ONE RACIST NATION

 

“Hey Kalimniou,” one of the school bigots shouted. “How big is your mum’s mo?” English being my second language, it took me a while to understand that mo here signified a moustache and not a moment, the implication being that, because I was Greek, my mother must also be Greek and therefore possessed of more facial hair than average for the global species. “Vastly bigger than certain parts of your anatomy,” I responded. Seeing him hesitate, I added by way of explanation: “Anatomy is a Greek word. Look it up.”

Given that this exchange took place three decades ago, there is something revealing about a politician who, confronted with the complexities of economic reform, reaches for a similar stereotype in the present day. In describing the government's capital gains tax reforms as having “more hairs than a Greek cook,” Federal One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce offered far more than a laboured metaphor. He reached into a cupboard of inherited ethnic clichés and pulled one out for public consumption.

Predictably, some will insist that this was merely a joke. I would argue, however, that humour does not emerge from a vacuum. Every joke depends upon a shared set of assumptions between speaker and audience. Joyce's remark functions only because listeners already recognise the stereotype being invoked and regard it as sufficiently familiar to be amusing. Consequently, the Greek, divorced of his Australian attributes, ceases to be a citizen engaged in the national conversation and becomes a stock character whose purpose is to provide comic relief.

The image itself is revealing. The figure of the “Greek cook” is assembled from a bundle of assumptions about ethnicity, appearance and culture. A gendered dimension is also present. Either the cook is imagined as a man, despite cooking so often being coded as women's work within domestic life, or the joke sidesteps the more obvious reference to Greek women because that would awaken another longstanding stereotype about female body hair. The humour relies upon ethnic and gendered caricatures treated as self evident and therefore available for public use. Greeks are hairy. Apes are hairy. Complete the equation.

The stereotype Joyce invoked did not emerge yesterday. It belongs to a long catalogue of assumptions that have accompanied Greeks throughout their Australian experience. Earlier generations were caricatured as café owners, fish and chip shop proprietors, garlic eaters, knife wielders, queue jumpers and foreigners who spoke too loudly while refusing to abandon customs deemed incompatible with Australian life. Throughout much of the twentieth century, sections of the media portrayed southern European migrants as culturally deficient, excessively emotional and incapable of assimilation. Individual stereotypes may have changed with the decades, yet the underlying logic endured. Greeks could contribute to Australia, enrich Australia and even become celebrated examples of multicultural success, to the extent that they were held up as model ethnics by members of the dominant culture, while continuing to occupy a distinct category within the national imagination.

What is perhaps most striking about Joyce's remark is its complete irrelevance to the subject under discussion. Capital gains tax reform concerns investment behaviour, housing affordability, government revenue and economic policy. None of these matters bears the slightest connection to Greek cooks. The comparison reveals a politician unwilling to inhabit the complexity of his own argument. Economic reform is difficult, technical and often resistant to simplification. Rather than confronting that difficulty, Joyce abandons the subject altogether and retreats into a cultural cliché. The stereotype functions as a substitute for intellectual labour. It spares both speaker and audience the inconvenience of analysis, offering recognition in place of understanding and familiarity in place of thought. One need not be offended in order to be disappointed. The standards appropriate to a federal parliamentarian are necessarily higher than those governing casual conversation. Citizens are entitled to expect from their elected representatives a degree of intellectual seriousness commensurate with the office they hold.

Equally revealing is the choice of target. Contemporary Australia has developed an elaborate etiquette governing public discussion of identity. Politicians are expected to exercise caution when speaking about race, religion, gender and sexuality. Entire industries of advisers, consultants and media trainers exist to prevent public figures from straying into offensive territory. Yet certain ethnic stereotypes continue to enjoy a curious exemption. Greeks, evidently remain fair game, for Joyce is not the first Australian politician to engage with such stereotypes. We would do well to recall former Australian PM Julia Gillard’s 2012 comments about renovations to her Abbotsford property:  “In order to try and make it look less hideous, part of the work that Con was to do was to mortar it and put pickets on it ... to try and stop it looking quite as Greek, dare one say... He's just a big Greek bullshit artist.” Familiarity appears to have granted these caricatures a peculiar immunity from scrutiny. What would provoke outrage if directed towards some communities is often dismissed as harmless folklore when aimed at ours.

