Thank you very much, and can I just say how wonderful it is to be here, Father Sophronios, thank you very much. Consul General, my federal colleagues, David Coleman and of course Nicholas Varvaris, whose father was Father Sophronios's predecessor in that important role as the parish priest. Look, it is wonderful to be here among you, you’re absolutely right, I am an unashamed Philhellene, and you know, you could not imagine, you could not possibly imagine modern Australia without the contribution of the Greeks to this country.
You could not imagine the Western world without the contribution of Greece.
The description of the, that battle between, or the war between Greece and the Italians and then of course the Germans where Australian forces, as you all know, were engaged, fighting side-by-side to defend Greece's freedom against German tyranny.
That was one of those tipping points in history, when the Prime Minister said no, Όχι, when he said no to the demands that the country be occupied. But what he was really saying was yes to freedom. He was saying yes to independence, yes to the values of the Western world that the dictators were seeking to crush. And there was a tipping point, and there’ve been so many tipping points between freedom and tyranny in Greek history, whether it is at the battles of Marathon or Salamis or Thermopylae. All of those points, Greece has been and the people of Greece have been in the very front line of freedom and the Western values that are so important to us today.
So I’m very, very pleased, very proud to be here as your Prime Minister to support you all, to support being Greek here today. I want to acknowledge the remarkable work of the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia. A tradition that goes back thousands of years, it is a, there we have the double-headed eagle of the Byzantine empires, of the Byzantine emperors. That thread of continuity from Κωνσταντινούπολη (Constantinople) right around the world, uniting Greeks in that continued tradition and ensuring that Greek language and Greek culture remains alive wherever Greeks are in the global diaspora. So, I want to say thank you to you, Father Sophronios, to your representative of the Archbishop.
And thank you to of course to the Mayor, thank you very much for having us here as your guests. As Sydney's First Man to be the Lady Mayoress, I am very proud of what local government does and I think all of us know, Nick Varvaris of course would have people would remember him very fondly as the mayor, as your predecessor as the mayor, but all of us, as federal politicians, when we go around doorknocking and our state colleagues who are here today would have the same experience, when you go around doorknocking, people invariably raise local government matters with you. Now, if you don't want to get elected, you can give them a lecture on constitutional law and say it is not part of my jurisdiction, however, if you want to get elected you say 'I will speak to the mayor and see if we can get it sorted out' and that’s what we do. So we know that local government is absolutely in the front line.
So, it is wonderful to be here with you all, thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed.
We’re here celebrating freedom, were celebrating Greece, we’re celebrating Australia which would not be the great country it was without the values and the culture and the contribution of Greek Australians so let me conclude simply by saying to you this, Ευχαριστώ αγαπητοί φίλοι . Ζήτω η ελευθερία . Ζήτω η Ελλάδα. Ζήτω η Αυστραλία. (Thanks dear friends. Long live freedom. Long live Greece. Long live Australia)