The multiculturalism that is associated with the Whitlam government didn’t just come overnight. When Whitlam came, the Greek community was organised. We had organisations like Greek Democritus League, the Migrant Workers Conference Committee, the Migrant Education Action conferences, the Greek Students and Graduates Association. Also, we were organised through broader organisations like the unions, especially Greek organisers in the Vehicle Builders Union and the Railways Union, the Clothing Union and the Maritime Union; and then there’s the Ecumenical Migration Centre. Those organisations were working towards the issue of migrant rights, welfare rights, the issue of language, and anti-assimilation sort of struggles. So when the coup happened, literally that instant people went to the streets because they didn’t want to lose those rights that they fought to win.¹

Whitlam meant a great deal to working-class migrant communities. His Labor government—in what felt like the first time, for many migrants—attempted to address their needs, extending the language of equity and access beyond the White working class. Today, the question of who first built multiculturalism is popularly associated with the Whitlam government, specifically with the colourful character of Al Grassby as the minister for immigration. However, as Greek-Australian public broadcaster and community activist Elias Diacolabrianos captures above, the Whitlam government’s approach to migrant equity, and its seeming embrace of structural pluralism, was not based on spontaneous foresight. It was a response to decades of organised activism and collaboration within the ‘migrant Left’.