Part of the explanation may lie in the peculiar place Greeks have occupied within the Anglo Australian imagination. Unlike some migrant communities, Greeks have rarely been cast as passive or compliant. From the goldfields and the labour movement to trade union activism, anti dictatorship campaigns and the noisy politics of the diaspora, Greeks have often been imagined as argumentative, unruly and resistant to authority. Even popular culture has tended to portray them as loud, emotional, entrepreneurial and forever negotiating the rules rather than simply accepting them. Beneath the apparently benign stereotype of the hard working migrant lurks another figure: the Greek as perpetual outsider, troublemaker and sceptic. He may be welcomed, even admired, yet he remains faintly suspect, a character whose difference is presumed to persist regardless of how completely he participates in Australian life.

The peculiar way multiculturalism operates in Australia also requires examination.  The official narrative celebrates diversity, yet diversity is frequently reduced to a collection of recognisable cultural symbols. Communities become associated with food, festivals, dancing, accents and inherited quirks. The complexity of lived experience gradually gives way to folklore. Greeks become tavernas, plate smashing and body hair. Italians become espresso, pizza and hand gestures. The individual disappears behind a catalogue of cultural shorthand. Stereotypes survive, and are tolerated by the target communities because they are often mistaken for affection.

There is an irony in this. Greek Australians have become victims of their own success. The community is sufficiently established to avoid being perceived as threatening, yet sufficiently distinctive to remain available as comic material. Earlier generations fought battles over employment, housing and social acceptance. Their grandchildren encounter a different phenomenon. Open hostility has largely disappeared, while caricature continues to circulate beneath the surface, even as increasingly, those latter generations are culturally indistinguishable from their Anglo counterparts. Acceptance has rendered the stereotype more comfortable, not less persistent.

This perhaps explains why remarks of this kind continue to resonate. They offer a fleeting glimpse into the deeper structures of perception through which Australian society continues to understand itself. The vocabulary of citizenship may be universal, yet the imagination often remains stubbornly tribal, arranging communities into recognisable and enduring types. Most of the time this process operates silently, beneath the threshold of conscious reflection. Then a joke, a casual aside or a political metaphor momentarily lifts the veil. The surprise lies neither in the existence of the stereotype nor in its expression, but in the discovery that it has survived so comfortably within a society convinced of its own inclusiveness.

The endurance of these images owes something to another, less frequently acknowledged dynamic. Many Greek Australians will insist that they are entirely untroubled by such remarks. Some actively repeat the same jokes, invoking hairy Greeks, overbearing mothers and chaotic family gatherings with evident affection. This is often interpreted as confidence, resilience or a healthy sense of humour. It may also reflect a more complicated reality. Communities that spend generations seeking acceptance within a dominant culture frequently learn to accommodate the images through which they are viewed. Over time, caricature acquires the familiarity of folklore. The stereotype ceases to feel imposed from without and begins to appear as an authentic expression of identity. To laugh along signals ease, belonging and social confidence, while to object risks appearing humourless, insecure or incapable of taking a joke. Gradually, the terms upon which a community is recognised can become the terms through which it recognises itself. In this way, stereotypes acquire a remarkable durability. They are sustained not only by those who create them but also, on occasion, by those who inherit them.

The above notwithstanding, ethnic communities are resilient and require no paternalistic rescue from politicians or commentators. Greeks have survived far worse than an ill-considered quip from a parliamentarian unable to engage in constructive debate. Our concern lies elsewhere. The remark exposes a striking intellectual laziness. Public life depends upon the capacity to engage with complexity. Democratic debate requires argument, evidence and persuasion. Whenever politicians abandon those tools in favour of caricature, the quality of public discourse is diminished.

Such moments matter because populism rarely arrives draped in banners announcing its intentions. More often it enters public life through the gradual coarsening of discourse, through the transformation of prejudice into common sense and through the recycling of inherited stereotypes under the guise of humour. A society that repeatedly excuses such habits eventually becomes accustomed to them.

The endurance of the stereotype tells us something unsettling. Three generations after mass Greek migration to Australia, many Greek Australians have become almost indistinguishable from their Anglo counterparts in language, education, profession and outlook. Yet a joke about "Greekness" remains immediately intelligible to a national audience. The stereotype survives even as the people it purports to describe have largely disappeared. Perhaps that is its real function. It no longer explains Greeks. It reassures the majority that cultural categories inherited from an earlier Australia remain available whenever they are needed.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 13 June 2026