Andrew Triantafyllos, a luxury car swindler, was the intended target of an arson attack on his multimillion-dollar Essendon mansion.
According to The Age, two cars, an SUV and a ute, were set on fire and drove through the gate of the double-story house on McCracken Street at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, in what police characterised as a planned attack; Essendon locals have said this was not the first time a car had been set alight at the McCracken Street house.
Triantafyllos, who also uses the names Andy and Jason, switching his surname to Trianafyllou or Triantos, declined to comment about the arson attack when contacted by this masthead.
“It is not my home that has been attacked; please leave me alone,” Triantafyllos said.
Rental records show that the 47-year-old and his partner have been renting the $2.7 million house since August of last year.
Back in 2018, Triantafyllos was declared bankrupt after persistently refusing to pay dozens of creditors, including the Australian Taxation Office, by liquidating debt-laden corporations, transferring assets, and starting new ones. In September of the same year, Consumer Affairs Victoria issued a warning about Melbourne Luxury Car Hire, another company linked to Triantafyllos.
Triantafyllos’ company, Supercar Garage, which was registered by a company linked to Triantafyllos’ mother, Chrysoula Coutlakis, collapsed in 2019 owing almost $283,000 to more than a dozen customers, The Age reported.
“You should be very cautious before dealing with Melbourne Luxury Car Hire,” Consumer Affairs’ then director, Simon Cohen, said at the time.
Triantafyllos has now been linked to a new scam involving the purchase of luxury vehicles – through his company “Cast Holdings Pty Ltd” – that are often under finance to non-bank lenders.
Stefanos Tsitsipas overpowered Australia’s Alex de Minaur in straight sets, 6-1, 6-2 on Tuesday at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome to advance to the quarterfinal.
According to ATP Tour, the Greek star sped through the first set in just 23-minutes, showcasing his breadth of experience on the clay surface while mixing patience with power at all the right moments.
A $300 energy bill credit for every household, a 10 per cent increase to Commonwealth rent assistance and capped PBS medicine prices headline Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmer’s third budget.
The federal government’s 2024-25 budget seeks to tame inflation, help ease living costs and bolster Labor’s pre-election economic credentials.
However, while everyone’s a winner, there are some losers. The government’s projected $9.3 billion surplus will be funded by slugging the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) with $14.4 billion in savings measures and crucially, decisions not to increase spending or any immediate solutions to address the housing crisis will see many renters and aspiring homeowners continue to suffer.
Here’s a breakdown of the 2024 Federal Budget winners and losers.
WINNERS
Aged Care
Photo: Matthias Zomer: Pexels.com
Another half a billion dollars will be spent next financial year to release 24,100 more home care packages.
$610 million will be given to the states to assist long stay older patients to be discharged from hospital sooner. Those initiatives will be developed by states and territories.
Another $190 million will be provided on top of that to extend and redesign the Transition Care Programme to provide short-term care of up to 12 weeks for older people after a hospital stay.
Electricity Bills
Every Australian household will get a tidy $300 rebate on their power bills, and eligible small businesses will receive a $325 rebate. From July, all households will have a $300 credit automatically applied to their electricity bills.
Around 1 million businesses will receive a $325 deduction off their bills over next financial year, to be applied in quarterly instalments.
Healthcare
The federal government says it is investing $8.5 billion in new money into health this budget.
The government will fund an additional 29 urgent care clinics, adding to the 58 already opened, which offer walk-in care seven days a week completely covered by Medicare.
For the second year in a row, the government has also increased the Medicare levy low-income thresholds for singles, families, seniors and pensioners to account for inflation.
The cost of medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) will be frozen for a year, for Medicare cardholders with a prescription. For pensioners and concession cardholders, the co-payment cost of PBS medicines will be frozen for five years. The government will spend $469.1 million on these subsidies.
Additionally, it will spend $3.4 billion listing new medicines on the PBS, including medications for cardiac disease, and a breast cancer medication that will see per treatment cost cut from about $100,000 to $31.60.
The government will also spend $1.4 billion over the next 13 years on the Medical Research Future Fund, including more than $400 million for low survival cancers and addressing health inequities.
Taxpayers
From July 1 every taxpayer will receive a tax cut following changes announced by the federal government earlier this year. It means workers in every tax bracket will pay less income tax.
Anyone earning less than $146,000 taxable income will receive a bigger cut than previously legislated, while anyone earning over that will receive a smaller cut.
The reforms reduce the 19 per cent tax rate to 16 per cent, reduce the 32.5 per cent tax rate to 30 per cent, raise the threshold at which the 37 per cent tax rate applies from $120,000 to $135,000 and raise the threshold at which the highest rate of 45 per cent applies from $180,000 to $190,000.
Women
The government will spend $1.1 billion over four years to pay superannuation on government-funded paid parental leave from July 2025, to address the disparity in retirement incomes between men and women which is now at 25%.
