By Anastasios M. Tamis*
In the third and final text of the “trilogy” of the Australian earthly paradise I will refer to some more individual features of Australia, as a result of its social ethos and political responsibility. These characteristics are not the result of the chance or circumstance, but are the result of education, upbringing and cultivated culture. It is a result of the way the family in Australia manages social issues and the education of their children. It is also the result of an education based on European standards, which draws many of its characteristics from ancient Greek society and culture.
No masked men were ever seen in Australia, no anarchist squatters, no libertarians, no strange party lamoyas. No university faculties or premises were ever occupied, no university or student facilities were ever destroyed. Never have Australian university faculties been desecrated by “permanent” students and manifold troublemakers and thugs of party gangs. Australian citizens have never seen students throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, there have never been scenes of death and hell even in the worst clashes between extreme trade unionists and police.
In Australia you feel that you live in security, that you raise your children and grandchildren in a humane, civilised environment. It is surprising how 500-1000 marked rascals, disoriented and radicalised bastards, ravage Greece and spread anarchy and terror among our people, who suffered so much and sacrificed so much to enjoy peace and security, in the most beautiful geographical part of the planet.
It is inconceivable for the Greeks of Australia to be able to bear to see this situation in Greece and not be in pain. It is impossible for a Greek in Australia not to be surprised by what is tragically happening in our country. They establish days of rioting and demolition, days of cultivating hatred against the state.
Rarely have the people of Australia experienced acts of violence, by terrorists and criminal elements. Even more rarely has its society been tested by cruel drug traffickers and human trafficking. However, on these issues, as in the case of any misconduct, there was a united and immediate consensus from all parties. And it is precisely Australia’s prerogative that in matters relating to society, foreign policy, education and defence, Australia’s parties have maintained a purely and effortlessly hyper-partisan policy since the formation of the Australian Commonwealth.
Studying the history of Hellenism in Oceania over the last forty years, I have not found in Australia an example of partisan exploitation in matters of crime and delinquent policy against the state, the police, the judiciary, national defense and foreign policy. Labor, as a party with a strong social conscience, almost always reverently continues the policy of the conservative Liberals, and vice versa. It is not possible for anarchist and cowardly masked men to tear down marbles and use them as ammunition, it is not possible to set fire and burn banks and murder pregnant women, women and innocent workers in their workplace, and not be brought to trial and punishment. It is not possible to rightly brand a single party as a ‘criminal organisation’ in order to atone for other parties whose masked thugs have organised and are organising deadly campaigns against police and state officials. It is not possible for Greek parliamentary parties to encourage, tolerate or not condemn acts of violence and terrorism against public property, crimes against citizens and intervene and mock the Government or the judiciary that rushes with its enforcement laws to control and punish offenders. It is not possible in European Greece for there to be inaccessible suburbs, like Exarcheia and hangouts, such as the Polytechnic, for the anarchists and come out of there and throw homemade bombs at the police.
On the contrary, what can we say about Australia and its struggles in the field of world peace? Since 1964 its police forces have kept the peace in Cyprus. Sixty whole years of offering to our tyrannised brotherly people of Cyprus. What about the carnage of their dead in Greece, their participation in the fronts of Macedonia and Crete, the fourteen cemeteries that are their burial place in Greece? Shall we refer to the thousands of Australians who found themselves fighting with their allies, with full bipartisan consensus, in the Pacific, in the Middle East, in Europe, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan?
To note the amazing performance of Australian schools at all levels and especially competitive higher education in learning, research, and publishing. On a global scale, ten of Australia’s 44 universities are in the top 100 higher education institutions in the world, and of these ten Australian universities, three are consistently in the top ten universities worldwide.
Let’s talk about sport, the aptitude for sports, the irresistibility of Australians in swimming and athletics, tennis, cricket and even football. Let’s refer to the number of gold medals at the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games and the World Athletics and Swimming. An Australia of 25 million is the third or fourth world power after China and the US over the past twenty-thirty years. To mention theatre, film, opera, literature, everywhere many of Hollywood’s greatest actors are Australians!
To move on to the organisation and order that prevails, from the organised state to the streets and squares and neighborhood and rural streets of millions of kilometers. Let us refer to cleanliness and the participation of citizens in cleaning, tidying up the greenery, where citizens also participate, mowing the lawns and grasses in front of their house, which essentially belong to the local municipality. Citizens learn from young children, just as they take their plate after eating and bring it to wash in the sink, so they do with public places, sidewalks in front of their home. They mow the grass that belongs to the public sidewalk, because being in front of their house, they show the degree of housekeeping that is their part.
I could record dozens more incidents that show and prove that Australia is paradise on earth. I will confine myself to one last thing. I will close this third article of the trilogy, with the sense of responsibility that distinguishes political figures, Australian politicians. Here applies the degree of responsibility and sensitivity felt by the Ancient Greeks. Miltiades, who saved Athens and the European world from the Persians at Marathon, because he damaged the State with the campaign of the Athenians in the unfortunate conquest of Paros, was punished with dozens of talents fine and because he did not pay the fine, he was thrown into prison, where he died. In Greece, only a few years ago, some of its politicians damaged the country with 100 billion euros (Varoufakis and Tsipras periods) and neither of them opened their noses and continued to play it as leaders. In the case of Australia, a minister did not declare a portable television upon entering Australia, and when this was made public the next day, he resigned. In Australia, as a rule, politicians have a political ethos.
*Professor Anastasios M. Tamis taught at Universities in Australia and abroad, was the creator and founding director of the Dardalis Archives of the Hellenic Diaspora and is currently the President of the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies (AIMS).
