Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to draw attention to an urgent fundraising initiative called Save the Archives, which was launched last year. Save the Archives is a campaign by the Greek diaspora to preserve the migration history of Greek Australian immigrants.

The Save the Archives initiative was launched last year to coincide with a very important anniversary—the 60th anniversary of the Assisted Migration Agreement signed in 1952 between Australia and Greece. Speaker, as you would know, many thousands of Greeks migrated to Australia under this agreement, which was conducted under the auspices of what was then called the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration or ICEM, which later became the International Organization for Migration that we know today.

Save the Archives has one goal—to preserve the existing documents from those Greek migrants who moved to countries, including Australia, between 1950 and 1975. These records are currently sitting in the basement in the Athens office of International Organization for Migration. There are over 200,000 of these records. Each one tells the story of a man, woman or child, who set off for distant lands for a better future, fleeing war torn Europe, civil wars and poverty, to go to a place where their dreams could indeed be realised. My parents were just two of those people whose records would be in this basement. Many thousands more who would have records in that basement live in my electorate. Speaker, I am sure many hundreds would be in your electorate as well. It is their records and their stories which are under threat of destruction.

Unfortunately, with the Hellenic Republic still in the grips of an economic crisis, the money to preserve these historic records is no longer available. The records are rapidly deteriorating. So unless we act now we are in danger of losing decades of history, culture and heritage of people who left their motherland between 1950 and 1975 to make their homes here in Australia.

Save the Archives is therefore aiming to raise the approximately €25,000 that is required for the IOM in Athens to begin the process of digitising the entry documents so they are preserved forever and a day. More importantly, the process of digitisation means that the records can also be shared—not just with the families of those who migrated to Australia, but with our academia, with researchers, with our cultural institutions and, most importantly, with future generations of Australians who no doubt will be researching their family histories in generations to come.

Once the funds are raised, they will be provided to the IOM in Athens so they can hire staff and equipment to convert all the physical files into digital files. It is estimated that the digitisation of the documents will take nine to 12 months. Plans are also being made about how the digitised archives will be presented, and this is being led by the Greek diaspora in Australia. Save the Archives plans to create an online portal that can make the archives easily accessible. The people behind this effort are a broad group in our Greek Australian community. They are passionate about our history and the people that have migrated to this country from Greece to establish themselves within Australian communities. They are the sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren of Greeks who took the bold move to leave the motherland to start a new life in Australia.

As I said, many of them live in my electorate of Hindmarsh and, I am sure, in yours as well, Speaker. My parents are just two of the almost 350,000 whose records are stored in that basement in Athens. So this is a culturally very important project but also one very close to my heart. Records like these are an important part of our identities as individuals but also as communities.

I would like to congratulate and thank in particular Spiro Sarris, who has brought this to my attention, for his activism on this issue. I would like to encourage everyone interested in helping the campaign to get involved, look at the website, like the Facebook page and follow the Twitter feed. There is also information on how you can donate to the campaign. I look forward to continuing to promote this cause and wish the organisers every success in this very important project. (Time expired)