Luke Simpkins, member of Australian Parliament from the ruling Liberal Party, was harshly critical in Parliament on Tuesday, following a letter from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in which she said that Australia will continue to address Macedonia under the temporary reference name “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”.
Bishop gave her response ten days ago, after an organization representing ethnic Macedonians living in western Australia asked her and the Tony Abbott Government, to change the long held Australian position, which is influenced by pressure from ethnic Greek Australians. The negative response from Bishop angered the Macedonian community in Australia, and Simpkins, who represents a district in Perth with a significant Macedonian community, expressed this outrage.
The issue I speak of is that of the failure of successive Federal governments to call the Republic of Macedonia by its constitutional name. On every occasion that the ‘name issue’ comes up with those Australians of Macedonian heritage, some 100,000, they feel insulted by this country’s continued use of the term, ‘former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’. Yugoslavia itself ceased to exist some 20 years ago and our country continues to be locked in the past. There is no doubt that both sides of Australian politics are ultimately fearful that this one issue will somehow galvanise the Australian Greek community into a block vote against whoever makes this change to recognise the Republic of Macedonia. Of course there are a handful of Australians of Greek heritage that do contact MPs talking about how many votes would be lost by whoever made such a change, but it remains a handful and despite the talking, there are not enough people that would vote only on this issue to affect the result in a single electorate. It is tragic that literally a handful of nationalists can exert such power as to control the foreign policy of this nation”, Simpkins told Parliament.
Simpkins acknowledged that most Greek Australians are not captive by this paranoid fear that, if Australia would use the Macedonian constitutional name, Greece would somehow lose part of its territory. But, Simpkins added, a small and vocal group of Greek nationalists maintains this pressure, and makes sure that Australia remains in a very small group of nations that continue to use the interim reference to refer to Macedonia. This pressure, Simpkins said, keeps Australia on the other side of the issue from its traditional allies like the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Simpkins points out that Greece has made it clear it has no intention to solve the name issue, makes no concessions in the discussions, fails to respect the verdict of the International Court of Justice, and even has designs to cause instability in the region, as evidenced by the statement made by former Prime Minister Andonis Samaras that for Greece the best solution to the issue would be if Macedonia fell apart in interethnic strife. In her letter, addressed to Chris Angelkov, Vice President of the Macedonian Community in Western Australia organization, Minister Bishop writes that Australia will continue to use the temporary reference contained in the 1995 Interim Accord.
