taught me the values of Greek culture at its best: filotimo, welcome for the stranger, and a sense of sharing whatever you have with those that don’t..
– Kon Karapanagiotidis –
Asylum Seekers’ Resource Centre

Kon Karapanagiotidis is a very busy man. In the one hour that I spent with the head of the Melbourne Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, his phone rang at least a dozen times.
He found a quiet spot for the interview as he has no office of his own, preferring to mingle with staff, volunteers and clients in the open space of the centre that helps thousands of refugees each year.
Driven and passionate about the plight of asylum seekers and refugees, he began this organisation from scratch in 2001 while teaching a welfare course at TAFE.
“I suggested to the students that we do something practical. A friend had an empty building in Footscray that he said I could use and we set up a food bank for refugees.
“Many refugees were not eligible for Centrelink so this was one thing we could provide for them – food. «We found cheap supermarkets and I went shopping with my mother for bargains at the market.”
People coming for food also had other needs that no one else could meet.
“They would ask me for help with learning English, they needed a lawyer, they needed a doctor for themselves or their children.”
Karapanagiotidis, himself a graduate in law, psychology and social work found himself providing these services and getting assistance from where he could.
Slowly, he was able to secure funding from various philanthropic organisations and through fundraising to set up the centre that now employs 32 paid staff and coordinates 700 volunteers.
The centre provides aid (food, school kits), medicine, employment placement, English language classes, crisis programs, community development and even family outings.
He claims that his Greek background and his experiences as a child of migrant working class parents were what led him into aiding refugees ‘who lived in desperate circumstances’.
His parents, who migrated to Australia in the 1960s, initially settled in Mount Beauty where they were tenant farmers, cultivating tobacco.
“It was my father’s dream to have a farm and work on the land,» he says.
Karapanagiotidis recalls that it was a ‘brutal life’ with 15-hour-days and as tenant farmers they did not make a lot of money.
He experienced a great deal of racism growing up and he says that nothing much has changed in the ensuing years.
“There’s all this propaganda about multiculturalism, but Australia is a racist country. The pressure to assimilate is very strong, to change or shorten your name and I meet people with Greek backgrounds who have done that.
“I think: why change your name? It’s your identity.”
He cites his parents as major influences on him, passing down to him a sense of humanity and purpose in life.
“Make your life count for something – that was my parents’ view. They taught me the values of Greek culture at its best: filotimo, welcome for the stranger, and a sense of sharing whatever you have with those that don’t.”
But he expresses disillusionment that many Greek Australians of his generation do not respect that legacy, believing that they have forgotten their roots or have little understanding of their parents’ experiences.
“I’m always frustrated when they think they’re special because they went to university. They don’t appreciate that it was their parents’ hard work and sacrifice that enabled them to a large extent to get where they are.”
He is also disheartened that Greeks come last in the ethnic groups that volunteer at the centre.
“People of all backgrounds volunteer, but the smallest number are the Greeks. And the Greek church needs to show some leadership as well. Their lack of participation is shameful.”
All this riles Karapanagiotidis, especially given the large numbers of Greeks who live in Melbourne.
“Why are we not visible in this area? To me it’s pretty clear – what the people we help here are going through is exactly what our parents went through – the same struggle to survive in a hostile country.”
He is angry with the Labor government’s politicisation of asylum seekers.
“Labor started off well, shutting Nauru and Manus Island detention centres, but they’ve opened two others and there are currently 4,000 people, including 508 children, in detention – something they said they would never do.
“It costs $973.6 million to keep the Christmas Island detention centre open – an amount that would fund this centre for 540 years. There is only one other country that has offshore detention centres.”
He reminds me that out of 43 million refugees, Australia’s intake is 13,000. “All this hysteria around boat people is ridiculous when you consider that our intake is miniscule.”
What would he like to see happen?
“For us to take more people, for asylum seekers to live in the community while their cases are reviewed.
“And to see more Greeks get involved.”
Neither of them seem a big ask.
The Asylum Seekers’ Resource Centre is holding a Volunteers’ Information night on 3 August at 6.30 at 12 Batman Street, West Melbourne. Phone (03) 93266066 for more information.