Daylight Saving

There isn’t a proposal for that again, is there?

Just do it Queensland. Join the rest of us civilised people down south. :joy:

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Queensland should join NSW ACT and VIC

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You’ve got that the wrong way around.

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Unlikely when the rest of the world is slowly planning to abolish DST.
It’s likely finished permanently in the EU as of this year, the US might not be far away either.

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Maybe Qld should join daylight savings.

Just went there for a family holiday. Loved it. But the sun came up at 5:01am. Hard to justify not joining east coast time to be honest.

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You mean like how NSW ACT and VIC joined Tasmania first?

Tasmania? Where’s that? :grin:

Agreed.
Have recently moved down from Townsville to Canberra. Having daylight saving time now is fantastic. Went out for dinner at 7pm tonight, finished at 8pm and went for a nice walk around the block afterwards with my sunglasses on. It’s so lovely to have so much time available after work in the evening and it’s great to see so many people out enjoying it.

In QLD it’s dark just after 7 and everyone is hiding away in their houses.

The only argument I ever heard in Townsville was either “we don’t need daylight until 10 at night” (which is obviously not factual, but honestly, amazingly, heaps of people up there seemed to genuinely believe that would happen if we had DST… I remember a former mayor saying this on the local news a few years ago when the topic was in the news).
The other argument was “it’s too hot”. Temperatures up there don’t vary by much more than 5 degrees over the course of the day, an hour difference makes less than half a degree of difference.

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Yeah, rona free so you don’t hear much from us! Also not on fire, not scorched, not flooded. Just nice sunny days - mid-20’s and lovely evenings with daylight till about 9:20.

Just checked the sunset time for Townsville for today - 6:57pm so it would be 7:57pm with daylight saving, Hobart is currently 8:45pm for sunset with the last of the light now disappearing around 9:15-9:30, it can just stretch out to near 10pm on a really clear night at the height of summer but I doubt that would happen that far north!

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Did those discussions on SA moving to east coast time ever get anywhere? Do people really notice the half hour?

In general Australia has too many time zones, doubly so with the mix of some states doing DST and others not.

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Totally agree… 5 different time zones in a population of approx. 25 mil seems absurd.

DST has nothing to do with population, like timezones, it has everything to do with spatial geography.

DST is a misnomer, you are not saving any time, you’re displacing it.

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I know that, but it looks inefficient having so many timezones for a relatively small number of people.

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While, I wouldn’t mind daylight savings, I can see why people in especially the north and west of Queensland aren’t in favour.

Daylight Saving has fewer benefits the closer to the equator you get because the length of the day doesn’t increase by a lot during summer months. While you might get an extra hour of sunlight for evening activities, that time ends up just being transferred away from the early morning.

If you look at Cairns for example, if there was daylight savings, sunrise today would not be until 7am, so lots of people would be getting up getting ready for work in the dark, which is unexpected during the summer months. In Mt Isa sunrise would be at 7:20 am.

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That’s why I get annoyed too with people who want DST all year round - that wouldn’t work here in Tas, in the height of winter you’d get sunrise near 9am, if it’s a dark and gloomy morning it’s barely light at 8am as it is and it would only give you light until about 5:30 anyway so quite pointless. At the equator, the day length between summer and winter is only a few minutes, at the poles it’s 24 hours difference and here in Tassie it’s about 6 and a half hours difference so it makes quite an impact but that would be different in Vic, then different again in Sydney and then different again in Alice Springs etc… There’s no uniform solution to make all states happy.

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If the states were structured in thinner layers north to south then it would be a lot easier, but they aren’t so the states we have simply have to come to arrangements that are best for their residents.

While I am skeptical on any concept to simply get rid of DST, I do wonder if Queensland may need to consider having two time zones - one north and the other south during DST. If so, where would that border be?

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The existing state borders with NSW and the NT? :stuck_out_tongue:

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The international moves to abolish it I thought were leaning the way of staying permanently on summer time? That has the drawback of meaning very late sunrises in winter which I don’t think would fly here (Melbourne on permanent DST for instance wouldn’t see sun in June until 8:30am).

I don’t see the idea gaining any traction up here anytime soon, unless Bob from Mt Isa get’s his way and breaks off to form the seventh state of Katterstan. I think the agitators here have largely given up, seeing as it has been the best part of 30 years since it was last trialled.

My position has always been that it makes so much sense for the south east, but I see the problems up north and out west. However it really should be noted the vast majority of the population is here in the south east - Adelaide doesn’t set its time zone for Ceduna, and likewise Brisbane shouldn’t set its time zone for Mt Isa.

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Really they should remove half an hour and move to +9

No we dont, we are a large country that spreads the distance of at least three time zones (excl. DST) - we should be using the number of timezones that are commensurate with our size and best match to sun time

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