## Short answer

No - Easter Saturday is **not** a uniform national public holiday. Whether an employee gets it as a public holiday depends entirely on which Australian state or territory they work in (and, in some cases, on a year-by-year gazettal in that jurisdiction), not on a single Commonwealth-wide rule.

## Why it isn't uniform

Public holidays in Australia are not all set centrally. Good Friday, Christmas Day, and a small core set of days are observed nationally, but the Fair Work Act's National Employment Standards (s.115) defines a public holiday as including "any other day, or part-day, declared or prescribed by or under a State or Territory law to be observed generally... as a public holiday." That means the NES itself defers to each state and territory's own proclamation/gazette. Easter Saturday is one of the days that individual jurisdictions have chosen to gazette - or not - so it sits in the variable category, unlike Good Friday and Easter Monday, which are public holidays everywhere.

## What it turns on for a given employee

1. **The state or territory in which the employee's workplace/employment is based** - this is the determining factor, since the gazettal is jurisdiction-specific.
2. **Whether that jurisdiction has gazetted Easter Saturday as a public holiday for the relevant year.**

As at FY2025-26, the established pattern is:

- **Gazetted as a public holiday:** New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory.
- **Not gazetted as a public holiday:** South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory.

So in 2026 (Easter Saturday falling on 4 April 2026), an employee working in NSW, VIC, QLD or the ACT would be entitled to treat it as a public holiday (with the usual NES public holiday entitlements - reasonable right to refuse work, and any applicable penalty rates under their award/agreement), while an employee working in SA, WA, TAS or the NT would not, and 4 April would just be an ordinary Saturday for them (subject to whatever weekend-work terms their award/agreement otherwise provides).

## Practical guidance for the payroll officer

Do not apply a single company-wide answer. Check the work state/territory of each employee (or each payroll location) against that jurisdiction's current public holiday gazette for 2026, because:

- Gazettal can change between years (several states added Easter Saturday or Easter Sunday as public holidays only in the last decade, e.g. Victoria from 2016), so it should be confirmed against the relevant state/territory government's official 2026 public holiday list rather than assumed to carry over automatically.
- Even within a jurisdiction that gazettes Easter Saturday, the actual entitlement (penalty rate, substitution, etc.) is then governed by the applicable modern award, enterprise agreement, or contract, which can still differ between employees in the same state.

**Bottom line:** Easter Saturday's public holiday status changes between jurisdictions - it is a public holiday in NSW, VIC, QLD and the ACT, but not in SA, WA, TAS or the NT - so the correct answer for any individual employee depends on where they work, confirmed against that state or territory's current gazette, not on a single Australia-wide rule.