Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is riding the Matildas’ success wave, along with the rest of the country, but his call for a public holiday if this great soccer team wins the World Cup hasn’t brought universal support. Business industry groups, small business owners, Coalition politicians and even journalists such as the AFR’s Phil Coorey are questioning the economic good sense of a pop-up public holiday.

When Maureen heard I was going to talk to Ben Fordham about the cost of a surprise public holiday, she warned me if I publicly opposed it, even she would thrown stuff at me! And she owns a CBD business. Such is the emotional appeal of the Matildas.

On Saturday night, we sat in a Sydney CBD pub watching the game but missed the second extra-time half because we had tickets to the wonderful Tina Turner musical at Her Majesty’s around the corner, which started at 7.30pm. Staff at the theatre were stopping people like me trying to multi-task by watching Tina’s impressive impersonator and the shoot-out simultaneously.

That was a dilemma where the legendary Matildas lost out to another legend — the life of Tina Turner.

As an overwhelmed Aussie sports nut, I want these hardworking world-class women to be permanently remembered and rewarded as they’ve done great things for business, the economy and the national vibe already. Importantly, they’ve shown that the country’s women soccer players are internationally renowned. And they’ve done a lot for showing that women’s sport can draw big crowds, male supporters and huge money, which justifies them to be financially rewarded like many overpaid male sport stars.

Don’t you worry, big business will be lining up to throw money at this team and women playing soccer and any other sport where the team can be world class. It will also help club competitions because there’ll be a Matilda multiplier effect, and that’s worth celebrating.

However, I’d prefer a parade day (which Phil Coorey backs) in every capital city if the Matildas get up, primarily because public holidays can be great for some businesses and terrible for others. And the businesses that could suffer the most are the ones that have copped it since the pandemic gave birth to the work-from-home trend, that is, CBD small businesses.

What does the majority of the population do on a public holiday? They don’t go to the CBD. If they do, it’s in the shopping precincts but all the businesses in office precincts will have to wipe off any hopes of a good daily revenue take, while their wage and other fixed costs remain.

And some business costs escalate! This is what Luke Achterstraat, CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia (COSBOA) told Coorey: “Public holiday penalty rates of 250 per cent – not 25 per cent, but 250 per cent – are a major impost on small businesses who will need to re-evaluate whether they even viably trade on the proposed public holiday.”

But what about the big picture cost of a pop-up public holiday?

The Daily Telegraph caught up Saul Eslake, former ANZ chief economist and respected independent number cruncher. This is what his figuring found: there’d be a billion-dollar hit to economic activity and NSW would cop a third of that loss of business and money. “The majority of businesses will hate it,” he said. “They’ll have to pay their staff who won’t be working just like any other public holiday or pay (public holiday) rates.”

I support Phil’s idea of a parade for the Matildas in every capital city, which would be a great fillip to many of the still-suffering CBD small businesses and even our big retailers would like a parade. Who doesn’t?

But I’ll give the final word to Phil Coorey, and this is a beauty: “Other than giving kids permission to skip school, so they can attend and wave flags, the nation stays productive and workers can have a happy day in the office. Who knows? A few more workers might be enticed to leave the home office, return to the CBD, and stay there”.