a) Especie oxidante 0,2 puntos a) Especie reductora 0,2 puntos.

Councillor Dimitrios Thanos (DT), who had been elected mayor of

Marrickville after the signing of the sister city agreement with Bethlehem, had

been the only councillor to oppose the initiative. Cr. Thanos’ profile on the

website of the Marrickville City Council noted that he had worked in a

professional capacity with indigenous communities and “continues to take time

from his own practice each year to volunteer his professional services to

remote communities around Australia”. We met in the mayoral office, where

he situated his opposition to the proposal within the wider context of his

disillusionment with the sister city model, as he had personally observed it in

practice.

DT: I wouldn’t say that I’m against sister cities. I’m against the existing model that exits in Marrickville. I was once a supporter of sister cities

generally, because I believed that it fostered friendship between communities, gave opportunities to open up different sorts of cultural experiences between communities in different continents, and all the usual jargon that comes along with sister cities. I was a believer at one stage.

The event that had prompted Mayor Thanos to re-evaluate his support for sister

city programs was the same one that Cr. Iskandar had identified as confirming

in his mind the peace building capacity of the sister city model. However, DT’s

conclusion had been that the sister cities visit had ultimately emerged as a

pointless exercise that had drained scarce council funds from other, more

pressing activities.

DT: I voted against it on the grounds that we have seven sister cities and none of them are functional and why create another one. I went on a sister city trip to Lanarca in Cyprus and Safita in Syria. It was one trip and we made two

sister cities. And I heard the usual rhetoric – oh, it’s not going to be an agreement on paper alone, we’re going to set up student exchange programs, sports exchange programs, we’re going to set up email and pen-pal exchanges between schools, cultural exchange, artists’ exchange programs, stuff like that, and none of that has happened. The Australians were saying it and so were the Syrians. Everyone was saying the usual stuff: we’re going to set up all these programs and aren’t we going to be fantastic, and we were going to foster friendship between our communities, and it just doesn’t happen.

BL: Why doesn’t it happen, do you think?

DT: It’s budgeting. You need a significant budget to set up these programs and you need an employee who is dedicated to those tasks. And it’s a really low priority item when you’re talking about budgeting in relations to matters that matter to the public that lives here. People are more concerned with local issues as opposed to international issues when it comes to local government and I agree with that point of view. I don’t want to spend a hundred thousand dollars a year on sister city programs when that hundred thousand dollars a year can go into programs for senior citizens, like a cultural centre, so they have somewhere to go, somewhere to read a paper, enjoy companionship between friends, meet new friends, set up things like programs for schools that senior citizens can go to as well; woodwork programs, things like that. We have so many things that we should be spending money on for local residents, that sister cities comes with a very low priority.

DT had other reasons for feeling discomfited by the trip. In his view,

expectations raised at a higher political scale were confounded by budgetary

constraints, limiting Marrickville’s capacity to fulfil the reciprocity norms that

help sustain the city model in practice. He explained that the sister city

relationship between Marrickville and Safita had been initiated at the

international rather than local scale of politics in Syria, and that this had had

significant ramifications for the resources that each partner was prepared to

DT: With Safita, the Syrian government requested that we set up some sort of agreement. I don’t know why they selected Marrickville council. The embassy staff knew some of the councillors and spoke with them here and that’s why they set it up. But see, Syria’s got political reasons for wanting to engage the West and their view of sister cities is, if they can engage us on that level, it bypasses the federal blocks that exist on any dealings with Safita, Syria. My problem with all that is that the Syrians view sister city agreements seriously, and councillors take advantage of that.

Furthermore, the high level of hospitality that Cr. Iskandar had interpreted as a

demonstration of friendship and honour was for Cr. Thanos a source of

considerable embarrassment.

