Australia Day work option is gathering steam

Major companies including Telstra have introduced policies that allow staff to work the Australia Day public holiday and take another day off instead.

Employees at major Australian companies have the choice to work on Australia Day and use a day in lieu at a later date.

Some of the nation’s biggest companies have begun offering their staff the opportunity to skip the Australia Day public holiday, in what advocates see as growing support for changing the date.

Major companies including Telstra and Woodside Energy have introduced new policies allowing staff to work on January 26 and take off another day of their choosing instead.

Similar policies have also been instituted inside consulting giants Deloitte, KPMG and EY.

The Australian on Monday revealed Ten Network’s chief content officer Beverley McGarvey had written to staff to inform them they could substitute the holiday, which she said was “not a day of celebration”.

The upcoming Australia Day holiday will be the first in which Telstra employees will be able to choose whether to work on Australia Day after voting on the matter earlier this year.

“Our employees have the choice to work on Australia Day and take leave on another day. This flexibility is built into the Enterprise Agreements our employees voted on earlier this year,” a Telstra spokeswoman said.

Woodside, meanwhile, introduced flexible public holidays in January this year as a trial for its non-rostered employees in Australia. That trial has been deemed a success and is being rolled out globally in the new year.

“With regard to Australia Day, we acknowledge and respect the diversity of views on the issue,” a spokeswoman for the oil and gas producer said.

“To this end, our flexible work arrangements support our employees to choose how they wish to recognise this public holiday.”

The push for more flexibility around the controversial date will empower workers to decide for themselves when they wish to take a day off.

Employees at biotechnology heavyweight CSL have been able to make a choice about January 26 in recent years, although a spokeswoman said the proportion of workers who opt out of the public holiday was “not statistically significant”.

Similarly, BHP has in recent years allowed staff in office roles to discuss their preferences for the day with their leaders. Those working on fly-in fly-out rosters are also able to make requests around the date.

“We recognise our workforce has mixed emotions about January 26 and what it represents to all Australians, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” a BHP spokeswoman said.

“We need to ensure the cultures of all Australians are respected, acknowledged and appreciated every day.

“Across our Australian teams, there are opportunities to discuss what the date means to different people. This has been an important part of engaging with our workforce, and more broadly, traditional owner and Indigenous communities.”

Deloitte, KPMG and EY all have policies allowing workers to opt out of a limited number of public holidays each year.

“KPMG’s cultural leave policy allows people to swap an existing public holiday with a different day, so they can recognise and celebrate religious or significant events relevant to their culture, Indigenous heritage or religious beliefs. This also applies to Australia Day,” a spokeswoman for the company said.

Australia’s biggest ethical investment manager, Australian Ethical, was an early mover on Australia Day. A spokeswoman said staff have had the option to work on January 26 for the past five years.

“As the national conversation continues to be debated, we think it’s important to acknowledge that 26 January doesn’t represent an inclusive day for everyone, so we hope that a constructive conversation can continue with Indigenous … groups to find a suitable day to celebrate,” she said.

“We know this isn’t a solution, but we take it as a sign of solidarity with the First Nations people. We also know that many of our staff will still choose to have 26 January off to fit in with their family and friends’ plans, and that’s OK too, but we support our employees’ choices to change the date they celebrate Australia.”

Brad Pettitt was the mayor of the City of Fremantle in 2017 when it became the first council in Australia to scrap its Australia Day celebrations. That move sparked nationwide controversy and drew strong criticism from the then Coalition federal government. Mr Pettitt now sits in the WA parliament’s upper house for the Greens, and has a longstanding policy in his office to allow staff to work on January 26.

He says that seeing so many major companies instituting similar policies represented a fundamental shift in the debate and was a clear sign of the growing momentum for shifting the day.

“My sense is that as a country, change is coming,” he said. “It’s coming slowly, but it will be small moves like this, by giving individuals the choice, which will just take us further on that path to what I think is probably an inevitable change.”

The Albanese government last week announced that local governments would now be able to hold citizenship ceremonies for three days before and after Australia Day, unwinding restrictions introduced by the Coalition in 2017 which restricted councils to holding those ceremonies only on January 26.

Opposition immigration and citizenship spokesman Dan Tehan said the Albanese government had failed to stand up to green-left councils in support of Australia Day.

“As wholly anticipated, employers have walked straight through the open door and begun to diminish Australia Day like Greens and Labor councils,” Mr Tehan said.