Responding to some recent discussion about the topic in the Ten Sport thread (which was mostly in relation to TV broadcasts):
Without Daylight Saving Time, we’d have ridiculously early Summer sunrises. Really, the sun rises before 6am (here in Sydney at least) at the peak of Summer with DST. Also, I daresay that more of the population would be awake at 7-8pm at night compared to 5-6am in the morning during the Summer/DST months!
Personally I think that Daylight Saving is absolutely fantastic here in Sydney and if anything, I wouldn’t complain if it ran for another month or so longer than it currently does in this part of the world.
That said, I do acknowledge that Daylight Saving doesn’t work everywhere and indeed, the current system six months of Daylight Saving as implemented by NSW/ACT/VIC/TAS/SA wouldn’t work everywhere. But of course letting different regions have different running times for DST would most likely make a complete mess of the timezones during Spring and Autumn which makes the current system of the states being able to decide whether or not to have DST not so bad, but still not perfect of course.
As I’ve said before about the topic of DST in Queensland (if not here, then certainly on Twitter), I think that it would only realistically work well in the South East corner of the state and running from November to February at the very most at that.
For better or worse, the power of regional politicians in Queensland would probably prevent a trial of DST in Queensland (whether it’s state wide or just for the South East) happening anytime soon. Remember, this is the same state that recently decided to go back to having their Labor Day Public Holiday in either June or July (not sure exactly which, but it was one of those two) after several years of having it in October in line with a few other states/territories.
Of course, I’d certainly be quite interested to hear the general opinions of others on the topic of Daylight Saving!
As I have said before, daylight saving should be a Federal Government responsibility, not individual states. This will mean DST will apply across the country, avoiding the embarrassment of five timezones in summer time.
In WA there’s some arguments against it I understand. You’re so far west for starters in Perth, apart from a few weeks of the year in summer you don’t get the super early sunrises. Plus, being GMT+8 means you’re on China/Central Asia time all year round which is convenient from a business perspective (though against that is the exacerbated 3-hour time difference to AEDT in summer)
In QLD where I am the issue is so vexed. DST would undoubtedly be beneficial for the south east (Brisbane, Gold Coast etc) but its benefits are less pronounced as you move further north or west. The sun rises at 4:45am local time in the height of summer here in Brisbane which is absolutely ridiculous, especially considering it’s practically dark by 7pm even at this time of year. Add to that that Brisbane is only 100km from the NSW state/time border (and the Gold Coast even less), and you understand why there’s a push for DST here in SEQ at the least.
The Labour Day analogy is a bit different and has more to do with the two major political parties than the state of Qld itself, but on DST you’re right in saying we won’t get change anytime soon, as the National part of the LNP refuse to entertain it, and the Labor party is too afraid of losing seats in Townsville and FNQ. Hence the post-1992 status quo prevails, despite it not being in the best interests of the capital if not the entire state
Completely agree. It should definitely be a federal issue.
I happen to live in the most anti-daylight saving area in Australia I reckon.
I live in Townsville, and this point above is literally what happens here every summer.
It doesn’t get light here quite as early as Brisbane, but it is completely daylight by 4:50am at the peak of summer, which is just ridiculous in my opinion. Meaning it’s already very hot by 7:30am, as the sun has been up for 2.5 hours already. (It’s usually already 30°C by the time of my commute at 8am, whereas 7am is usually closer to 25°C).
And the evenings are completely wasted here too, I was out exercising at the beach just yesterday and it was dark by 7:20pm, which is about the latest we get all year.
The biggest reason for everyone being so anti-DLS in this area is just a lack of understanding/education about the topic.
Every single person you talk to about it, seems to think you’re adding 3 hours to the clock, not 1.
Even the Townsville Mayor said on 7 Local News a few years ago when daylight saving was in the news “We don’t need the sun still shining into our houses at 10pm at night here in Townsville”.
You ask anyone about the trial in the 90’s and they will all swear black and blue that it was terrible because it was dark until 8am in the morning and daylight until 10pm at night. Which is obviously complete crap.
It’s absolute non-sense that daylight saving isn’t implemented in Queensland in my opinion. It’s ridiculous to have us out of sync with the rest of the East Coast to start with. But the worst part is, if you check out a sunlight map online, the entire Queensland coastline is actually the first place in Australia to get dark at night… and we’re running 1 hour BEHIND the rest of Eastern Australia. It’s just ridiculous! Wake up QLD!
Honestly, if the government just grew a pair and introduced it today. In 10 years time, no one would even be bothered by it or even worried anymore. It would just become the normal thing.
