It is one thing to be so passionate about a person, group or cause that you recognise and celebrate it on the same day every year, or even book out an entire month. However, it is quite another to expect anybody else but you to pay for it. No doubt, looking toward the precedent of the previous Labour government’s creation of the Matariki public holiday in 2022, the Multicultural New Zealand group wants a public holiday to celebrate multiculturalism.
In what can only be described as a lowest-common denominator method to maximise the appeal of their demand for another public holiday, Multicultural New Zealand has been celebrating a te Tiriti-based Multicultural Day on the final Friday of August since 2021. At this year’s celebrations at parliament on 26 August, MNZ President Pancha Narayanan called for a new public holiday to recognise “we are a multicultural society”. Narayanan either isn’t satisfied with one day or he is deliberately making an outlandish appeal so one day looks like a reasonable compromise. Not only does MNZ want to recognise Multicultural Day on a Friday so that people can take the day off to dress up in the costume of their birth country, but they advocate for an additional cultural day off so anyone can celebrate an event that they consider important on any day of the year.
