Richard Wynne MP





Theo Sidiropolous Memorial Launch: Sat May 29

The City of Yarra is holding a launch of Stand Up – Speak Out, a Memorial to the late Theo Sidiropoulos by artist Jenny Steiner.
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When: Saturday 26 May
Time: 3.00pm – 6.00pm
Where: St Phillip’s Park (Located next to the Collingwood Town Hall)
140 Hoddle Street, Abbotsford.

Here is the invitation in PDF format or
Join us to for the launch of the Memorial to be followed by a musical celebration ‘EVIVA!’, a term Theo used when making a toast for ‘Life to be celebrated by all’. This musical celebration was inspired by Theo’s passion and commitment to political and social change and the Labour movement.
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With special thanks to Multicultural Arts Victoria for making this musical celebration possible.
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Theo Sidiropoulos Biography

(b.1924 – d.1998)
Theo Sidiropoulos was born in Katerini, Greece on 24 July 1924 and migrated to Australia in 1954. He made outstanding contributions to Melbourne’s social, political and civic life through his community and political activism, belief in social justice and support of migrants’ rights. Theo was a community leader in Collingwood and the surrounding areas of Fitzroy, North Fitzroy, Clifton Hill, Abbotsford and Richmond, as well as within Melbourne’s Greek Community. He also played a significant and visionary role at a State and national level.
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Theo was:

> Councillor, City of Collingwood (1968-1978)
> Mayor City of Collingwood (1977)
> MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) for Richmond (1977-1988)
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CONDOLENCE SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT
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Republished below are two condolence speeches by Dimitri Dollis (then State Member for Richmond) and John Brumby (then State Labor Opposition Leader) for the former State Member of Richmond, Theo Sidiropolous as recorded in the Victorian Parliamentary Hansard (20 October 1998).
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Mr DOLLIS (then Member for Richmond) – I join the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Premier in extending my condolences to Popi, Anthie and Harry. Theo Sidiropoulos was a friend of mine, but more importantly, a friend of my family.

He was a remarkable individual who went through the difficult phases in life to open new roads for many of the first, second and subsequent generations who were to follow him. He was a lovable character although full of contradictions. Embodied in him was a culture, a pride, a history and an ideology that sometimes brought him into conflict with the rules of the society which he loved and which he made his country. He said that had it not been for his migration to Australia his many remarkable achievements would not have been possible.

Can you imagine a young man migrating to this country with very little English who, after a few years settlement, not only did well economically but was also the first non-English-speaking migrant with a Greek background to be elected to the former Collingwood council? The late 1960s was not a decade during which people like Theo were welcomed with open arms. However, the Labor Party and the Collingwood council made Theo very proud of his unique experience and contribution.

He brought freshness and dynamism to his job. Those who served with him refer to him as a breath of fresh air. In those days some 40 to 50 per cent of Collingwood residents spoke Greek. The Collingwood council and the Labor Party recognised that they should have appropriate representation, and Theo was given an opportunity to serve.

Collingwood High, as it was then known, was burned down and replaced by the Collingwood Education Centre, a unique institutional arrangement created by Theo and the people who worked in the area. Three educational concepts were included in one entity — primary, secondary and the teaching of a number of languages.

Throe’s contribution to the anti-freeway struggles is legendary. He and the mayor of Fitzroy were the first mayors to be arrested for attempting to stop the trucks coming through. Theo was arrested in full mayoral regalia. The convincing arguments he put to Alan Hunt were also legendary. Alan Hunt was a minister with a great reputation and he enabled Theo and others to produce the four-school pilot program that introduced languages other than English into government schools. Greek was his main love and he ensured that it was taught at government schools.

As mayor and together with his successor, Caroline Hogg from another place, he managed to have Collingwood declared the first nuclear-free city. That is taken for granted now but it was a first in those days and was reported internationally. The declaration of Victoria as a nuclear-free state was generated from those days in the City of Collingwood.

A remarkable group of people, including Theo, came from the Collingwood council to Parliament. However, it is not Throe’s parliamentary service we need to celebrate but the unique character of one who served the community in every respect.