My sole objection to DST is changing the clocks twice a year, and this applies to the whole world, not just Australia.
Regarding the arguments above in favour of DST:
you can simply do everything earlier in summer instead if you want. Workplaces can start earlier if they choose, you can get up earlier, shops can open earlier, etc.
you can put the clocks forward and just leave them there permanently; I don’t care if we have DST, just stop changing the clocks twice a year
Changing clocks causes no end of headaches and complications. For example, every time the clocks change at least one of the FTA networks messes up its EPG. My Panasonic DVR’s daily/weekly programs-to-record stuffs up and I have to adjust all the times by an hour. I have to adjust - at last count - 7 clocks in the house, including obscure ones such as the landline answering machine, for which I have to get out the manual to remember how to do it. There are teams of people who have to go out after midnight twice a year to all the churches, town halls etc. with clocks on them to change them. There are always people who forget and are an hour late for appointments. Sleep is disrupted for a week or so. If a live event overseas starts at 2.30 am on the night we go off DST, is it the first 2.30 or the second 2.30? All of these problems would disappear, and time-keeping, all software that uses the current time, time differences with other countries would become consistent, clean and much simpler if we just left the clocks alone.
SA at least should align with the eastern states. A half-hour difference is just silly.
Here’s the thing, I Live and work in Moree NSW I run a radio station that broadcasts across the NSW/QLD Border region. I Can take or leave Daylight Saving to be honest but for the Love of God can it please be All of the Eastern Seaboard or just scrap Daylight Saving all together. Take Remembrance day for example. Every year we get complaints from people in Queensland that we didn’t pause for 60 seconds at 11am when the fact is we did it an hour before due to the time zone circus that is our life 6 months a year. Give time zones to the Feds & be done with it…So PLEASE, Can we just have Eastern, Central & Western Time…
Given I’m on a 530 AM shift next week I’m thankful the sun goes up early up here. Plus I’m never a fan of the sun being up so late. The whole hot at 9AM thing doesn’t wash with me, it’s hot everywhere these days it seems so it doesn’t matter. If anything I complain that the air conditioning is too low (and the fans are on full blast) and I actually have been known to wear a jumper at work at this time of year.
There will never, ever, ever be a complete unification of Australia about whether daylight savings is good or bad, people in Queensland and WA will always want it banned whereas people in Tasmania will never want it banned. Others in the middle will want it extended. Believe it or not, we actually have a pretty good system now. Compared to the way it was for many years until all the states lined up about 10 years ago and VIC, NSW and SA extended theirs by nearly a month at the beginning to line up with Tassie and all the states also extended the end date from the last Sunday in March to the first in April.
In Tasmania, the length of days varies by nearly 8 hours between summer and winter. In the middle of summer without daylight saving sunrise would be before 4:30am but it would actually start getting light around 3:30am every morning. At night it would be sunset by around 8:00 with some light around till a bit before 9.
With DST it makes these times much more reasonable with sunrise at 5:30 and light at night until near 10pm, not sun but enough to be outside enjoying the evening.
In winter however the days are dark with sunrise not until 7:45 (which would be 8:45 if DST continued all year) and sunset at 4:45.
In Townsville there’s only a variance between summer and winter of about 2 hours to the length of daylight so the difference DLS will cause is nowhere near as great and bordering on being a nuisance.
For those who complain about the current one hour difference between the eastern states, should have tried being in Tassie for the month of October when we were ahead by an hour each year! Sometimes you would not get TV shows until the next week, other times we’d see them an hour ahead of the mainland, other schedules were just completely different. Some ABC radio programs would have a special Tasmanian edition and TDT would just show their normal programming an hour out with no notice of the time variance by the last couple of years so you’d sit down for Australian Idol at the advertised time of 7:30 and there’d be nothing until 8:30 but no way of knowing.
I know, I have to have a chuckle at my workplace when it’s 40 degrees outside and people are wearing cardigans inside at work!
I guess it’s easier for workplaces to make it a bit too cool than a bit too warm -as you can’t please everyone… so it’s just easier for some to rug up a little to make them happy.
I think I can remember WIN Tasmania having to air it’s news at 7pm, ACA at 7.30pm, with other prime time programs to follow from 8pm (when it was 7pm in VIC and NSW).
Yep, they all used to handle it differently each year and we used to get a very basic clock cover up on Sunrise and Today that would make some people here hyperventilate at how it looked.
Was great for other things though, you could fly to Melbourne and arrive 5 minutes before you left.
China is bigger than Australia and they seem to cope perfectly fine.