There’s $56 million for a raft of women’s health initiatives, including $7 million over four years to support women and families who have suffered miscarriage, and training for GPs to better treat menopause.
Women will also benefit from higher rebates for longer consultations for patients with complex gynaecological conditions such as endometriosis, which the government will spend $49.1 million subsidising.
Renters on average incomes and aspiring homeowners
The government has acknowledged the country is in the grips of a housing crisis, with average rents consistently rising, property ownership increasingly out of reach for workers and housing construction falling well short of national and state targets.
However there is little in this budget that will bring immediate relief, or even cause for short to medium term optimism, for middle and high income renters.
For those renters eager to escape the constant fear of rent rises and buy their first home, there are no structural changes such as to negative gearing rules that would shake up the ownership dynamic of the housing market.
NDIS recipients and providers
The government’s headline surplus has been achieved in part through a significant saving on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, with spending on the program predicted to be $14 billion less over four years than projected in the mid year economic and fiscal outlook.
Would-be migrants
The government will set the cap for next financial year’s permanent migration program at 185,000 places, with 132,200 of those places being allocated to skill stream, limiting more permanent places to people who fit Australia’s longer-term skills needs.
Net overseas migration is forecast to halve to 260,000 in 2024-2025.
A $25 ballot for working and holiday visas will also be introduced for people coming from China, Vietnam and India from next financial year.
International students
The number of places for international students will now be capped, under legislation due to be introduced by the federal government.
The Archiveexplores how Greek migrants faced the challenges of building a new home in Australia, and documents how Sydney’s Greeks contributed to the city’s social and cultural remaking and forged their own unique identities through oral histories and photographs.
Created in partnership with the University of New South Wales, the State Library of NSW, the Greek Orthodox Community of NSW and the Australian Research Council, the Archive is a rich collection of publicly accessible primary resources that document this extraordinary time in the history of the Greek community in Sydney.
The State Library of New South Wales is one of Australia’s oldest and most important public institutions. Actively collecting since 1826, the Library preserves and presents the social, cultural and scientific history of NSW and Australia for the benefit of all. Its rich collections, both physical and digital, alongside partnerships with the public library network across NSW and other vibrant collaborations enable Australians to examine their past and imagine their future.
The Library’s vast collections reflects the variety of formats which people have used to record experiences. They comprise books, magazines, and newspapers, manuscripts, photographs, artworks, maps, objects, ephemera, oral histories and increasingly digital material. In recent years oral histories have become an indispensable format for documenting people’s stories because of their immediacy and directness. They are also critical for documenting communities who have little access to traditional documentary formats.
‘The Trip’ found in ‘Stories from the Oral History Collection’ on the website. Photo: State Library of NSW.
The Library’s collection has been – and continues to be – developed through purchases, legal deposit and donation, bequests and transfers from other organisations.
Importantly, the Greek-Australian Archive project has added significant new oral histories and images to the Library’s collections that shine a light on Sydney’s rich multicultural history.
The Cretan Federation of Australia and New Zealand has released the official national program of events for the Battle of Crete that will be held in May and June 2024 around Australia. Events across Australia will commemorate the 83rd Anniversary of the Battle of Crete and the Greek Campaign.
The events will be attended by a delegation from the Hellenic Ministry of Defence including Vice Admiral Christos Sasiakos, Deputy Chief of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff; Captain Pavlos Angelopoulos, Staff Officer of the Bilateral Relations Directorate of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff; Lieutenant Commander Stylianos Mitsiotis, Staff Officer of Public Relations Directorate of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff; and Colonel Ioannis Fasianos, Military Attache of the Hellenic National Defence Force based in Canberra.
The delegation will be travelling to Perth, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. Below is the national schedule of events:
The Consul of Greece in Perth, Georgia Karasiotou was honoured for her services in a farewell function hosted by Archbishop Makarios of Australia on Friday, May 10.
Approximately 500 guests attended an event at the Archdiocese Conference Centre in Perth, where celebrations of the strong bond between Greece and Australia, particularly in Western Australia, took place.
Present at the event alongside Archbishop Makarios and Ms Karasiotou were Bishop Elpidios of Kyanea, the Consul of Croatia in Perth, Zoran Sangut, the Consul of Estonia in Perth, Anu van Hattem, as well as other clergy and local Greek community leaders.
Ms Karasiotou met with Archbishop Makarios of Australia in Sydney back in March. File photo.
On the night, Archbishop Makarios awarded Ms Karasiatou the medal of the Order of the Christ-loving and wished her good health and strength, highlighting her valuable efforts towards the Greek community of Perth.
Bishop Elpidios of Kyanea then presented Ms Karasiotou with a bouquet of flowers as a small token of appreciation for significant contributions during her time as Consul.
The Modern Greek Teachers’ Association of Victoria, in collaboration with the Greek Community of Melbourne’s Language & Culture Schools, has designed an interactive educational workshop titled ‘Sing and Learn with Mr. Tasos,’ featuring Tasos Ioannidis, creator of the songs ‘Lachana and Hachana.’
