“I know a lot of people have been working towards this agreement. I think the only thing I have to do right now is make sure that it’s passed through the Greek parliament . . . for this program to start having effect as soon as possible.” That was 14 May 2014; the Greek Minister of Tourism, Olga Kefalogianni was talking to Vasso Morali for SBS, during her visit to Australia.

She was gloating over the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between Greece and Australia to create a mutual working holiday visa program that would send 500 people from each country to the other.

Australia was represented by the Abbott Government’s Minister of Immigration, Scott Morrison. The Samaras Government in Greece did not include an immigration portfolio – these were simpler times – but it still remains unclear why this MoU was not signed by a more relevant ministry, Foreign Affairs, for instance.

Maybe it had to do with the strong ties of cooperation that had been established at the time between the Tourism Ministry and the Australian Embassy in Greece, led by Jenny Bloomfield.

Whatever the reason, Ms Kefalogianni could rightly claim a success, given that the signing put an end to 20 years of back and forth. Because, as the older Neos Kosmos readership may recall, this visa program began as an initiative of Nick Bolkus, during his tenure as Minister of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, a position he held in the Paul Keating cabinet from 1993 to 1996.

The first Greek Australian federal minister in Commonwealth history remains one of the most productive and visionary ministers to have ever been in this role. In his days in office, Australia’s migration laws were rewritten, creating an infrastructure that stands to these days (and is slowly being demolished by Peter Dutton). Key to the ministry’s policies was an acknowledgement of the importance of temporary business entry, through a series of initiatives, not least among them the Working Holiday Visa.

The program has allowed thousands of young people from around the world to visit Australia, earn money working in the fields and – even temporarily – renew the country’s rural workforce.

According to veteran Neos Kosmos journalists, Mr Bolkus wished to have this initiative begin from his country of origin, Greece.

But Greece was not ready at the time for such a thing. The country was swept by the triumphant return of Andreas Papandreou in power, after being acquitted in ‘the trial of the century’ and seeing the government of his nemesis, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, collapse.

Mainly, the country was facing the first wave of immigrants coming from Albania and the fear of “strangers coming for the Greek jobs” was so prevalent that the idea to add a few hundred Australian backpackers to the mix did not sound appealing at all.

So yes, Olga Kefalogianni had every reason to feel triumphant for putting an end to two decades of discussions. But she failed to do ‘the only thing’ that remained – pass the agreement through parliament.

With the crisis that killed Greek economy as an excuse, the issue was once again shelved, until last year, when it was unearthed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, in charge of the diaspora, Terence Quick.

During his visit to Australia last May, Mr Quick discussed the issue with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and told Neos Kosmos, “As for the working holiday visa, I have already forwarded it to the Greek parliament. We were waiting for it to be approved by the Parliamentary Budget Office. Since this does not burden the State Budget, the approval document awaits for me, as we speak, at my desk. As soon as I return, I will discuss it with the minister, so that it can be included as an amendment to the next bill we have to vote for.”

It was one of these rare moments in politics, when a minister is actually telling the truth. Indeed, six weeks after Mr Quick’s return to Athens, the MoU was ratified by the Greek parliament, the respective decision printed and published in the Greek Government Gazette (ΦΕΚ B’ 4488/2017), at the end of 2017. Four months later, nothing has happened.

Neos Kosmos has been receiving messages, on an almost daily basis, from people eager to benefit from this deal.

As for the Department of Home Affairs, which now deals with visas and immigration, it has also put things on hold.

“Australia remains committed to progressing discussions with Greece on a reciprocal work and holiday visa arrangement between our countries,” a spokesperson for the department said, when we reached out to the ministry for comment.

“We welcome the recent steps by the Greek Government to progress legislation that will allow for the implementation of a reciprocal arrangement between Australia and Greece. Once a commencement date for the arrangement has been mutually agreed by both partner countries, details of the work and holiday visa program will be published on the Department of Home Affairs’ website. Once implemented, the arrangement will allow young people from Greece, aged between 18 and 30, to apply to stay in Australia for one year and undertake short-term work and study. The same reciprocal conditions will also allow young Australians to work and holiday in Greece.”

In other words, Australia waits to see what Greece will do, in order to do the same. The ball is in Greece’s field. Only nobody seems to know where in the field – or even where the field is.

Trying to find out why things are stalled, we referred to the diplomatic mission of Greece in Australia. All our communications resulted in the confirmation that no official announcement has been made, no directions given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

So we tried to contact the Foreign Ministry – but our email was returned undelivered.

“An error occurred while trying to deliver this message to the recipient’s e-mail address,” the Mailer-Daemon’s message read, the reason being that for the past few days, the Greek Foreign Ministry’s email server has been down.

An official announcement only states that other means of communication should be preferred.

No worries. After all, as we found out in the meantime, the implementation of the visa is a duty of the Greek General Secretariat for Lifelong Learning & Youth (GGDVMNG) of the Ministry of Education Research and Religious Affairs.

One would expect that a visa program that dealt with holidays and work might be part of the porfolio of either the Foreign Ministry, or that of Tourism – even the Labour one, but no, the Education Ministry was deemed more appropriate.

Having had the experience of email failure, we tried the old, trusted telephone communication and called the number stated on the General Secretariat’s website.
The officer at the other end of the line informed us that this was in fact a wrong number and was kind enough to give us the right one.

We were greeted by an administration officer of the General Secretariat who was happy to help, but could not connect us to the General Secretary’s office, because there was something wrong with the call centre.

We finally reached the General Secretary’s office and asked to talk with one of his deputies, who might know more about the visa program. Unfortunately, they had yet to arrive to work. After all, it was only 9.30 am. We were asked to call later on. And this is exactly what we will do.

[To be continued]