Page 5072 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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understand are feeling a little bit disappointed that the holiday will fall during school holidays. Of course, it is not during their formal stand-down period, so that means probably one less day of professional development that teachers will have to attend during the break between term 3 and term 4. I thank members for their support of the legislation.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (11.05): Firstly, in supporting this bill I would like to acknowledge the extensive contribution of UnionsACT in providing the history of the ACT union picnic day in their submission to the government’s consultation on the future of Family and Community Day. I do note Mrs Dunne’s reference to some of the history and I believe that reminder of that history will significantly add to the debate here today.
Union picnic day was a well-established and popular workers’ holiday in New South Wales awards prior to the creation of the Australian Capital Territory on 1 January 1910. However, once the ACT was established, New South Wales awards ceased to apply in the territory, and ACT workers were not covered by any industrial law until the establishment of the ACT Industrial Board on 13 April 1922. The Industrial Board was empowered to deal with industrial disputes and to fix wages and conditions for workers engaged on commonwealth works in the territory. Decisions of the board were known as awards. The jurisdiction of the board was extended in 1936 to cover all private sector employees.
Prior to the establishment of the ACT Trades and Labour Council in 1931, it appeared that some unions ran a picnic day known as the “combined sports and picnic day”, held on Easter Monday at Environa, a land development near Tralee station in New South Wales. The sports and picnic day was held in New South Wales because, at the time, the ACT had restrictive laws governing sports, and a total prohibition on sale and consumption of alcohol. These laws were inspired by a wowser Minister for Home Affairs, King O’Malley, but the laws were gradually altered after 1931.
Following the establishment of the ACT TLC, the affiliated unions decided in 1932 to move picnic day to the first Monday of March and to hold the event in the territory. The first ACT picnic was held at old Acton racecourse, near the mouth of Sullivans Creek and adjacent to the ANU, and later at the Cotter reserve and Manuka oval. The picnic has since been held at a number of other sites, which include Weston Park, the Canberra racecourse and EPIC.
From about 1932-33, unions were able to obtain, through submissions to the ACT Industrial Board, that picnic day should be included as a paid public holiday in various awards and determinations. Even when the Industrial Board was abolished in 1949 and the ACT came under the commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Act, the ACT awards retained union picnic day as a public holiday. In 1941, the management and planning of union picnic day came under the direct control of the Trades and Labour Council, due to the acute manpower shortage caused by the war.
ACT union picnic day was a popular multi-industry holiday and from the 1930s it even enjoyed support and patronage from local businesses that supported the holiday by providing company transport, marquees, meat, bread, fruit and vegetables, and
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