Last week the Republican Movement's petition to Make Matariki a public holiday officially closed. Meanwhile, driven by a much larger ActionStation petition, Stuff has come out in support:
Today, Stuff is launching a campaign to make Matariki a public holiday from 2021.They're agnostic as to whether it should be a new holiday or replace foreign monarch's fake birthday (with which it frequently aligns), but they want it to be a holiday, and they want it to happen by next year. That's perfectly a doable legislative timetable; the question is whether the politicians are keen.
[...]
The law says public holidays exist to observe days of “national, religious, or cultural significance”, but most of our holidays aren’t expressly Kiwi.
We’re overdue the creation of a unifying holiday that honours Aotearoa’s past and celebrates New Zealand’s future. Matariki is that holiday.