From his early years until his death he devoted his life to serving his fundamental beliefs. The Labor Party, which he joined after a short membership of the Communist Party of Australia, was one of those beliefs. After rejecting communism he became one of the strongest proponents for everyone’s inclusion in the parliamentary structure.

After the split in 1956 he filled the vacuum left in Richmond, Collingwood and Fitzroy by arguing that the remarkable group of individuals who had migrated and worked within our society should be included in political structures. However, he believed the political parties needed to recognise their inability to speak English. He argued that it was possible to have branch structures by allowing people to communicate in the languages in which they felt most comfortable, and the Greek language branches were born. It must not be forgotten that they were born out of a desire not to establish a power base but to participate.

Theo’s opponent during the 1977 preselection was the Honourable Andrew McCutcheon, a very dear friend and colleague of his from his days at the Collingwood council. Theo’s inclusion on the list followed by his success in becoming a candidate for the Labor Party and eventually the member for Richmond indicated the Labor Party’s desire in those difficult days to have elected a person who had come here as a migrant and whose language was other than English — a person who could contribute as part of the multicultural society.

We take multiculturalism for granted these days, but we would find an entirely different world if we were to visit the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. That world has changed, and it was the Theo Sidiropouloses of this world who brought about that change. The Premier is able to proudly announce Victoria to be one of the finest examples of a multicultural community in which tolerance, inclusion and pride in diversity are the benchmarks of a unique society because of the remarkable contributions of people such as Theo Sidiropoulos.

We must celebrate, honour and not forget those contributions.

As I extend my condolences to Popi, Anthie and Harry, I ask the house to remember that Theo did not live an easy life in this place. He experienced incredible difficulty as a person who was not able to command English as easily as he was able to command his native Greek. In fact, he could outargue anyone in his first language. At times in this house events were witnessed that are better left to the history books, but honourable members were able to learn that tolerance must be practised, and tolerance includes an understanding of the difficulties we all have when we enter this place.

I join with the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition, and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in expressing my condolences to Theo’s family. Theo was a remarkable individual and he will not be forgotten.

Already an educational foundation that will give opportunities to young people to study in a field of their choice by supporting them economically has been established in his name.
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Mr BRUMBY (then Leader of the Opposition)
— On behalf of the Labor Party I join with the Premier in extending condolences to the late Theo Sidiropoulos’s family. As I did not serve in the Parliament at the same time as he did and met him on only two or three occasions, I did not know him well.

However, I am aware from discussions with members of Parliament and with those at last week’s funeral and memorial service that he was held in extraordinarily high regard by both the Parliament and the community.

We recall his special contribution. He was the first Greek-born and non-English-speaking migrant to be elected to this Parliament. As I remarked at last week’s memorial service, he was in many ways an inspiration to and pathfinder for many current parliamentarians, particularly those from the Labor Party, of which approximately a quarter now come from non-English-speaking backgrounds.

His funeral was a testimony to the high regard in which he was held, with more than a thousand people being present at the Collingwood town hall.

There was a long list of speakers who spoke for more than 2 hours, including former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, former Premier John Cain, former Premier Joan Kirner, Federal President of the Labor Party, Barry Jones, many parliamentary members, community leaders, family, friends and members of the Greek community. Moving eulogies were given by Giovanni Sgro, George Zangalis, Mark Georgiou and a number of Freedom Fighters, an organisation which as many are aware has an interesting history.

In a book compiled by Allan and Wendy Scarfe quoted in an article in the Age, Theo Sidiropoulos says about his early years in the resistance: I remember Churchill’s famous appeal: every Greek from the age of 16 years who is able to carry a gun should get one and fight the Germans, in the streets, in the fields, in the houses …

He was the inspiration of young people to join the EAM-ELAS — the national liberation front.

It is a pity that he was later the architect of our destruction.

Many members of the freedom fighters spoke at his service last week. As the Premier has said, Theo entered this Parliament as the result of a by-election in 1977 and served for 11 years until August 1988. During that time he served as Government Whip and as a member of the council of the University of Melbourne, the Public Works Committee and the Public Bodies Review Committee. He was a government representative on the Melbourne-Thessaloniki Sister City Committee.

