Greek Community of Melbourne (GCM) President Bill Papastergiadis said that “quite often careers appear to take precedence over all other different parts of a person’s life. But it’s those other parts that aren’t so apparent that really shape that person’s career”.
It was this opening statement that set the tone for the candid Q&A coordinated by presenter George Donikian and posed by members of the Greek community of Melbourne to Senator Arthur Sinodinos at the sold-out fundraising at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club on Monday ahead of his imminent departure to Washington in the new year where he is set to take on the role of Australian Ambassador to the US.
In a roomful of proud Greeks, who gathered for the GCM’s inaugural Hellenic dialogue evening, Mr Sinodinos spoke of his Greek ‘identity’ that has been quite incidental to his political life. Quite simply, he is Greek without touting it, and just because his DNA is on millions of dollars of federal government funding to the Greek community does not mean that he does not know where his loyalties lie.
“The attitude that I always took, and this predated going into politics, is that I never thought I should hold two passports,” Mr Sinodinos said in response to a question that asked him to clarify viewpoints expressed in a Neos Kosmos interview with Fotis Kapetopoulos in regards to dual voting rights where he said he “would never vote in another nation’s elections”.
“One passport at a time is enough. I didn’t like this idea of having multiple passports or whatever. I don’t know if it was neatness, but it never struck me as the right thing to do. And it always struck me that one could have loyalties that are placed with your forebears but there has got to be loyalty that comes first – and the loyalty is either the adopted country or the country where you were born.”
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Mr Sinodinos places Australia first and foremost. But as an Australian, he also believes in multicultural Australia, and has worked towards ensuring it is embraced by government.
“Does it matter at the end of the day if they (citizens) want to celebrate their heritage? Does it matter if on a national day they want to put on their pom poms and foustanellas and get on with it?” he asked, grateful that he learnt Greek before he could speak English – adding that we can “live and let live” as long as we obey the law.
“As long as we believe in the (country’s) basic institutions, it works.”
As a young boy he was conscious of being different, of eating feta cheese in Vienna-styled loafs instead of slices. It was a time when post-war waves of migrants entered the country, followed by waves of Asians, and later Africans and so forth. “What struck me through all these generations of watching these people come is that ultimately society takes you in and moulds you, and it gives you opportunities, and you see people responding to that,” he said, adding that “a strong society takes people in. As long as you subscribe to the basic values, you just get on with it.”
The Greek Community
He reminisced as to how far the Greek community of Melbourne has come, from his first impression of a “leftish” PASOK-loving community to one with new, younger leadership that is incorporated into the broader Australian community. “As the leadership changed, it made it easier for me as a person of Greek Australian background to argue the case as to why in government we should be helping communities like this in what they are doing,” he said, adding that funding needs to be justified.
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Cypriot Community President Stelios Angelodimou hopes that Mr Sinodinos will show the same support for the Cypriot community's building project in Brunswick as he had for the Greek Centre.
A project like the Greek Centre on Lonsdale Street that is a “cultural icon for the people of Melbourne, and a national icon as well” is one that “excites the imaginations of politicians”.
The Lonsdale Street Greek Festival is one that shows the face of the community as a force to be reckoned with. “Every year now, any politician who doesn’t put it on the calendar to attend the opening of the Antipodes festival has got rocks in his head. The festival of Sydney is all very well, but this is the centre of it all,” Mr Sinodinos said. “And when a politician of any stripe is on the stand watching all those people on Lonsdale Street, it makes a lasting impression.”