Greek Australian Conversations. Defining ethnic identity beyond language and culture
This year’s third event of the Greek-Australian Conversations (GAC) initiative was held at Ballam Ballam in Brunswick, on Sunday 9 August 2026, at Melbourne’s Merri-Bek municipality, attracting a significant and engaging audience.
The topic of discussion focused on “Social Cohesion or Social Division?
How Should We Respond to the New Politics of Australia”, with the Rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation?”, and featured social researcher and pollster Kos Samaras, Anthea Hancock head of the Scanlon Foundation Institute and Danae Bosler, Assistant Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council.
Together, with an audience of around 80 people, the speakers critically examined different dimensions of the issue, drawing on public opinion research, political participation and activism.
One of the key political conclusions emerging from both the research and the discussion, was that Australia’s right and far right are increasingly shifting the terrain of political confrontation towards cultural and identity-based demarcation lines and competing values. Yet, the priorities, and insecurities driving citizens towards the political right and far right – as a reaction to the status quo – are primarily economic driven.
Immigration—which has become the bogeyman and, in Pauline Hanson’s narrative, an explanation for almost every major problem of our time, from employment to housing—is not, as the speakers argued, among citizens’ primary concerns.
However, as long as political debate remains focused away from the economic sphere, Hanson, along with the broader Australian right and far right, is likely to continue to attract support, even if that support is “soft” and transient to a significant degree.
Another noteworthy aspect of the event was the significant participation of people from the broader Australian community. This once again demonstrates that the Greek-Australian Conversation collective has succeeded so far, through its choice of topics and speakers, in developing into an outward-looking initiative that engages in dialogue with the broader Australian society.
Such engagement remains an important challenge for many other Greek-Australian and migrant organisations and the activities and events they hold.
What seems to be emerging from the events held so far by GAC, is the possibility of creating a multicultural “political” community of ideas and dialogue—one that understands and defines the Greek and migrant ethnic identity of Australian citizens not only culturally and linguistically, but also through critical reflection, ideological engagement and political participation.
This emerging community seems to also be able to reach out and to converse with the wider Australian community/mainstream.
- Freelance Journalist, Writer, Media Adviser, Web Content