The National Day of Mourning will be held tomorrow to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II, with the states and territories clarifying trading conditions for the public holiday. Our dedicated resource outlines more about how your business(s) might be affected. The noticeable differences are that South Australia are treating tomorrow like Anzac Day, where shops must stay closed until midday, while other jurisdictions will have standard public holiday trading hour arrangements in place.

National Cabinet has agreed to extending pandemic leave payments as long as mandatory Covid isolation periods remain in place. This will ensure workers who don’t have access to sick leave, and are forced to isolate for five days, will continue to be supported. The ARA has called for a timeline to be developed for when mandatory isolations will be scrapped altogether as part of our ultimate goal to treat Covid just like any other virus. Pleasingly, we’re seeing the states and territories wind back restrictions even further for things like masks on public transport.

As part of our submission to the recent Jobs and Skills Summit, the ARA called for national consistency around workforce participation for school aged Australians. The current regulations vary across jurisdictions making it overly complex to employ students who would like to work limited hours on weekends, holidays and evenings without interfering with their education. You can read more about these complexities here.

We are looking ahead to the Federal Budget on 25 October and you can read the ARA submission here.