What it would take to make Diwali a public holiday in Australia

On 22 October 2025, the New South Wales Legislative Council agreed to a motion recognising Diwali. The Minutes of Proceedings record it as item 39, moved by the Hon. Mark Buttigieg, with the outcome noted in six words: “Debate ensued. Question put and passed.”

Buttigieg is a Labor member of the Legislative Council and the NSW Parliamentary Secretary for Industrial Relations, Work Health and Safety, and Multiculturalism. The motion sat on the Notice Paper as item 2561 under the heading “Diwali 2025”.

His substantive motion asked the House to recognise Diwali “as a significant celebration for Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and some Buddhist communities across New South Wales, symbolising the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil”, and to recognise that the festival “highlights the vital contribution of our diverse communities and promotes harmony, hope, and the strength of our multicultural society”.

Two further paragraphs noted community celebrations statewide and acknowledged that Premier Chris Minns and Multiculturalism Minister Stephen Kamper had hosted a Diwali event on 13 October 2025.

What the motion does not contain, anywhere in its four paragraphs, is the phrase “public holiday”.

What a motion can and cannot do

This distinction is the whole of the matter, and it is routinely lost in coverage. A motion agreed to by one chamber is a resolution of that chamber. It expresses an opinion. It binds nobody, creates no entitlement, amends no Act and appropriates no money. The Legislative Council could pass the identical motion every October for a decade and no worker in New South Wales would gain a day off.

Public holidays in New South Wales are made under the Public Holidays Act 2010. Section 4 sets out the eleven standard public holidays that recur every year, from New Year’s Day to Boxing Day. Section 5 is the flexible provision, and its wording is precise: “The Minister may by order published on the NSW legislation website declare a specified day or part-day in a particular year to be a public holiday. The order must be published at least 7 days before the public holiday.”

Read that clause carefully. The Minister’s power runs to a particular year. It is a switch for one-off days, not a mechanism for adding a permanent fixture to the calendar. A recurring annual Diwali holiday would have to be written into section 4, and section 4 can only be amended by a bill passing both Houses.

The same structure applies in every state

The pattern holds across the country, with the lever held by different hands.

Queensland’s Holidays Act 1983 puts its recurring holidays in a Schedule; section 4 lets the Minister appoint special holidays by Gazette notification, but subsection (4) makes such a day a bank holiday rather than a public holiday unless it is for an agricultural show. Queensland’s genuine one-off public holidays, including the 2014 G20 day in Brisbane and the 2020 “People’s long weekend”, were each inserted into the Act itself as new sections.

South Australia routes the power through the Governor. The state replaced its century-old Holidays Act 1910 with the Public Holidays Act 2023, whose section 5 allows the Governor by proclamation to “appoint a day to be an additional public holiday in any year”.

Federally, there is no lever at all. The Fair Work Ombudsman lists eight public holidays under the National Employment Standards, then adds “any other day or part-day declared as a public holiday within a State or Territory”. A Prime Minister cannot create a Diwali holiday. Eight state and territory parliaments can, one jurisdiction at a time.

The petitions are large, and in the wrong place

The most visible expression of the campaign is a Change.org petition titled “Make Diwali a public holiday in Australia”, started by Mohini Ghaisas on 6 November 2021 and addressed to the Australian government. On 29 August 2026 it carried 16,415 verified signatures against a 25,000 target and remained open.

That is not a trivial number. It is also, in parliamentary terms, invisible. The NSW Legislative Assembly requires a minister’s response to any petition with 500 or more signatures, and debates ePetitions that reach 20,000. A search of tabled petitions in New South Wales and Victoria found no Diwali public holiday petition in either system. The 16,415 signatures on a commercial platform trigger nothing; a fraction of that number on the parliament’s own platform would compel a written ministerial answer.

Rajan Zed, and the limits of a press release

Much of the international coverage of Diwali holiday campaigns traces back to Rajan Zed, a Nevada-based figure who styles himself a Hindu statesman and is president of the Universal Society of Hinduism. He issues a high volume of statements urging governments, school districts and companies across several countries to recognise Diwali, and they are frequently republished without checking.

His clearest documented Australian intervention dates to November 2020, when he urged the ACT Government to recognise Diwali as a public holiday and asked the ACT Catholic Archbishop and the Anglican Bishop to back it as an interfaith gesture, saying the ACT needed to “change its policy to reflect the changing demographics”. No response from any Australian government has been located. The press releases listing on Zed’s own website carries no current Australian Diwali holiday item. His claims are best read as advocacy, and attributed as such.

Notably, the Hindu Council of Australia, the national peak body and a volunteer organisation of 28 years standing, publishes no campaign for a Diwali public holiday at all.

