Methodology
How these dates are checked
Every date on this site traces to a jurisdiction's own Act or to the department that administers it. This page says how, and — further down, generated from the data itself — what has not been checked yet.
The source order, and why it is two deep
The Act first, the administering agency second, aggregates never
Dates are computed from the instrument — the Act, its Schedule, the rule it states — and then matched against the published schedule of the department that administers it. Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the story and it goes on the page.
Both are necessary, and this site has been wrong in each direction. Reading the New South Wales Act showed that its extra Anzac Day Monday is an additional day rather than a substitution, which most summaries get backwards — so the Act caught something the agency's table alone would have hidden. Then the ACT went the other way: section 3(1)(a)(viii), read on its own, says the holiday moves to the Monday, and the ACT Government observes both days. The Act alone would have published a wrong answer.
A federal aggregate is a cross-check and never a source. It cannot carry the council-level variation that is the whole point of the regional sections.
What every page is built from
| Where | Public holidays | School terms | Shop trading |
|---|---|---|---|
| NSW | Public Holidays Act 2010 (NSW) No 115 | NSW Department of Education | Law read |
| VIC | Public Holidays Act 1993 (Vic) No 119/1993 | Victorian Government | Law read |
| QLD | Holidays Act 1983 (Qld) | Queensland Department of Education | Law read in part |
| WA | Public and Bank Holidays Act 1972 (WA) | WA Department of Education | Law read in part |
| SA | Public Holidays Act 2023 (SA) No 39 of 2023 | SA Department for Education | Law read |
| TAS | Statutory Holidays Act 2000 (Tas) No 96 of 2000 | Tasmanian Department for Education, Children and Young People | Law read in part |
| ACT | Holidays Act 1958 (ACT) A1958-19 | ACT Government | Law read |
| NT | Public Holidays Act 1981 (NT) | NT Department of Education and Training | Law read |
The date answers, and what they are built from
The pages that count to a date — days from today, the weeks left in the year, Christmas — use the same holiday and school-term data as the rest of the site, so a business-day count is only as good as those dates, and is refused for a year a state has not published. The counting rules are written out once, on the calculator.
Time zones come from the IANA time zone database that browsers and servers ship, read through the platform rather than typed into a table. Season dates follow the Bureau of Meteorology, which starts each season on the first of the month; no exact solstice or equinox time is published here, because no Australian primary table for one was found.
When this was last checked, and what forces the next check
| Instruments and schedules read | 43 across 8 jurisdictions Each data file names its sources and the day each was read; the table above links the main one for each state |
|---|---|
| Oldest check in the data | Most recent: Thursday 8 October 2026 |
| Years published | 2026, 2027 and 2028 6 of 8 have gazetted a third year; the rest have not published one |
| Re-read deadline | Enforced by the build A warning the day a calendar year turns; the build fails 60 days later |
| Rebuild | After every Australian midnight So "today" on every page is today, not the day it was published |
None of those numbers is typed into this page. They are counted from the data files at every build, so the row that says how many instruments were read cannot become a claim about how many were read a year ago — and the re-read deadline is a build failure rather than an intention, which is the only kind of schedule worth publishing.
What the build refuses to publish
These are checks, not intentions. Each one fails the build rather than producing a warning somebody scrolls past.
- A date with no source. Every calendar file must name the instrument, its publisher, its URL and the date it was read, or the site does not build.
- A year that has rolled over. Public holidays are gazetted annually and school terms are set per year. The build warns the moment a calendar year turns without next year's dates being verified, and fails sixty days later.
- A verification date in the future. Caught exactly once so far, on the day it was introduced.
- A colour that cannot carry the text put on it. Every colour pair is measured against the WCAG contrast minimums in the build.
- A page nobody can reach. The build walks the site from the homepage through body copy only — a link in the footer does not count — and fails on any page that cannot be reached that way.
- An FAQ that restates its own page. An answer may share at most a quarter of its phrasing with the page above it.
What is not verified yet
This list is generated from the data files at every build, so it shrinks as the work is done and it cannot quietly stop being true. If something you need is on it, treat this site as a starting point for that question and not an answer.
Dates the law appoints but nobody can state yet
VIC, 2028 — Friday before the AFL Grand Final. No 2028 Grand Final date had been announced when this was checked on 30 September 2026. It fell in September in 2026 and in October in 2027, so neither month can be ruled out.
The Victorian Government's 2028 list prints 'Subject to AFL schedule' in place of a date. The day is appointed by the Act; only its date is unknown. We publish that rather than a guess, because a wrong date here is a day someone books leave around — and 2027 showed the guess would be wrong: the usual last Friday in September became 1 October.
| Where | Still to do |
|---|---|
| NSW | Local public holidays and local event days under ss 5 and 8 are not listed here yet, and the page says so rather than implying the state list is complete. |
| VIC | Melbourne Cup substitutions under s8A are made council by council, at least 90 days before the Cup. The 2026 swaps are all read from their Gazette notices (Business Victoria's list misses Murtoa). For 2027 and 2028 only the multi-year declarations are known (Macedon Ranges to 2029, Wodonga to 2031); the councils that ask year by year file by about 4 August 2027. |
| VIC | The 2027 Grand Final Friday (1 October) is worked out from s6(ia) and the AFL's announcement, and stays marked unverified until Business Victoria prints it. The 2028 one will be filled in when the AFL sets that Grand Final, and every build flags both until they are settled. |
| QLD | The four closed days are set by the Act and no Commission order can change them. What the trading area orders decide is the hours a non-exempt shop may keep on an ordinary public holiday, by putting it in a type 1, 2 or 3 trading area. Those current orders have not been read, so for a particular shop on a particular ordinary public holiday the honest answer is still 'check the order that covers your area'. |
| WA | The current s12E orders have not been read. They are what decides whether a general retail shop may open on a given public holiday outside the three absolute days, so the honest answer for any particular holiday is 'check the current order'. |
| WA | The 2027 regional King's Birthday dates are not published yet — the WA Government lists 2026 only. When they appear, they replace the statewide date in those districts rather than adding to it. |
| WA | Other districts may proclaim alternative dates under s7; only Karratha and Port Hedland are listed for 2026. |
| SA | The Act's structure is now read: greater Adelaide is a shopping district by definition, and elsewhere only a council-initiated proclamation under ss 11-12 brings an area inside the Act. The list of currently Proclaimed Shopping Districts is not published here — those proclamations sit in the Gazette. |
| SA | Section 5 exemptions and s5A closure notices are made by Gazette notice and are not tracked here. |
| SA | Section 5 proclamations of a holiday for a district or locality are not listed here. |
| TAS | The Anzac Day Observance Act 1929, which deals with Anzac Day trading in Tasmania, has not been read, so whether it restricts shops on Anzac Day morning is not stated here. |
| TAS | The Shop Trading Hours Act 1984 itself has not been read here: the two restricted days come from WorkSafe Tasmania, the agency that administers it, so this page does not state the size at which a retailer counts as large. |
| TAS | Schedule 2's part-day government holidays (the 11am Launceston Cup start in the city centre) are described in the rules but not listed as separate dated rows. |
| ACT | Section 3(1)(b) declarations for part of the Territory are not listed here. |
| NT | The gazette notice appointing the five show days has not been read — the Territory’s gazettes are un-indexed PDFs and the notice predates 2026. The dates and regions come from the administering agency’s published table and map instead, which is why they are the only dates on this page not traced to an instrument. |
When we get it wrong
A wrong date matters on the day, so corrections are logged rather than quietly edited. The corrections log says what the site said before, what it says now, and how the error surfaced. It was not empty on the day this site launched.
This page last reviewed .