DT: On the trip to Syria, we were treated like royalty. We were taken around all of Syria, we were given five star, seven star treatment; that’s the best hotels, the best food. We were driven around, we had a police escort. They closed down streets in Damascus so we could get through without problems of traffic and stuff like that, and I find it embarrassing. I find it embarrassing that we cannot reciprocate to the level that the Syrians would like, and their purposes go a lot deeper than our councillors, which is pretty much, it’s a junket. People paid for their own airfares, but while we were over there, we didn’t spend a dollar. I went there with money, expecting to pay for hotels, to pay for my own meals and so on and I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. When we were going through the streets of Damascus I went into some shops and the Syrian handlers were coming in and they were going to pay for things that I may have wanted, and I was like “it’s not..!” [Holds hands up in mock defensive gesture and laughs uncomfortably.] … All our passes to

archaeological sites, everything was covered. It was just done. And I find that embarrassing. We can’t reciprocate at that level. They view these international agreements much more seriously than we do.

DT: Well you see, Syria is being boycotted by the West and they want to create an image of tolerance to the West, and of inclusion. And Syria is a fantastic place, mind you. I mean the Western view of Syria is that they’re fundamentalists and they’re not. They’re probably one of the more moderate Muslim states in the Middle East and they want Westerners to see this …Their foreign minister has come here and we actually put something on in the main hall when she was here. It was very nice and very good to have such a

relationship with them, but really, I’m embarrassed. We cannot reciprocate the level of care that they took.

For Cr. Thanos, sister city relationships optimally involved interactions

between ordinary citizens of diverse communities, with councillors playing

only a supportive role at the local level. In his estimation, the rhetoric

surrounding the sister city concept will remain at the level of rhetoric so long

as it is councillors rather than citizens who do the travelling.

DT: I’d prefer a model in which things happen between the communities that doesn’t involve just councillors travelling abroad. Everybody looks for an excuse to justify their going abroad on council business. And the fact is that no-one needs to travel abroad on council business in their function as councillor or as mayor. I’ve got no problem against Palestinian people, although a lot of people tried to portray me as such when I was voting against it. I’d support a concerned Palestinian group that believes very strongly in Palestinian issues to go over there and have an exchange of ideas and experiences with the people who actually live in Bethlehem. That’s what engenders friendship between communities. And those people who go over there come back. They speak to their friends about their experiences. It’s not council going over the top of everyone. That’s how you build relationships and foster friendship, not by the elected councillors going once every couple of years abroad.

While Councillor Iskandar and Jennifer had primarily valued local opinion, DT

was also concerned about the reaction of the media and people outside the

Marrickville local government area to the Bethlehem proposal, and of

opposition to the idea of sister cities in general. I asked him whether he thought

media reports of a shocked public reaction had been exaggerated.

DT: There was a shock reaction, not probably so much from locals, but there was a very large response from the media. I got 2UE and 2 GB and everyone. People were interested, people were calling the radio stations, local residents, telling them what they thought of councillors creating new sister cities. It was a very negative reaction from the public in creating new sister cities,

especially such as political city in Palestine. Mind you, I don’t have a problem with Palestine per se, I’ve got a problem with the fact the sister city

agreements are non-functional; there hasn’t been any positive exchange or nothing positive has actually come out of them. And until council actually decides to fund the sister cities program, I won’t have a bar of it.

In his capacity as mayor, DT was untroubled by the demarcation aspect of

criticisms directed against Marrickville councillors by Federal politicians over

the sister city agreement, but he was concerned about issues of substantiation

and the reputational risk that the comments by the Foreign Minister had

engendered for Marrickville council.

BL: Alexander Downer has made a statement about the Bethlehem link apparently, that Marrickville council is foolish to associate itself with people that support terrorist organisations. What would be your response to this sort of intervention in local government affairs?

DT: Well I’m sure Alexander Downer would have said that it’s local

government intervening in international affairs! Saying that someone supports terrorism is an easy thing to do. I don’t know how true that is. I’m not saying

that Alexander Downer is making it up, but my understanding is that that people who were here do not endorse terrorism and don’t endorse terrorist acts. That’s a very big statement by the former Foreign Minister. If the former Minister does have solid information, then he can present it to council and councillors will make up their minds. It’s very easy to make a statement and tarnish someone’s reputation, whether they’ve got evidence or not and I’d rather see something backed by evidence as opposed to just a broad, sweeping statement like that.

