I know what you’re thinking. Suggesting we scrap public holidays in Australia sounds like absolute political suicide. We are a nation that prides itself on the long weekend. But before you reach for your pitchforks, hear me out.
I’m not suggesting we work more. I’m suggesting we work smarter, rest better, and completely overhaul a system that is fundamentally broken.
The public holiday calendar as we know it is a relic of a bygone era. It’s time we abolished it entirely—and replaced it with a guaranteed six weeks of annual leave for every Australian worker.
Here is why our current system doesn’t make sense anymore, and why this simple trade-off would be better for our economy, our regional towns, and our own well-being.
We Are Operating on an Outdated Calendar
Let’s look at Victoria as a prime example. Victorians get 13 public holidays a year. Of those, six are aligned with the Christian faith, one celebrates the King’s birthday (on a day that isn’t actually his birthday), and two are dedicated solely to sporting events.
In the 1970s, this made a bit more sense. Back in 1971, over 86% of the population identified as Christian. Today, that number has dropped to 43.9% and is steadily falling. Across all faiths, only 7% to 17% of Australians regularly attend religious services.
We are a vibrant, multicultural, and increasingly secular society. Millions of Australians observe Diwali, Eid, Lunar New Year, or Yom Kippur—yet our rigid calendar forces everyone to shut down for Easter and Christmas while offering zero formal flexibility for other cultural traditions.
The Long Weekend Mirage
We love to think that long weekends are a massive boost for regional tourism, but the reality on the ground is often chaotic.
When an entire capital city decides to flee to the coast or the country on the exact same Friday afternoon, regional infrastructure buckles. Sure, accommodation providers might love the surge, often jacking up the price of a bed for the weekend. But for the local cafes, pubs, and retail shops, it’s a different story.
Small towns simply don’t have the massive pool of staff required to cater to these dramatic, sudden influxes. Combined with the crushing burden of public holiday penalty rates, many small businesses are forced to simply lock their doors. Instead of a relaxing getaway, tourists are left queuing for an hour just to get a coffee.
The Hidden Economic Toll
If governments are genuinely serious about improving national productivity, modernising our leave system is an easy win.
Every time the economy is forced into a mandated shutdown for a public holiday, it costs the Australian economy between $15 billion and $25 billion annually.
And then there are the unintended behavioral consequences. Take the Melbourne Cup public holiday, which lands on a Tuesday. Without fail, businesses across the state brace for the inevitable wave of “sickies” or Monday annual leave requests as workers engineer their own four-day weekends. This creates massive operational friction and leaves remaining staff overworked.
The Solution: Weeks Annual Leave
The answer isn’t to strip Australians of their right to rest. The answer is to give them total sovereignty over when they take it.
By rolling our 10 to 13 public holidays into our National Employment Standards, we could bump standard annual leave from four weeks up to six weeks.
This is the ultimate win-win compromise:
- True Cultural Inclusion: Workers of all faiths and backgrounds can use their leave for the spiritual, cultural, or family events that actually matter to them.
- Smoother Tourism: Families can spread their holidays out throughout the year. Regional towns would benefit from a steady, manageable stream of year-round tourism rather than buckling under frantic, three-day invasions.
- Better Business Productivity: The economy doesn’t violently start and stop 13 times a year. Small businesses don’t get punished by arbitrary penalty rates, and the “Tuesday holiday sickie” becomes a thing of the past.
- Personal Freedom: Want to take a random week off in August to go camping when it’s cheap and quiet? With six weeks up your sleeve, you can.
It is time to move past a rigid, top-down, one-size-fits-all calendar. Let’s give Australians the flexibility, autonomy, and modern leave entitlements they actually deserve.
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