Is WA in line for another public holiday?

Western Australia is considering adding another public holiday to its calendar, with Premier Roger Cook confirming his department is conducting a review of the state’s public holiday arrangements.

With West Australians working on Monday while the rest of the country celebrates the “King’s birthday” – which takes place in September for us – Cook said the primary focus of the review was on better aligning public holidays with those over east, but an extra day was also being reviewed.

WA Premier Roger Cook.Credit: Tony McDonough

“As punters often remind me, we have fewer public holidays than they do on the east coast, I take that on board,” he said.

“I have an open mind as to what we might be acknowledging in our public holiday system.

“This isn’t a decision you take lightly, but I think what I’ve often heard from the business community is that they want to see better alignment between WA public holidays and the east coast public holidays, and that’s the primary focus for this review.”

Cook said the changes to the public holiday regime could take place as early as next year, but were more likely to come in 2027.

WA has the lowest number of public holidays per year at 11, while Victoria has 13 and the Northern Territory has 14.

Outside of national public holidays like Easter and Christmas, public holidays like Labor Day, the King’s Birthday and WA Day are all on different dates on the calendar compared to the rest of the country.

Last week’s WA Day public holiday was marked with little fanfare in the state, with the government again moving the WA Day festival to November when the weather is generally better.

According to Cook, this may be a sign of things to come.

“At the moment, we celebrate WA Day in the middle of winter, but we celebrate it in the spring, when we know the weather will be better,” he said.

“I think that gives us some pointers as to maybe some of the ways that we could align things.

“Why is it that we had a public holiday last weekend, but not this weekend, when they have a public holiday on the east coast?

“It’s just something I think we need to look at to see if there are extra elements of productivity that can be added into the process.”

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