DT acknowledged that some sister city relationships are more active than

others, but considered that the kinds of activities they promote, such as school

exchanges, do not go far enough to empower all members of each international

city as potential participants.

DT: There are some functional sister cities. I mean, the Japanese tend to take these things seriously and put a lot of effort into them. It’s not that far, so I think they set up exchange programs amongst the schools. But I’m not aware of any sister city agreements that have substantial community exchanges, and therefore fostering world peace and harmony. If you don’t get the community involved, you’re not fostering anything. If it’s just an excuse for councillors to go abroad and come back and say what wonderful things they learned, well that’s not enough. Either citizens go, get involved, community organisations that involve the citizens, and have exchange between them and overseas, as well as the government exchange, as well as the bureaucratic exchange, or there’s just no point to them. And what do you budget for? Do you budget for the needs of the elderly, or do you budget for something that is really the domain of the Federal government under the Foreign Minister?

BL: So you see these sorts of issues as outside…

DT: They’re outside the normal function of council. It’s not core business of council - it’s an addition to it. And it’s great in theory, but whether it works or not is a different story altogether. If you ask me out of all the sister cities which ones we should have, well, if we’re genuine in terms of social justice,

we would say the Palestinian one and probably the Syrian one. The rest, I’m looking at them and saying, fair enough, they were made, they were

developed with good intentions, but whether or not there’s something genuine to be gained out of them is a different issue altogether. The ones with serious political connotations, like Palestine, like Safita, you also need funding for things like that to work, and if funding is not forthcoming, then we meed to think seriously about what we are doing in creating new sister cities.

Unusually for an opponent of sister city relationships, Mayor Thanos had

specifically identified politically motivated relationships as the most worthy

and authentic expression of the sister cities concept. In explaining his position,

he drew on a version of the Eisenhower story, and cited links that had been

fostered between U.S. and Soviet cities created during the Cold War. He also

considered the tripartite sister city arrangement suggested by some opponents

of the Olympia-Rafah sister city project to constitute a means of avoiding

divisive political partisanship at the level of local governance.

BL: So the fact that they are politically sensitive is a reason for pursuing them in your opinion?

DT: Yes. Sister cities were developed by Eisenhower’s wife when he was President. And the reason for the first sister cities - I can’t remember which ones they were, but there was one in Russia and one in America during the height of the Cold War. It was set up in a way that it was a low level contact, so that there could be cultural exchanges and political exchanges between the Soviet Union and the United States of America at a very low level, and that way, create friendship and understanding between communities, and therefore, hopefully, avoid a nuclear disaster. That’s the philosophy and rationale behind that and if we hope to follow through to today, well then you’d pick controversial sister cities so you could have cultural exchange. And another thing, if you’re going to pick one side, why not pick a town on the other side? So we’ve got an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, well, fine with Bethlehem, let’s pick a Jewish township and have a sister city agreement with

them as well … You can create quite a statement by making a sister city, just as what happened with Bethlehem in Palestine. The councillors who

supported it wanted to make a political statement and that statement reverberated all around Australia.

Again citing financial constraints, Mayor Thanos went on to express scepticism

regarding the currently widely expressed argument that economically focused

sister city relationships, in particular with Chinese cities, could benefit local

councils and urban communities.

DT: I question whether or not agreements between councils do actually create a financial, economic advantage. I don’t see how that’s going to create

business interests between China and Australia. That’s something that’s above the level of council. Economic benefit requires economic policy, which is the domain of the state and federal governments. For council to create business opportunities, well councils like Marrickville do not have enough a big enough budget to actually set aside money to create investment opportunities. Businesses follow profit, and if they see a business opportunity here in Australia, they’ll be here whether there’s a sister city agreement or not. Business has been going on for so many centuries; it hasn’t needed sister city agreements.