Carnevale Festival Funding

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:17): My question is to the minister assisting the Premier. Has the assistant minister ever had discussions with Mr Mario Romaldi? I remind the assistant minister to the Premier that Mr Romaldi resigned from SAMEAC because of inappropriate remarks he placed on Facebook. Has the assistant minister ever had discussions with Mr Romaldi about providing funding to support an Italian festival that he would be involved in managing?

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:18): I thank the honourable member for his continuous interest in multicultural affairs and the matter relating to the meeting I had recently with Mario Romaldi as well as George Belperio. The meeting was not just to discuss funding. The meeting was to update me about, potentially, what the Italian community as a whole would like to do with the Carnevale festival.

To inform the honourable member, Carnevale was supposed to hold a festival in 2018, but that was not organised by the community at all because of a lack of capacity and resources to manage the festival. So the Italian community have broadly discussed who is going to be the next organisation that will take over the Carnevale Italian festival. But there was no funding promised at all to Mario Romaldi or George at this point because the government of South Australia would like to support what the Italian community wants to do, but it is a matter for the Italian community to decide which organisation will manage the festival going forward.