Bosses should let workers uncomfortable with the "race-based" date of Australia Day take an alternative holiday day off work, a Tasmanian indigenous leader says.
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"It is now time for Tasmanian businesses to engage in a national discussion about rubbing biased history into the faces of Aborigines every year," Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chair Michael Mansell said.
"Unions, churches, local government and even state government employees should be given the choice rather than be told they must celebrate the invasion by taking a holiday on January 26."
Mr Mansell urged Tasmanian businesses to show "social responsibility" about the "divisive" January 26 date.
"I call on businesses to allow those employees who feel uncomfortable about celebrating a race-based national day to work on January 26 and take an alternative holiday in its place," he said.
"This is not businesses dictating to their workers.
"It is allowing a conscience vote by employees about the inappropriateness of the date of invasion of Aboriginal lands being the date used for a national day.
"Already, KPMG has given its 9000 employees the option, as have PwC and Deloitte."
Tasmanian Liberal Senator Eric Abetz said it was shameful that Australia Day was falsely characterised as a race-based national day.
"Such comments divide Australia on the basis of race and demonstrate an ignorance of history," Senator Abetz said.
"The politicisation of race and the use of identity politics to try and tear down Australia Day and all that Australia has achieved as the best nation on earth adds nothing to public discourse."
Unions Tasmania agreed employers should give workers the choice.
"Within the Tasmanian union movement ourselves, a number of unions already give staff this choice and it is taken up," the peak body's secretary, Jessica Munday, said.
"Substituting a public holiday isn't difficult - awards or agreements often contain clauses to substitute public holidays by genuine mutual agreement - and, in the absence of an industrial instrument, there is nothing stopping employers from agreeing to give workers that choice.
"It would recognise that a growing number of people feel deeply uncomfortable marking Australia's national holiday on a date that is so divisive and hurtful for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples."
Sean Ford
The Advocate Newspaper, Tasmania. Business, economics, politics, crime.
The Advocate Newspaper, Tasmania. Business, economics, politics, crime.