Theo Sidiropoulos was born on 24 July 1924 and was educated at Katerini in Greece prior to his involvement in the Greek Resistance between 1942 and 1945 and thereafter. He served a term as a municipal registrar in Katerini between 1949 and 1954 and migrated to Australia in December of that year. He came out by himself and a year later returned to Greece to collect his future wife Popi and bring her to Australia. They married in 1956 and had two children, Anthie and Harry.

In Australia Theo had a remarkable range of jobs. He started as a factory worker at General Motors-Holden, worked as a tram conductor for a period and then ran a number of small businesses. As the Premier has remarked, he continued to run small businesses after he left the Parliament.

He joined the Australian Labor Party in 1957 shortly after his arrival in Australia and was extremely active in his local area.

He was a Collingwood city councillor from 1968 to 1978, including a term as mayor. At the service last week a remarkable number of people from the community came to pay their respects to him for the work he had done on behalf of the community. He had wide involvement in the Labor Party, including membership of the immigration and ethnic affairs policy committee, the industrial affairs policy committee and as a member of the government task force on bilingual education. He was also responsible for organising and establishing many of the Greek ALP branches in Melbourne and no doubt encouraged the involvement of many of our current members of Parliament.

His inaugural speech of April 1978 in this place raised issues that are just as relevant today as they were then. He was justifiably proud to be the first member of the Victorian Parliament from a non-English-speaking background and his intention was to pursue a variety of issues that confronted Victoria’s multicultural community.

For example, he spoke at length about bilingual education, now known as languages other than English, in Victorian state schools. He criticised the education minister of the day who had been saying there was a surplus of teachers in the state school system, pointing out that only 1 per cent of the children of migrants had the opportunity to learn a language other than English. All members of Parliament can say with pride that since that time there has been a great expansion of the LOTE program in our schools. Today far more than 1 per cent of those students have the opportunity to learn other languages.

Theo spoke also of government cuts to funding for what was then radio station 3ZZ, now 3ZZZ. He was very critical of the then Liberal government for cutting that funding. Mr George Zangalis spoke of that matter in his eulogy at the service last week. Nevertheless 3ZZZ is now a radio station that enjoys bipartisan support for the work it does in promoting multiculturalism.

He also spoke in his inaugural speech about the need for better recognition of trade and professional qualifications for Victoria’s migrant population. We would all agree with him even now on that one. Although some progress has been made, much more work needs to be done to ensure that the qualifications of those who migrate to Australia from overseas — whether in engineering, medicine, plumbing or metalwork — are properly recognised. At the moment they are probably not.

Theo spoke at length about multiculturalism. He was proud of the role of Arthur Calwell and the Labor government in initiating Australia’s great post-war migration program and he was proud of the work of Gough Whitlam and Al Grassby in promoting and supporting multiculturalism. Victorians can be proud that today some 44.5 per cent of all the people in this state are either born overseas or have one or more parents who were born overseas. We can surely say that we are the multicultural capital of Australia.

The life of Theo Sidiropoulos is a tribute to Australia’s post-war migration program, multiculturalism and the Greek community in Melbourne for whom he achieved so much.

During his eulogy Giovanni Sgro, a former Labor member of the Upper House, spoke about One Nation, saying that Theo Sidiropoulos would have dearly loved to know that the One Nation political party had achieved no political success across Australia. Unfortunately he died shortly before the federal

election results were known. He said that in the 60s and 70s new migrants to Victoria and Australia faced many tests, that there were many One Nations, and that racist attitudes were often apparent to those who first migrated to our shores. He said Theo would have been pleased to hear the election results and to know that One Nation had achieved so little.

Theo Sidiropoulos made a significant contribution to this Parliament, the Victorian community and the Greek community. On behalf of the members of the Victorian Parliamentary Labor Party I join with the Premier and all members of this house in extending condolences to Popi, Anthie, Harry and all other members of his extended family.

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