It’s that time of the year, the last week of Daylight Savings for another year.
It’s amazing how much of a difference the one hour makes, here it’s in Albury going to jump from a 6:59pm sunset on Saturday to 5:57pm on Sunday.
Personally, I’m in two minds about DST. I’m not a morning person so the late sunrises don’t bother me and I get a lot more enjoyment with a later sunset, but I also love my European sport (such as F1) and DST makes that at an even less favourable timeslot a lot of the time.
I think there’s a good case for NSW, VIC, TAS, QLD and the ACT to look at perhaps a ‘compromise’ of a half-hour ‘daylight saving’ all year around (i.e. the time zone is permanently set to UTC+10:30).
Would mean in the middle of winter in most places there’s sunlight until about 5:45pm instead of 5:15pm (and sunrises still before 8am, 8:10am at worst in somewhere like Hobart), while still being beneficial in summer with daylight until about 8pm (with local variances depending on location of course).
It also mitigates the arguments against both permanent DST and permanent standard time, being sunrises being too late in winter and sunsets being too early in summer respectively, and doesn’t disadvantage ‘morning people’ or ‘evening people’ disproportionately.
This would also eliminate the Tweed time zone confusion and the twice-annual disruption of moving clocks back and forward.
I just think DST probably goes for a month too long. I’d be happy if we put our clocks back in the 1st week of March.
Its crazy that we are now spending more of the year in DST than in normal time. Maybe we should move to UTC +11 permanently and adopt Nighttime Saving Time in winter and put our clocks back one hour then!
I respectfully disagree. I think it ends at the right time. At the other end of the year, i think it starts too late.
The rest of the world has 7 months of DST and 5 months standard time. Food for thought. If we followed Europe’s model then we would start one week earlier and finish three weeks later.
What I mean is that there’s a huge difference with how it impacts people’s routines between a 7pm sunset, where you can do a few things after work in the daylight (for those who work standard office hours), and a 6pm sunset where by the time you get home there’s bugger all daylight left.
I agree it definitely drags too long into late March, mid-March feels right to me as a good time to switch back. It could be started a bit earlier though, mid-September would make sense also being around the equinox.
I don’t see why we should do that just because Europe does.
Most of them are further away from the equator than even Tasmania is. They have 3am sunrises and 10pm sunsets in summer so probably makes more sense to them to do it.
Whereas countries near the Equator like Singapore don’t have it at all because their shortest and longest days of the year are only 30 minutes different.
So I have a slightly unique perspective on this. I grew up in daylight saving territory in Victoria and now live in non-DST being in Brisbane.
Being in Brisbane in November-December without DST is ridiculous, the sun rises most mornings before 5am with light in the sky not long after 4am. It also means by about 7am the sun has already been up for two or more hours and is super hot.
I don’t care how much a morning person you might be, that is utterly insane. Especially when it’s still dark well before 7pm during those times.
But I’ve just spent the last few days in Victoria as well, and don’t fancy their arrangement at the end of DST that much either. Sunrise is close to a quarter to eight AM right before the clocks change, which means most people are going to work in the dark for the last few weeks before the clocks go back.
Personally, I think Queensland (or at least the south east) should observe DST for the earlier reasons provided, but it shouldn’t run beyond the autumn equinox when the days are shorter than the nights. That would mean DST ending about two or more weeks earlier than it currently does, and sunrises remaining at a more appropriate time for all.
I agree with this.
Taking Canberra as an example, since that’s where I live, we are waiting until the sunrise gets to 7:20am to end daylight saving on Sunday, but then we wait until the sunrise is at 5:34am before starting it up again in October.
It should be starting in early to mid September to avoid the crazy early sunrise times.
Even though it’s pitch black when i’m getting up for work now, I actually still prefer this way because at least I can get outside after work.
Tonight after work I was out for a walk with my wife at 6:45pm and we actually mentioned the fact we wouldn’t be able to do our evening walks anymore from next week because it will be dark.
I’ll take the dark mornings in favour of keeping the lighter evenings for longer.
Don’t get me wrong, by mid-Winter the sunrise would just be far too late for daylight saving to continue permanently in my opinion, but I still feel like it could run for a bit longer, and should definitely start much earlier than October.
This was something I also found odd about living in Queensland too.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s hot there in summer most of the time, but with the sun rising so early you never got to actually enjoy the only cooler time of the day.
I remember driving to work at 7:30am and because it had already been light for 3 hours it was already 30 °C.
By the time you were up in the morning you’d already well and truly missed any opportunity to enjoy some cooler temperatures.
Having lived in both, I enjoy QLD’s stance on no DST and hope it continues.
I mean we can’t even get shops to open later than 6pm some days. I would expect if Qld was to adopt DST then trading hours would need to change to reflect this.
I mean just go to the Airport Woolies after 6pm on any summer Sunday……
NSW should knock two months off daylight saving and let it run from November to March, farmers say, because post-pandemic work habits have made it redundant.
Members of NSW Farmers will vote at the lobby group’s state conference next week on whether it’s time for rural Australia to push back against daylight saving, which has been gradually extended since it was introduced outside of wartime in 1971, so it now covers half the year.
thats an issue with the state government regulating trading hours - i’m of the opinion they need to get out of the way and let business open when they want (with the exception of ANZAC day, Christmas Day, Easter)
as someone who works for a national company out of the Brisbane office DST makes it difficult, especially when dealing with the perth office. you only really get 3 or so hours of producivity a day due to late starts, lunch breaks and stuff
It’s no different to working with international offices in particular West Coast US for example. During our summer there is more of a overlap with our working hours.
It’s a bit annoying just means you may need to schedule meetings differently the arguments of Queensland should not have daylight saving is not helpful that isn’t going to change any time soon neither should it. I personally think daylight saving goes for too long and if it finished earlier like it used to I’d be for that.
