Australia has not resolved the argument exposed by the 2023 Voice referendum; it has merely absorbed it. Beneath procedural calm, the question of sovereignty — who holds it, how it is recognised, and on what moral authority the state rests — remains unsettled.
On Sunday 22 February, in the multipurpose venue Patris in Brunswick East, Greek Australian Conversations will convene its first open public discussion under a title that makes that unease explicit: Indigenous Sovereignty / Republic / Bondi. Connecting the dots… Where do Greek Australians, as part of our “multicultural” society, stand?
Three terms that sit along the fault lines of contemporary Australia. One question that shifts responsibility from parliament to community.
This is not a cultural gathering. It is a civic intervention.
The forum is structured as a conversation rather than a declaration. Esther Anatolitis — Honorary Associate Professor at RMIT School of Art, former editor of Meanjin and Co-Chair of the Australian Republic Movement — will be in dialogue with George Vassilacopoulos, Adjunct member of the Philosophy Program at La Trobe University and long-time community advocate. The audience will be invited to contribute. The format avoids spectacle. The premise does not.
The Settlement and Its Silence
For much of Australia’s post-war history, migrant incorporation followed a pragmatic grammar. Communities preserved language, religion and memory while integrating into the economic and institutional mainstream. Multiculturalism functioned less as ideology than as accommodation. It enabled upward mobility without demanding cultural erasure.
Greek Australians became one of its most visible successes. Parishes and after-hours schools flourished. Media outlets and welfare organisations were established. Children entered universities and professions. Representation followed in local councils, state parliaments and federal chambers. The narrative is often told as one of steady ascent.
Yet the settlement carried an omission.
Newcomers were invited into the machinery of the state; they were not asked to interrogate its foundations. Constitutional architecture was treated as stable background — procedural, legitimate, settled. Sovereignty, symbolism and origin lay outside the everyday obligations of migrant life.
The 2023 referendum unsettled that quiet arrangement. Whatever one’s position on the proposal, the campaign revealed that Australians do not share a uniform understanding of their founding compact. Indigenous sovereignty — the assertion that authority existed here prior to British settlement and has never been ceded — remains the deepest unresolved question beneath the Constitution enacted in 1901. It is not a marginal debate. It is structural.
In metropolitan electorates with significant Greek-Australian populations, support for the Voice was comparatively strong. While the community is not politically uniform, many Greek Australians publicly aligned themselves with Indigenous recognition, framing it less as a partisan question than as one of historical acknowledgement and civic fairness. Generational differences remain visible — older migrants who fled political instability often approach constitutional change cautiously, while younger Australians educated within decades of Indigenous rights discourse tend to engage the question more directly. Some welcomed the referendum as overdue; others worried, quietly, about reopening constitutional ground that had once seemed settled.
Greek Australian Conversations has chosen not to treat that engagement as episodic, but as ongoing.
Form, Authority and Shared Space
The organisation’s framework speaks not merely of cultural preservation but of governance, research and institutional standards. It identifies three constitutive strands of contemporary Australia: Indigenous heritage, postcolonial institutions and migrant contributions. That formulation reframes migrant communities from beneficiaries of multicultural policy to participants in the civic architecture of the state.
For Greek Australians, constitutional form is not abstract theory. Many families hold living memory of monarchy, republic, dictatorship and democratic restoration within a single generation. Institutional rupture is not distant history; it is inherited experience. Migration to Australia was often an act of seeking durability — a political system that endured beyond factional volatility.
Australia offered that durability. Courts functioned predictably. Governments changed without regime collapse. A constitutional monarchy, geographically distant and symbolically restrained, appeared to work.
But distance has acquired new meaning in a country transformed by migration. Nearly half of Australians are born overseas or have a parent born overseas. The republic question, dormant since the 1999 referendum rejected a particular model of change, persists beneath the surface. Where authority resides — and how it is embodied — is no longer merely ceremonial. It shapes national self-understanding.
Bondi’s inclusion in Sunday’s discussion introduces another dimension. Bondi has long served as shorthand for a relaxed, plural public Australia — sunlight, surf and multilingual ease. When violence disrupts such a space, the shock is civic as well as criminal. It reminds Australians that cohesion is contingent. Shared space depends on shared belief — in law, in legitimacy, in one another.
To place sovereignty, republicanism and civic rupture within a single frame is not to conflate them. It is to recognise that constitutional legitimacy and social trust are connected conditions. A nation uncertain about its origins may eventually become uncertain about its cohesion.
Standing Within the Argument
The forum is structured as dialogue rather than proclamation. Anatolitis approaches republicanism as a question of alignment between institutional form and contemporary reality. Vassilacopoulos approaches sovereignty through philosophical clarity, insisting that legitimacy cannot rest on sentiment alone. The invitation to audience participation reflects the same ethic: civic questions require civic engagement.
The significance of Sunday’s gathering does not depend on resolution. It lies in the gesture. For decades, migrant organisations were assessed by how effectively they preserved heritage and facilitated integration. Increasingly, another measure is emerging: whether they are willing to examine the constitutional and moral architecture of the nation they inhabit.
On Sunday 22 February, in a hall in Brunswick East, Greek Australians will not settle sovereignty or decide the republic. They may disagree. They may hesitate. Some may leave unconvinced. But they will have done something that marks a quiet threshold: they will have placed themselves inside the constitutional argument rather than alongside it.
When a community long measured by its successful integration begins to measure itself against the nation’s unfinished design, something shifts. Not loudly. Not theatrically. But structurally. And structural shifts rarely remain confined to the room in which they begin.
Event Details
Indigenous Sovereignty / Republic / Bondi – Connecting the dots… Where do Greek Australians stand?
Date: Sunday 22 February 2026
Time: 3:00 pm
Venue: Patris, 140 Barkly Street, Brunswick East, Victoria
Speakers:
Esther Anatolitis – Honorary Associate Professor, RMIT School of Art; former Editor of Meanjin; Co-Chair, Australian Republic Movement
George Vassilacopoulos – Adjunct member, Philosophy Program, La Trobe University; writer and community advocate
This is an open community conversation. Audience participation is encouraged. Admission is free.
