STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator TYRRELL (Tasmania) (13:38): How good's a public holiday? It's time off from work to reflect on the importance of family, community and helping others. When we work during those holidays, we should be paid accordingly—a little extra to recognise that we aren't with family and friends.

Instead, we're out helping the community and keeping our essential services going. What blows my mind is that we don't have a consistent approach across the country for our public holidays. Tasmania has the fewest public holidays nationwide.

Did you know that Tasmania is now the only state in the country where Easter Sunday isn't a public holiday? Many retail and hospitality employees work on Easter Sunday without public holiday penalty rates or the legal right to decline shifts to spend time with family. It's not fair that other states get Easter Sunday public holiday rights at work but Tasmanians miss out.

The Tassie government has the chance to finally fix this. When they do fix this, we know that the impact on businesses will be minimal. It will be the smallest possible pay increase for any new public holiday because Sundays already have penalty rates.

The change would just mean we're catching up with the mainland. But let's not forget they've had 12 years to do this and, instead, they chose to sit on their hands. I want to shout-out the Tassie state Labor team for long advocating for this change, alongside the SDA union.

Thanks to enterprise agreements negotiated by the SDA, workers on these agreements receive higher pay on Easter Sunday and have the right to refuse work. But thousands of other Tassie workers still don't have these rights, so it's about time the Tassie government pulls its head in and declares Easter Sunday a public holiday.