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Jacinda Ardern joined by Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis in Rotorua for a tourism industry meeting.
Labor will make the 12th Matariki New Zealand public holiday starting in 2022 if re-elected, Labor leader Jacinda Ardern announced.
The new winter holiday would fall sometime during the Matariki period, with the expectation that it would always occur on a Monday or Friday.
The announcement of the policy follows a series of public campaigns for Matariki, which acts as the Maori New Year, to be recognized.
The exact timing of Matariki changes every year when it comes to the reappearance of a star cluster and has traditionally varied between Iwi.
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Monique Ford / Stuff
There have been increasing requests for Matariki to be celebrated as a public holiday.
It would be the first new public holiday since the Third Labor Government made Waitangi Day a public holiday in 1973, although then-Prime Minister Norman Kirk called it “New Zealand Day.”
“Matariki will be a distinctive New Zealand holiday and a time for reflection, celebration and looking to the future as we take more and more pride in our unique national identity,” Ardern said.
He said the struggling tourism sector might need the help of another holiday, pointing to the “long term” without public holidays that currently occurs between the queen’s birthday in early June and Labor Day in late October.
“We don’t have a lot of legal holidays compared to other OECD countries and it would be nice to break in the long term over the winter,” Ardern said.
Labor would postpone the rollout until 2022 to give companies time to overcome the Covid-19 hit and prepare for another holiday.
He’s also interested in consulting a team of experts to get the exact date, said Labor Deputy Leader Kelvin Davis.
“We will work with the Matariki experts to design and determine the appropriate dates for the holiday, but we hope it will always fall on Monday or Friday,” Davis said.
Matariki would be the first new holiday since Waitangi Day and the first direct expansion of paid holidays for all New Zealanders since the last Labor government added another annual holiday week in the early 2000s. A bill from Labor Party members “Monday” on both Waitangi Day and Anzac Day in 2013.
The Tourism Industry Association has called for a new “one-time” holiday to help them overcome Covid-19, while the Association of Employers and Manufacturers has opposed such a call. NZ First has also made clear its opposition to a new holiday.
National leader Judith Collins was asked about support for making Matariki a public holiday on Monday.
She was not directly opposed to the idea, saying that many on her “team” thought it was a good idea, but said companies would be wary of any additional costs at this time.
“The problem is that it’s another public holiday that companies have to pay for,” Collins said.
“We see that large companies have to get rid of a lot of staff. We are going to have many vacations for people who weren’t looking for ”.
New Zealand currently has 11 public holidays, including regional anniversary days as a single public holiday. Four of them sit within the Christmas / New Years period.
This is fewer paid holidays than 18 other OECD countries, but more than 12 others.
