Tony Birch

And I think the fact that Christos has talked about this and written about it shows a great integrity in him to be self-critical in that way.

And I think he's overly self-critical, by the way.

Yeah, I think that sense of shame is... I understand it, but he need not feel it to that degree because I think his politics is wonderful and his writing is wonderful.

But I would say that it is partly its age, but I think it's partly the migrant experience that...

I think the time that Christos would have gone to university, there's this enormous pressure on the kids of migrants initially to assimilate and to feel assimilated and to be accepted.

And I think Christos would have gone through that very strongly.

But I think like a lot of other migrant families and a lot of migrant kids, Christos has come back to really appreciate deeply his, for want of a better term, his Greekness of growing up in a Greek-Australian family.

And many of my friends from high school, either of a Greek or Italian background, as they've grown older, they've actually gone back to really valuing what it is that they value.

They clearly are Australian and they understand the values that have helped their kids get on, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think they now affirm their, for want of a better term, their ethnic self more than they had when they were younger.

So I just think it's part of the enormous pressure

put on people to be homogenous and I think the last thing we need in a country like Australia is that homogeneity.

I think we need to appreciate difference.

In my case, I think what I was always saved by is that I grew up in a house and a family and a community that understood

diversity in the truest sense.

I understood that in my extended family, I can literally talk about either blood or married relations who are Aboriginal from Barbados, from Malta, from Ireland, from the UK.

from other parts of the world, from India.

I have my great-grandfather by marriage is from the Punjab.

So I always lived in a really diverse family.

So I didn't feel a need to escape that in any way.