Don’t just tinker with Anzac Day. What about our other public holidays?

It doesn’t feel right to be talking about public holidays at this time of year. Summer? Now that’s a different story. As soon as the Christmas trees come down, the January 26 debate begins. Next, it’s Good Friday’s turn, as non-believers take their stations to be cross about closed bottle shops.

After the King’s Birthday, the calendar is clear until the October long weekend, followed by the annual grumble about how many holidays Victoria seems to have.

But the midwinter discourse drought was broken this week, when NSW Premier Chris Minns announced changes to retail trading restrictions on Anzac Day from 2025. The change, campaigned for by the retail workers union, will see the restriction on trade before 1pm extended to the entire day.

Minns said this would make sure veterans were “recognised and free to take part in services throughout the day”, not just dawn services.

“It might be inconvenient for a few hours, but closing our biggest corporate shops for a single day is a small price to pay for living in a free and open democracy,” he added.

Critics were quick to point out that, even if we were to shun Westfield in gratitude that Man in the High Castle was only fiction, pubs and clubs would still be open, as well as a long list of retailers exempt from the state’s public holiday trading restrictions.

Is it fair to say that the afternoon where you drink like a fish in the Dardanelles Strait is an appropriate commemoration of the nation’s military history, but the one where you visit three different shopping centres looking for the city’s last bottle of golden syrup to make Anzac biscuits is not?

Amid opposition to a national holiday on January 26, Anzac Day has emerged as something of a de facto national day, particularly for younger Australians, who – only a generation ago – cared little about the day, or shunned it on anti-war grounds.

Go to a pub on April 25 and you’ll see huge crowds of people in their 20s and 30s playing two-up. For those who have decided January 26 is not a date to celebrate, Anzac Day has stepped in. And, like all public holidays worth their salt, Anzac Day is being observed in the customary way, with a polarised debate about whether something is “un-Australian”.

It all begs the question: In 2024, what is a public holiday for? Are they a workers’ entitlement, in which case the shops can be open, provided those who are working in them are being adequately compensated for going without their day off?

Or are they a community celebration, where we expect people to act a certain way, and do certain things? Where certain ways of spending the day might be viewed as inappropriate or inconsiderate?

I am uniquely unqualified to have an opinion about this or, indeed, about anything much to do with public holidays because I have contracted out of them: media workers usually forgo public holidays for extra days of annual leave, so the sleepless news can be published all year round.

But even I, someone who celebrates most public holidays by missing a train she didn’t realise would be running on a Sunday timetable, can see the growing controversy around public holidays – where they fall, their names, and what one can and can’t do on them – points to a lack of social cohesion.

NSW’s 11 public holidays were first placed on the calendar decades, if not centuries, ago.

More than half are tied to Western-rite Christian celebrations. But in the 2021 census, 12 per cent of people in the state were members of a non-Christian religion, and 33 per cent did not have a religion at all.

The 48 per cent of people in the state who said they did belong to a Christian denomination includes those who are Orthodox, and observe these holidays on different dates.

With more people choosing to not recognise Australia Day on its current date, an increasing number of employers, including tech giant Canva and consulting firm PwC, now give staff the option to work January 26 in exchange for an alternative day off.

Could the public holidays on Good Friday, Easter Monday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day be better used by some communities if they were four days of cultural leave, able to be accessed at any time by people of any – or no – creed? If a public holiday is a worker’s entitlement, should it not be of equal value to all workers?

I am describing a logistical nightmare, of course. Universal public holidays allow extended families to catch up, Cricket Australia to schedule Test matches, and payroll officers to avoid nervous breakdowns. These are clearly the ramblings of a woman who doesn’t have public holidays.

We could always take the same route as India, which turned a swath of religious festivals – Christmas, Diwali, Eid al-Fitr – into its 17 public holidays. But where do you draw the line? In a diverse society, is it possible – or even desirable – to find a set of observances in which everyone will take part?

I will end with the one thing that even I, a public holiday conscientious objector, know to be true: The golden syrup you used to make Anzac biscuits last year is still good. That stuff never goes off.

Mary Ward is a reporter at The Sun-Herald.

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