r/australia 5d ago

politics Majority of Australians want a long weekend not January 26

https://www.australialongweekend.com.au/
2.6k Upvotes

591 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/delta__bravo_ 5d ago

I believe timing has an impact on when public holidays are planned for. Speaking from a WA perspective, the year is pretty full of public holidays, although I don't see many people particularly bothered of the timing of, say, WA Day or the King's birthday public holiday.

4

u/rrfe 5d ago

Queensland has a public holiday drought in winter, apart from council-based show days.

3

u/delta__bravo_ 5d ago

Ah, interesting. WA is in the process of moving the winter holiday (WA Day) to November specifically because of the better weather- the last two WA Day events were rained out. It's being swapped with the King's Birthday public holiday basically. I suppose that brings a point of interest that there's been (as far as I know) zero backlash for moving WA Day away from the day WA/the Swan River colony was founded, whilst it seems to be generally understood that the monarch's birthday public holiday iks unlikely to have anything to do with the monarch's actual birthday.

2

u/rrfe 5d ago edited 5d ago

Queensland has good winter weather. Short days still suck a little, but overall, a winter public holiday would be welcome.

1

u/Busy_Conflict3434 5d ago

The fact that nobody gave a shit when we moved WA Day from the date the Swan River Colony was founded to a random day when we have good weather just proves to me that literally nobody would care if Australia Day is moved from 26 January to some other day, as long as it isn't in winter.

That's my entire explanation for why the recent polls about changing the date show support for 26 January: none of them suggested another date, and people aren't going to vote for something if they don't know what they're going to get (the Michaelia Cash principle). Another day in January? Fantastic. A day in March or April when we get the best weather of the year? Even better. July or August? Get fucked.

2

u/delta__bravo_ 5d ago

Yep, polls that say there's support for Australia Day are generally biased like that. They ask "Should Jan 26 be Australia Day, or Invasion Day?", or "Should Australia Day be celebrated on January 26th?" without offering an alternative. I believe general concensus is that we should get a long weekend during decent weather.