Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to congratulate the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria on not only another successful Lonsdale Street Greek Festival, which took place this weekend, but also on celebrating 30 years of continuous festival activities in Lonsdale Street. I also want to acknowledge that the local member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, was in attendance and has always been in attendance.

It is an exciting milestone because this festival began as a success story and continues to be one 30 years later. In fact, my very first real job was as coordinator of Greek Week, the forerunner of today's Lonsdale Street Greek Festival. It began as a week of events in and around Melbourne celebrating Hellenism and Greek culture. It grew into the Antipodes Festival and came under the auspices of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria.

The Lonsdale Street Festival is a combination of the hard work of Melbourne's Greek community and is supported by the Victorian government. I want to commend the dedication and tireless work of the festival team, led by Jorge Menidis and Penny Kyprianou, the festival's co-chairs, Tammy Ilious and Leonidas Vlahakis, and the many and varied enthusiastic volunteers who I want to acknowledge, as they are behind-the-scenes masters who enable this weekend-long event to run smoothly and become bigger and bigger each year. This year, I understand, there were some 100,000 people who rocked Lonsdale Street this weekend.

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