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My take is it’s a great idea.
As I work in NSW in the public sector, I have noticed that Canberra and the ACT have a couple of extra ones.
No reason we can’t add a couple of extra nationally, and celebrate our diversity at the same time.
As the article suggests, Chinese New Year and Diwali are top of the list.
An Indigenous day would be a great idea too !
What are your thoughts?
For those in NZ, a look at your public holiday calendar is a good idea too.
Well I don't live there but I would encourage you all to go for it, and absolutely you MUST also include an Indigenous Day. The more public holidays and celebrations you have the better. I'm saying that based on our own experience here in Canada.
We have lots of public holidays or celebrations that are either federal, or provincial/territorial, or civic/municipal or what have you and we all love it. There are enough public holidays and other celebrations across most of the country to cover every month of the year and then plenty more. It brings more people and more cultures all meeting and sharing their cultures together and it's really good for the economy. It makes more people happy and excited when there are mutual celebrations to look forward to. I would always encourage all countries everywhere to do something similar along the same lines in their own countries.
Here are the things we have holidays, celebrations and observances for in our multi-multi-cultural society. You will have to scroll down to see them all and explanations of them.
My take is it’s a great idea.
As I work in NSW in the public sector, I have noticed that Canberra and the ACT have a couple of extra ones.
No reason we can’t add a couple of extra nationally, and celebrate our diversity at the same time.
As the article suggests, Chinese New Year and Diwali are top of the list.
An Indigenous day would be a great idea too !
What are your thoughts?
For those in NZ, a look at your public holiday calendar is a good idea too.
Public holidays for Diwali and Chinese New Year is the sort of thing that could only come out of a think tank. I'm not sure creating public holidays for religions, let alone for one where the number of believers is below 3% of the population, is a good thing, so that's Diwali out. And while Chinese New Year is nice it has absolutely no meaning for 90%+ of the population. We may as well add Italian Republic Day and Greek Independence Day to public holidays. You can celebrate diversity without having very culturally specific public holidays.
I think we should just make Australia Day the Monday of the last weekend of January or the first weekend of February. Everyone goes home happy.
Well I don't live there but I would encourage you all to go for it, and absolutely you MUST also include an Indigenous Day. The more public holidays and celebrations you have the better. I'm saying that based on our own experience here in Canada.
We have lots of public holidays or celebrations that are either federal, or provincial/territorial, or civic/municipal or what have you and we all love it. There are enough public holidays and other celebrations across most of the country to cover every month of the year and then plenty more. It brings more people and more cultures all meeting and sharing their cultures together and it's really good for the economy. It makes more people happy and excited when there are mutual celebrations to look forward to. I would always encourage all countries everywhere to do something similar along the same lines in their own countries.
Here are the things we have holidays, celebrations and observances for in our multi-multi-cultural society. You will have to scroll down to see them all and explanations of them.
How much extra do businesses have to pay staff to work on public holidays in Canada? My niece gets about $60 an hour to work as a barista at events if they are on a Sunday public holiday.
Celebrations are one thing but public holidays another, we already get twenty days of annual leave, ten days of sick/carer leave and also some get long service leave. Do we really need another cost to the economy to have a day off to celebrate something like Chinese New Year, which is relevant to perhaps 10% of the population and is already well celebrated on weekends?
Well I don't live there but I would encourage you all to go for it, and absolutely you MUST also include an Indigenous Day. The more public holidays and celebrations you have the better. I'm saying that based on our own experience here in Canada.
We have lots of public holidays or celebrations that are either federal, or provincial/territorial, or civic/municipal or what have you and we all love it. There are enough public holidays and other celebrations across most of the country to cover every month of the year and then plenty more. It brings more people and more cultures all meeting and sharing their cultures together and it's really good for the economy. It makes more people happy and excited when there are mutual celebrations to look forward to. I would always encourage all countries everywhere to do something similar along the same lines in their own countries.
Here are the things we have holidays, celebrations and observances for in our multi-multi-cultural society. You will have to scroll down to see them all and explanations of them.
Hmmm... about 3% of the population is Indigenous... we already have 12 public holidays a year.... so. cut one out for Indigeous ?....well I could cope with it...say ditch the Queens/Kings Birthday PH, call it whatever the current woke sorta terminology suits.... yep, great day off work to go fishing... bring it on !
The problem here is that even if the consensus becomes that it is better to move Australia Day, when would we have it. Federation happened on New Years Day, 1901, which is already a public holiday.
I am not aware of any unified Aboriginal celebration day, though someone may enlighten me.
It also will not work to proclaim something like Chinese New Year a public holiday as the ethnic composition of Australia is constantly changing. Even now, migration from India has overtaken that from China, the migrants from places like Italy and Greece are dying off.
But if we just abolish the holiday the unions will likely cause all sorts of trouble. The date works for families in NSW as it marks the end of the summer school vacation, but I notice that in QLD the kids went back to school last week.
How much extra do businesses have to pay staff to work on public holidays in Canada? My niece gets about $60 an hour to work as a barista at events if they are on a Sunday public holiday.
Celebrations are one thing but public holidays another, we already get twenty days of annual leave, ten days of sick/carer leave and also some get long service leave. Do we really need another cost to the economy to have a day off to celebrate something like Chinese New Year, which is relevant to perhaps 10% of the population and is already well celebrated on weekends?
Yes, but, the barista earning $60 an hour to work on Sundays and public holidays gets neither paid or unpaid annual leave or long service leave. The system as it currently is operating is letting an awful lot of labour productivity accrue to business while real wages go sideways.
I am not aware of any unified Aboriginal celebration day, though someone may enlighten me.
The first Sunday in July precedes the beginning of NAIDOC week. NAIDOC is an acronym for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. As we already have a June long weekend, shifting the Kings Birthday to the start of July and calling it the NAIDOC long weekend or whatever could be done. I'm not sure if we want a national holiday that is based around mourning though, rather than celebration.
My wife became an Australian citizen yesterday after living here for 17 years. I was half expecting protesters outside the citizenship ceremony the whole invasion day thing has gained so much traction.
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Happy Australia Day !!
You can celebrate diversity without having very culturally specific public holidays. 
