Editorial: Anniversary could be better timed

This is an odd day for a holiday, coming at the end of the summer break, when many holidaymakers have not long returned to work, schools are reawakening and the cogs of the economy are cranking up for another year. It is doubly odd that only the northern half of the North Island (and Nelson) will be taking the day off. For the rest of the country it is business as usual. It was just as absurd that Wellington and the southern North Island (except Taranaki) did the same thing only last Monday.

If there is a reason to observe provincial anniversaries with a holiday it might at least be arranged for the whole country on the same day. To have the capital closed for business one day and the commercial hub out of action a week later makes no sense. It can only multiply the economic losses of a public holiday.

Would it matter if all parts of the country celebrated their foundation at the same time? Certainly Wellington and other New Zealand Company settlements can mark a day their first settlers stepped ashore. But Auckland had a more haphazard beginning. A settlement had already taken root on the Waitemata when Governor Hobson decided to make it the capital of the colony.

In 1842, the Government Gazette announced that January 29 was the second anniversary of the establishment of Auckland and a regatta was held on the harbour to celebrate the occasion. Today's regatta, sponsored by the Herald, is in a tradition unbroken since that time. There is nothing sacrosanct about the date, though. The original six provinces of the colony - Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury and Otago - were all formally established in the same way at the same time, by the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852, and abolished together just 23 years later.

Not long before the abolition four more were created, Hawkes Bay, Marlborough, Westland and Southland, each of which observes its own anniversary day, as do South Canterbury and the Chatham Islands. There are, in all, 12 days in the year when one or another part of New Zealand is out of commission. All are Mondays or Fridays (except that this year Southland's anniversary will be observed on the Tuesday after Easter Monday), which lends weight to the impression that the dates are not vitally significant.

So if we were to mark local anniversary days with a single national holiday, when should it be? We already have Waitangi Day at this time of year though it does not always fall on a weekday. Easter is a moveable feast, set by the moon and liable to fall anywhere between mid-March and late April. Anzac Day arrives on April 25. There is hardly need of another break in autumn.

The winter months are the ones most devoid of a day's respite from the routine. After Queen's Birthday is observed in early June it is a long haul to Labour Day in late October. A holiday in August would not go amiss. Schools would certainly appreciate it. Even though they have broken their year into four terms, mainly to relieve the winter grind, the third term this year runs from July 16 to September 21 without so much as a long weekend.

The winter weather often seems to relent a little in August, then return with a vengeance in spring. Maybe it is trying to tell us something. It is not as though we are well endowed with public holidays. We have 10, excluding the various anniversary days. The United States and Britain have the same number. Japan has 20, Hong Kong 17 and Austria 13, for example. Australia has 10 but its states and territories add one, two or three more. Like our provincial anniversaries, Australian local holidays are staggered over 16 different days on the calendar.

A break of even one day at intervals during the working year has immeasurable value for the worker and the work. It is not just the added rest and opportunity to get away for a three-day weekend, the shortened working week that follows is almost as refreshing. That cannot be said for today's holiday, when we have barely got into gear for the year, and there is another break next week. We need a day we would appreciate more, a day all regions could observe in their own way.