The workshop is aimed at kindergarten teachers, educators, and theatre educators, with the goal of enriching teaching practices in Greek language instruction through music.
The presenter of the workshop is the well-known composer and songwriter Tasos Ioannidis, whose love for children is the source of his creativity, as much of his work is inspired by his experiences as a father of three children.
Aimed at transforming the learning process into a game, he created the series of children’s educational songs, books, and theatrical works ‘Lachana and Hachana.’
In the seminar, Mr Ioannidis, with his guitar, will select songs that address the needs of Greek schools in the diaspora and can be divided into four thematic units:
Letters, shapes, colours, days.
Classic songs in new versions.
Grammar songs.
Songs for emotional education.
He will teach techniques, practices, and games to educators that will help them engage with their students in acquiring vocabulary as well as grammatical forms and structures through song.
Mr Ioannidis, creator and songwriter, said about the upcoming seminar: “If the teacher manages to turn the lesson into a game so that the child learns without realising that they are learning, then learning becomes an experiential process. The emotional intelligence of children is in operation, and the system of brain neurons is in action. The imprint in children’s memory is indelible, full of the colours of experience. Learning becomes a joyful process!”
The interactive educational workshop will take place on Saturday, May 18, from 2:30-4:30 pm, at St. Gregory the Great Primary School (396 Manningham Rd, Doncaster) and is provided free of charge to all Greek language educators.
Vow Foods co-founder, George Peppou says building a manufacturing hub in Australia can have its advantages, hoping the budget will show more government investments in advanced manufacturing.
According to AFR, the food-tech startup has begun exporting products from its Sydney factory to Singapore, with plans to launch in several more markets across Asia this year.
Vow Foods cofounder George Peppou (right) says their lab-grown meat is more environmentally friendly. Photo: File photo.
“We are the third company in the world to sell cultured meat and we achieved this for less than 10 per cent of the capital and in half of the time of the other two,” Peppou said.
“We’ve got so efficient at this; we can build factories 20 to 50 times cheaper than our competitors.”
The Future Made in Australia Act will include billions of dollars in loans, grants, and equity holdings, as well as investment incentives to attract global and local capital to new companies.
With funding flowing through existing and funded policies like the National Reconstruction Fund, Industry Growth Program and the Future Made in Australia policy, there is potential for what Peppou is proposing.
The dispatch of postal vote envelopes to over 200,000 registered voters for postal ballots in the upcoming European elections, has commenced. This process extends to Greek Australians, with 835 voters registered from the continent of Oceania.
Communication regarding the dispatch of envelopes has been conveyed to voters via email, SMS, or Viber, accompanied by a link enabling them to track the shipment’s progress until delivery. A select few have already received their designated envelopes.
According to directives from Greece’s Ministry of Interior, the receipt of materials is restricted to the registrant or authorised individuals. Distributors from sponsoring companies verify the recipient’s identity during delivery. Failure to authenticate may result in fines of €10,000 per omitted file.
Contained within the envelope dispatched to the 202,556 voters are:
Instructions detailing MEP candidates from all parties.
A uniform ballot encompassing all participating parties, featuring designated spaces for voter selection.
A voting envelope for ballot placement.
An application-responsible declaration for postal voting, which can be submitted digitally via the epistoliki.ypes.gov.gr platform.
A return envelope for postal voting, to be sent to the designated collection area.
For voters within Greece, the return of the envelope with the ballot is free of charge. Options include scheduling a delivery with the company or personally dropping it off at designated stores.
To ensure timely arrival, ballots must reach the collection site by Saturday, June 8, 2024, at 17:00 Greek time. Recommendations for sending vary based on residency, with deadlines ranging from June 3 to May 28. Registered and express mailing methods are advised.
Failure to meet the deadline results in the unopened return of the envelope. In such cases, participation in the elections is limited to attending the polling station.
In the event of lost materials, voters can reprint through the postal voting platform or visit a specially designed website for people with disabilities for assistance in ballot completion and printing.
North Macedonia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday issued a statement affirming the country’s “unwavering commitment to fully respect constitutional provisions and all internationally assumed obligations,” including the Prespa Agreement signed with Greece.
The statement came a day after North Macedonia’s newly-elected president, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, sparked a diplomatic spat with Greece by referring to her country as “Macedonia,” rather than the constitutional name “North Macedonia.”
North Macedonia’s new President, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova. Photo: Robert Atanasovskis/AFP via Getty Images.
At the time, Greece’s government pointed out that the new president’s deliberate avoidance of the country’s constitutional name was a “gross violation” of the 2018 Prespa agreement and warned of consequences in bilateral relations and for North Macedonia’s prospects of joining the European Union.
In response, North Macedonia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday urged “all political stakeholders, particularly elected officials, to exercise caution.”
“Upholding the Euro-Atlantic trajectory of the country remains a paramount strategic interest and serves as a guarantee for its long-term security and stability,” it said in a statement.
