Today is a public holiday in the ACT. Behind that statement lies years of political pettiness. Let’s begin our story decades ago, when most people worked under an industrial award. While these were many and varied, they had common features. Depending on your particular industry, you got an extra holiday every year. Public sector employees got the day after Boxing Day - they still do. Finance sector employees got a Bank Holiday in early August - they still do. And everybody else - the factory workers and builders and bus drivers and shop attendants - had Trade Union Picnic Day. The trade unions took over a park and organised barbecues, with games and ice cream for the children. It was a family day out, in an era when not many people owned cars and a day off to enjoy with the family was not common. As we all got better paid, we all got cars, and people used their day off for their own family outing instead of joining the union day. By the late 1980s the picnic day was in the sights of employers. It was a paid day off, and it cost lots in penalty rates if employers wanted to keep their business open. During the 1990s, successive ACT governments removed the day and reinstated it, depending on their political affiliation. It got so petty that when John Howard embarked on his ill-fated overreach of Work Choices in 2004, he included a section that made it illegal to have a trade union picnic day in the ACT. The ACT had the last word, though: it had the power to declare public holidays. The (by now) Labor government introduced an additional public holiday for the ACT, to entrench picnic day. But picnic day had lost its appeal in its original form. It was also in early March, when we were already celebrating Canberra Day. Easter was soon after, and then Anzac Day. The calendar was already crowded with holidays in the first four months. For a while the holiday moved to Melbourne Cup Day on the first Tuesday in November. It made some sense since most offices and businesses had a big boozy lunch for the Cup anyway. But it led to a de facto long weekend - take the Monday off and you got 4 days off work. Then it moved to the end of September, labelled Family and Community Day. But that wasn’t popular either, since we already had the first Monday in October as a long weekend. Finally, it moved to the end of May, and changed its purpose. Now it marks the start of Reconciliation Week, and commemorates efforts to bring indigenous and non-indigenous Australians together. It occurs in the week that runs from the date of the 1967 referendum to the date of the Mabo decision. In its new guise it is a worthy addition to the calendar, and finally disposes of the decades of pettiness that have led us to this holiday.
Chris Erskine’s Post
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10moGreat summary, Chris!