What business says, and what the economists say back

The case against runs on cost. Tim Piper, Victorian head of the Australian Industry Group, said on 24 October 2024 that “Footy Friday costs well over $1.5 billion to the economy”. The group’s release called a further Victorian public holiday an expensive kick in the guts for the State economy. A PwC estimate cited by SmartCompany put the AFL Grand Final Friday holiday at about $852 million in lost output. When Western Australia announced two new public holidays in September 2025, Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA chief economist Aaron Morey called it disappointing and pointed to wage bills at 250 per cent above award, while Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas put the annual cost at $150 million to $200 million.

The most-quoted Australian figure, close to $2 billion for the September 2022 national day of mourning, came from economist Stephen Koukoulas. A similar $2 billion figure, put on a proposed public holiday for a Matildas World Cup win, was challenged by Peter Martin, writing in The Conversation in August 2023, who called it a back-of-the-envelope estimate. Cutting hours worked does not dent productivity, which is output per hour. Citing research by Harvard and University of Chile economists covering more than 200 countries over two decades, Martin noted the net hit to GDP from an extra public holiday was only 20 per cent of the output that would otherwise have been produced, putting the true figure as low as $1 billion.

The Productivity Commission’s Workplace Relations Framework inquiry report examined the question at length. It accepted the case for designated days, finding “there is some genuine social benefit associated with widespread community engagement in events, especially on days of cultural or spiritual significance”.

It also found that by declaring new holidays, states “can unilaterally create obligations under the NES for any employer in their state or territory to provide further leave days with pay”, and recommended that newly designated state and territory public holidays no longer attract penalty rates or a paid day of leave. That recommendation was never implemented, and the National Employment Standards still pick up state declarations, but it remains the sharpest statement of the argument that public holidays are a blunt instrument.

Overseas recognition delivers less than the headlines suggest

Campaigners point to the United States, where Pennsylvania recognised Diwali through Senate Bill 402, signed by Governor Josh Shapiro on 22 October 2024; Connecticut followed in 2025; and California’s AB 268 was signed in October 2025. Religion News Service summarised what these laws actually do on 10 October 2025: “While it is a primarily symbolic designation that does not require schools and government offices to close, families in the diaspora say recognizing it signifies that South Asians belong in the American mainstream.”

The genuine exception is New York, where legislation signed by Governor Kathy Hochul on 14 November 2023 closes New York City public schools on Diwali. Sponsor Jenifer Rajkumar noted that “for over two decades, the South Asian community has lobbied for the Diwali holiday”. Sindh in Pakistan took a third path in October 2025, declaring 20 and 21 October holidays for Diwali but specifying that only Hindu employees could take them, a targeted model absent from the Australian debate. In India, Diwali sits among 17 central gazetted holidays for 2026.

What the Diwali public holiday Australia campaign has achieved without one

Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November, a date confirmed independently by Diwali.info and timeanddate.com. Diwali 2027 falls on Friday 29 October, which removes the weekend problem in the year the New South Wales public holidays review is due to begin. That creates a practical wrinkle. Section 5 would permit a Sunday to be declared, but a Sunday public holiday adds a paid day off for relatively few workers and adds penalty rates for those already rostered. India, where Diwali is gazetted, grants no substitute weekday in 2026, under a standing rule that no substitute holiday is given when a festival holiday falls on a weekly off.

Meanwhile the alternative mechanism already exists and is widely used. The Fair Work Ombudsman confirms that “an award or registered agreement may also include provisions which allow an employer and an employee to agree to substitute a public holiday for another day”. A Robert Half survey of 1,000 full-time office workers conducted in November 2024 and published on 15 January 2025 found 65 per cent said their employer allowed them to swap a gazetted public holiday for a culturally or religiously significant day, 64 per cent thought the option mattered, and 62 per cent believed it improved workplace morale.

In New South Wales, circular C2020-09 gives employees of all Public Service Agencies access to leave to observe days of religious significance, though it names no festival.

The opening that appeared in February 2026

On 15 February 2026, the Minns Government announced an additional public holiday on the Monday after Anzac Day in 2026 and 2027, using exactly the one-year power in the Public Holidays Act 2010. Buried in the same release is the more consequential news. A review of the state’s public holidays will commence in 2027, examining the current number of statewide public holidays and “whether NSW should have an additional public holiday”, informed by community, business and other stakeholders.

The arithmetic favours the question being asked. NSW had 11 public holidays in 2026 before the Anzac addition, against 15 in South Australia and the Northern Territory and 14 in Queensland, Victoria and the ACT. Industrial Relations Minister Sophie Cotsis said the review “will look at whether the balance is right for workers, families and businesses, and whether there is a case for change going forward”.

The 2021 Census counted 684,002 Hindus in Australia, 2.7 per cent of the population and a 55.3 per cent increase in five years, alongside 210,400 Sikhs. Mark Buttigieg’s motion put that community’s festival on the parliamentary record without asking for anything. A submission to the 2027 review would be the first time the question is put to a process capable of answering it.