September 25. Day 268. The Italian Job

It's rare for a politician, even a former one, to talk openly about wanting to be booted out. Santo Santoro, however, is ready to take one for the team. The former Howard Government minister is a now lobbyist and president of the
 Festitalia Committee. It's the latter he'd be happy to hand on. At a sumptuous launch of the festival at the Treasury Hotel this evening, Mr Santoro said Brisbane needed the festival but the festival didn't need him.
"One of my biggest challenges at the moment is to find a successor.
"When you come to the festival, you'll see it's full of young people and I would hope half a dozen of them, hopefully 20 of them get the bug and say 'we're Italian, we're going to perpetuate this. When the oldies move out we're going to move in'. I'll ask for a bit of warning and pad my backside and they can boot me out."
Mr Santoro said Brisbane's Italian community had always held large community celebrations gathering on mass in places such as New Farm park to mark saints' days. But a more secular and outward celebration of all things Italian was a more recent invention. Festilalia, with the backing of the Italian Consul, began its life in Spencer Park at Newmarket last year. This year its back, bigger and better on October 8. Mr Santaro said Brisbane was more than ready to celebrate the influence of its Italian migrants.
"It's not just ready. It's overdue," he said pointing to the fact that just about every suburb has its Italian restaurant.
This festival IS about food but much more
"It's basically a manifestation of culture, food, dance, singing and historical spectacle like flag throwing," he said.
Tickets to the festival are available from the Festitalia website. As someone who never met a pasta variety I didn't like, I might just see you there.