Exclusive: A national disability exhibition organiser who took thousands of dollars in payments from stallholders never even finalised booking the venue, it can be revealed.
River Night, behind Developing Australian Communities, has run a series of successful expos, boasting on his website that he is behind “the largest events for the disability and NDIS sector ever seen in Australia’s history”.
However, when disability providers arrived to start setting up at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on Thursday, they discovered that the event was off.
The Victorian Convention and Event Trust said in a statement that “the deposit was never paid and the booking was not confirmed”.
“We have made several attempts to contact the event organiser to support the successful delivery of the event and received no response,” a spokeswoman said.
A Sydney exhibition for October 23 and 24 has been cancelled according to the ICC Sydney website.
The statement said: “Please be advised that due to unforeseen circumstances, the Sydney Disability Connection Expo is not proceeding at ICC Sydney this year.”
Both centres asked people impacted to direct their enquiries to Developing Communities Australia.
This masthead was unable to get hold of founder of the company, Mr Night, who has autism, and is a self-declared disability advocate, appearing on TV shows including The Project.
There are now concerns as to the future of the company, with people wanting to know what’s going on.
James Loveday, who was meant to be manning a stall in Melbourne this weekend, had also booked two nights in a hotel as he was travelling from out of town.
He said he was annoyed the organiser had gone quiet and not alerted people to the fact it wasn’t going to be running before everyone started turning up.
“In theory it is going to cost the company upwards of $12,000, if you think about paying for the stall, two nights accommodation and weekend rates for staff,” Mr Loveday said.
“Two weeks ago we got an email reminding us about our stalls, confirming it was going ahead. In relation to the upsell we had someone call a staff member asking whether we wanted to buy a banner to go above the stall which would have cost another $2000.”
Mr Loveday said the event is free to people with a disability, but he was concerned that some people would have spent their NDIS funds on transport to get to the event.
“Those are the people I am more concerned about,” Mr Loveday said.
Just two weeks ago, a Developing Australian Communities Facebook post on October 1, was advertising for events in Brisbane and Perth.
“Booth space is running out FAST !!!”, the post said, and calling for providers to buy space at events in Brisbane and Perth in November and Brisbane next May.
“Want to showcase your services at Australia’s biggest Disability Connection Expo, but thought you couldn’t afford it? Think again,” the post read.
“We’ve just introduced our new 2m x 3m Budget Booths – specifically designed to give incredible smaller providers, passion-led startups, and budget-conscious innovators the platform they deserve.”
It is not known whether any of the other events advertised have also been cancelled.