New Zealand’s population continues to diversify and currently 28% of New Zealanders identify as being from a non-European migrant background.
Multicultural New Zealand (MNZ) president Pancha Narayanan wants a new public holiday to recognise “we are a multicultural society”.
On the last Friday of August every year, the Multicultural Councils across the country celebrate a Te Tiriti based National Multicultural Day.
The initiative was first launched in 2021 as a way to encourage migrants to make their heritage visible in their daily lives by wearing cultural clothing, sharing traditional food with friends and colleagues, and speaking their native language.
This year, celebrations took place earlier at Parliament on August 26 where Narayanan proposed the inclusion of a Multicultural Day into the Holidays Act.
The Holidays Act is the legislation which outlines what public holidays New Zealanders are entitled to — currently we have 11 public holidays.
The ACT Party has previously criticised public holidays for adding to the cost of doing business and made a previous pledge to remove the public holiday on January 2 after Matariki was introduced as a new holiday in 2022.
If a Multicultural Day is successfully made into a public holiday, Narayanan said “New Zealand would be the richer for it” and “ethnic communities will flourish”.
Two days off to celebrate multiculturalism
Narayanan is proposing two different public holidays to celebrate multiculturalism.
The first would be establishing a national Multicultural Day, similar to the one MNZ currently celebrates, and making it a public holiday.
He said it would allow New Zealanders to visibly celebrate their different cultures and “thank our ancestors”.
MNZ’s Multicultural Day is intentionally held on a Friday, because it allows people to make their cultures visible in schools and the workplace, which Narayanan said sets it up well to be turned into a public holiday.
The second is a “cultural day” which gives New Zealanders a day off to celebrate an event that is culturally significant to them.
This could be taken on a religious holiday that is not a public holiday in New Zealand, like Vesak Day which is observed by Buddhists, or a cultural celebration, like Lunar New Year.
Narayanan said New Zealanders would be able to choose when to take this second day off and could have it written into their contracts for work.
Reflecting New Zealand’s diversity
Narayanan has been a member of MNZ since 1992 and was first elected as the president in 2002.
Since then, he’s seen New Zealand become increasingly diverse and describes it as a “nation of immigrants”.
He came to New Zealand in 1986 as a postgraduate student from Malaysia, where Eid al-Fitr, Diwali, Christmas and Chinese New Year are all public holidays due to the diversity of the population.
Narayanan said New Zealand needs an identity as a multicultural society and a new public holiday would reflect the demographic makeup of the country.
“What we’re doing is sowing the seeds… When we do that for years and generations, it becomes part of our culture,” he said.
‘We live in a democracy’
Minister for Ethnic Communities Melissa Lee attended the Multicultural Day celebrations at Parliament, where Narayanan proposed the idea of a new public holiday.
Lee said “there is immense value in the many cultural celebrations that are already being held around New Zealand throughout the year” and she takes “great pride in noting that New Zealand continues to grow even more diverse”.
She said cultural celebrations “help to grow social cohesion in New Zealand” which is “already very multicultural, with more than 160 ethnicities represented in New Zealand”.
When asked if she would support a Multicultural Day becoming part of the Holidays Act, Lee said: “With regards to a nationally recognised Multicultural Day, it’s worth remembering that we live in a democracy, and there are ways for any member of the public to propose changes to legislation – for example, they can present a petition to Parliament.”
