Anzac Day Act 1966

The Anzac Day Act 1966 is a short but important law. Its main job is to recognise 25 April each year as Anzac Day and to make it a day of commemoration. The Act states that the day commemorates the contribution of people who have served New Zealand in time of war and in warlike conflicts, including those who died, and also people who died in New Zealand military service or whose death was connected with that service at another time.

For business owners, the Act matters because it does more than name the day. It also sets observance rules for how the day is treated, and it links to the Holidays Act 2003 for public holiday transfer issues. If you employ staff, open premises, run events or support fundraising on 25 April, this Act is part of the legal picture you need to check before making plans.

This Act is relevant to more than large retailers. Any business or organisation making decisions about opening, staffing, events or fundraising on Anzac Day should consider it. The practical impact is strongest where your operations are time-sensitive, customer-facing or tied to public holiday rules.

It is especially relevant if you are deciding whether to trade in the morning, whether to run a ticketed event, whether to ask staff to work, or whether to promote an Anzac Day activity that generates profit. It is less about day-to-day compliance across the whole year and more about getting one important date right.

The main trigger point is simple: your business is doing something on 25 April. Once that is true, the next question is whether Anzac Day falls on a Sunday or on another day of the week. The Act treats those situations differently for observance purposes.

If Anzac Day does not fall on a Sunday, the day must be observed up to 1 pm as if it were a Sunday. After 1 pm, activities may be permitted if they could lawfully take place after noon on a Saturday. That means your planning should focus on timing, the nature of the activity and any other laws that affect your sector. If you are also employing staff, a separate trigger point is whether the public holiday is transferred under the Holidays Act 2003.

Section 3 is the operational core of the Act for many businesses. If Anzac Day falls on a Sunday, it is observed as a Sunday. If it falls on any other day, it is observed up to 1 pm as if it were a Sunday, and after 1 pm activities are permitted if they may lawfully take place after noon on a Saturday.

In practice, this means you should not treat Anzac Day like an ordinary trading day. A café considering a 7 am opening, a retailer planning a morning sale, or an event organiser scheduling a paid activity before 1 pm should stop and check the legal position first. The Act does not give a blanket permission to operate as normal. It creates a time-based observance framework that may interact with other laws affecting your business.

A sensible approach is to make your opening-hours decision early, document the basis for it, and check any linked issues such as staffing, signage, bookings, alcohol service or venue conditions. If your business has multiple sites, do not assume each site is affected in exactly the same way without checking the relevant operating rules.

Business owners often assume this Act contains the full employment rule set for Anzac Day. It does not. The former section dealing with terms of employment has been repealed. The current Act instead says it is subject to section 45A of the Holidays Act 2003, which concerns transfer of the public holiday for the purposes of Part 2, subpart 3 of that Act when Anzac Day falls on a Saturday or Sunday.

The practical point is that rostering and pay questions should not be answered from this Act alone. If staff are working, you should separately check the Holidays Act position, including whether the public holiday is transferred for the employee, whether public holiday pay rules apply, and whether an alternative holiday may arise. This is particularly important for businesses with part-time staff, weekend workers, casual arrangements or mixed weekday and weekend rosters.

For example, if Anzac Day falls on a weekend and your employee usually works on one of those days, the transfer question may matter. If your business opens after 1 pm but not in the morning, you still need to work through the employment consequences of the day being a public holiday. The safest process is to review rosters, employment agreements and payroll settings before April each year.

The Act also creates a framework for Anzac Day trusts. The New Zealand Returned Services’ Association (Incorporated), and affiliated local Returned Services’ Associations, may take steps to set up a trust and appoint trustees. Those trustees can receive donations and grants for specified charitable purposes that are publicly notified before Anzac Day in the relevant year.

This matters if your business wants to support Anzac Day fundraising, especially where you are running an activity at a profit and plan to donate some proceeds. The Act expressly says trustees may receive donations and grants from persons, companies and societies carrying out activities on Anzac Day at a profit, as well as from other persons and public bodies.

If you are promoting a donation-linked campaign, check that the trust has been properly set up, that the charitable purposes have been publicly notified before Anzac Day, and that your advertising matches what will actually happen to the money. Keep records of the amount raised, the basis of the donation and when the funds were transferred. That helps avoid customer complaints and internal accounting confusion.

Even though this is a short Act, good records still matter. Most compliance problems around Anzac Day come from assumptions: assuming you can open as normal, assuming payroll will handle the day correctly, or assuming a fundraising message is clear enough. A few simple documents can reduce that risk.

At a minimum, keep a dated trading-hours decision, the roster for the day, any payroll notes about public holiday treatment, and copies of customer-facing promotions. If you are donating profits or taking collections, keep the trust details, the publicly notified charitable purpose, and proof of payment. For multi-site businesses, use one central checklist so each location follows the same review process.

These records are also useful if a staff member later questions pay treatment, if a customer asks how a donation was handled, or if management changes and next year's planning starts from scratch. The goal is not paperwork for its own sake. It is to show that your business checked the right issues before acting.

You should get help if your business model does not fit neatly into a standard opening-hours decision. That includes mixed-use venues, businesses with alcohol service, operators with several different activities on the same site, and employers with complex weekend rosters. Advice is also sensible if you are unsure how the observance rule interacts with another law affecting your operations.

Another common reason to get help is where marketing and fundraising overlap. If you are advertising that profits from Anzac Day trading will go to a charitable purpose, the wording should be accurate and supported by your records. Employment advice may also be worthwhile if you have recurring payroll issues around transferred public holidays or alternative holidays.