When Jeff Kennett eliminated the September public holiday, then a Thursday for show day, it was considered the harshest of all his austerity cuts.

Fast forward 20 years and what should have been a simple vote winner by dangling an extra-long weekend before the public has ignited a fierce debate about the relative value of a holiday for all versus the right to pursue business.

In Ballarat and across Regional Victoria there has been a big question mark over whether a Grand Final Eve holiday is of any value to regional cities when the big events are all on Melbourne. The government has countered that the extra-long weekend will prove a boon for regional areas as people take the time to get out of Melbourne and spend money elsewhere.

 The jury is still out on that argument and it will be interesting to see the figures of how many extra visitors there were and how much they spent - if they are in fact ever calculated.

We can say that Ballarat was alive and well on a particularly beautiful spring day and while many services were closed there was no shortage of businesess particularly in retail and hospitality that stayed open.  

However every one of them did have to pay public holiday penalty rates for staff and for small business that can be an onerous burden; the difference between a good day and not worth opening at all.

The premier took another angle which harked back to the arguments of John Cain about Sunday trading and the innate value of people having the time to spend with family, particularly the lowly paid in retail.

"Right across Victoria people are spending time with their kids and families and I reckon that's pretty important," Mr Andrews said.

While it is hard to argue with that, not everyone has this luxury.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has called the AFL grand final public holiday "an indulgence" and casual workers and small businesses were losing income on what would normally be a profitable Friday. While Mr Guy is right about the indulgence, and we all love one, what is ultimately the issue is whether it is an indulgence we can afford.