Brisbane blogger Joanne Jacobs is campaigning for daylight saving in SE Queensland. Last year, Mark Bahnisch came out against, arguing that, in Brisbane’s summer weather it’s better to finish work after sunset. I thought this might be a good time to review the issue, which we discussed at length last year
I’m generally in favour as I tend to wake up with the sun. Because Brisbane is so far east (we’re not far from Byron Bay), sunrise in summer is very early – it’s light before 5am. In some ways, that’s good (it’s a great time to get work done), but not if you want to stay up past about 9pm. It starts getting dark pretty early, around 6:30.
I suspect that daylight saving here does little more than restore the time in Brisbane to what it would be under “God’s time”, without time zones or other fiddles.
The problem is, of course, that the state is big in both directions. The tropics have very little seasonal variation in the length of the day, which makes daylight saving in summer nonsensical while the west has the opposite problem to Brisbane. As various commentators noted, the idea that resistance to daylight saving in these regions is based on ignorant provincialism is itself ignorant and provincial, reflecting an assumption that the conditions of the temperate-zone eastern seaboard hold universally.
But if we have to have one time zone for the whole state , we should pick it to suit the majority. My guess is that a majority of people in SEQ would prefer daylight saving, and this would outweigh the majority against in other regions. But there are certainly sizeable minorities in both areas, so it’s hard to predict for sure.
Last time around, I dismissed as ludicrous the idea of an internal time zone border, but as commentators pointed out, NSW has one, with Broken Hill on Adelaide time. On reflection, I think the idea has a bit of appeal on general subsidiarity grounds.
Starting with the current situation, Queensland has to choose whether to go along with the southern states and get the benefits of consistency along with the benefits and costs of daylight savings. Clearly the benefits are larger in SEQ, so if we go that way, it would be reasonable to offer the same choice to the north and west. Those regions would then have the same choice between a more convenient time system, with the costs of inconsistency with the South-East, or a less convenient but consistent system.
Of course, anyone who really doesn’t like daylight saving could leave their watch unchanged, stick to their old schedules as far as possible, and just bear in mind that everyone else is using a different time. The reverse is true in the present situation if you really like daylight saving – you can just get up early.
John Quiggin 
I think Daylight-saving was originally introduced into Australia during World War II as a way of conserving power. The “wasted” sunlight at 5.30 am was used to save power at 6.30 pm. With Global warming being so topical and Energex under pressure to cope with the summer power requirements that air conditioners impose, daylight-saving might be a worthwhile intervention to consider. Far less long-term effects than nuclear power for example.
Central time could be expanded to take in a large slab of Queensland? The NT does not save daylight, so northern and western Qld could join it during the summer months. This would reduce the number of time zones in summer to four instead of the current five.
But daylight saving causes skin cancer.
At least, that is what the Queensland Premier, and he is asvised by the state’s health authorities, so he must be right.
The whole daylight savings debate becomes even more irrelevant in places such as Cairns or Mount Isa. The latter is almost another time zone away from Brisbane.
Just as Australia as a whole is too Sydney/Melbourne-centric, debate about all things Queensland tend to be too Brisbane/SE-centric. It’s a big state and a bigger country.
If you go with a new time zone be sure to tell software vendors like Microsoft so that PCs can handle the change. Every time NSW has a non-standard daylight savings change date it is a real pain.
PrQ,
I think you have it right in the last paragraph. If you want daylight saving, just get up earlier and go to bed earlier. Time should be a way of organising our own day – not a straitjacket imposed on us.
If we free up trading hours then, apart from a few businesses that need to stick to fixed hours for other reasons, the whole point becomes moot. Just choose your own hours and be done with it. Sort it out for yourselves.
After reading some of these comments I wonder if anyone has lived in a a region with a lot of time zone overlap. Out in north west QLD some of the TV is broadcast from Alice Springs (30 minutes difference), some from Townsville, some from Brisbane, (same time zone) and delayed radio broadcasts from Sydney. One can see/hear three time zones just by walking from one room to another in the house.
I think timezones shouldn’t be meddled with on the basis of digital equipment, it’s too hard to get all the information out to all the non-network aware devices. And I would also argue that having daylight savings kick in during secondary school exam periods is a fairly silly thing to do. All this for a policy which many people see absolutely no benefit in, and which disrupts people’s sleeping patterns. QLD is a smart state to reject it.
Re trading hours and global warming.
Exactly, which is why we need to sign up to a comprehensive treaty allowing hour trading between the states and countries with an excess of leisure time.
In reply to Andrew Reynolds, I recently started a new job where I have to get up at five am for a six am start. Going to bed at 9pm is no fun, especially when the family is watching TV. It’s harder than you think, having one’s own timezone. also at the weekends, you either have to slip back to normal time (which screws up your body clock) or get up at say 6am on a Saturday morning, which seems a bit spartan.
Aidan,
I used to work on mine sites, where, during summer, they start work around 5am (or earlier) so that you can finish your 10 hour day by 3pm. Being a bit Spartan on the weekends is great – get to the beach at 8am and it is really nice – no-one there, clear water, etc.
I now fly a fair bit, so my body clock is a bit messed up anyway.
Only slightly off-topic – I saw a presentation years ago where this guy proposed that the various Acts around Australia that regulate time should be repealed. A bit extreme, perhaps, but it is an idea that I am coming around to. Time will still work, we will know what the time is – but changes to time and its regulation in all forms would go. Good outcome.
David Rowell – wouldn’t daylight saving increase power usage? Workers arrive home from air-conditioned offices an hour ealier and crank on the air-con until at least sundown. This is being used as an argument against daylight saving here in WA.
Getting up earlier doesn’t help you finish work earlier, unless you are the CEO and can change your own office hours on a whim.
There is an interesting study in Canada, which compares the working dilligence of the people in two cities: Toronto and Montreal.(The two cities are in the same time zone.) It says that one reason that ppl in Toronto work much harder than the ppl in Montreal is because the ppl in Toronto can see the sunlight ealier than the ppl in Montreal.
Unfortunately, ‘sunshine’ always makes me feel dizzy!
If you work flexitime it does, Yobbo. Otherwise, get up an hour earlier and go for a walk, a swim or do some other exercise you normally leave until the evening 😉
As any fule kno, it matters not one jot what time you arrive at work, it’s being seen by the boss to be the last to leave that counts. In the real world, office workers who fancy their chances at a career – and isn’t that most of them? – will benefit from daylight saving by being able to actually have some of that quality time with the kids or friends out of doors rather than zonked out in front of the tv. Andrew Reynolds’s time-anarchy utopia would in fact lead to the situation faced by shift workers and their families at present being replicated throughout the workforce, with mums on Tonga time and dads on Rio time and only the children running on local time. And then the Andrew Bolts and Miranda Devines could write foam-at-the-mouth pieces about the irresponsiblility of working class parents, and the need to crack down on juvenile delinquency. If only human beings were machines, eh, wouldn’t life be grand! Daylight saving is a wonderful thing for wage slaves – it’s only the leisured class and those with the luxury of setting their own times who debate the topic.
BTW, I favour giving the people what they want – in the 1992 referendum all the local government areas in southeast Queensland voted in favour of daylight saving, and all local government areas outside the southeast voted against it. The people have spoken – they want two time zones, so let them have them!
The Broken Hill comparison doesn’t get much traction with me since it’s not the NSW capital. If you accept the argument that it’s bad for Qld to be out of sync with the more populous parts of the country then surely it follows that it’s bad for the bulk of Qld to be out of step with its capital?
But Broken Hill is a nice reminder of how railways created timezones. The rail link to Broken Hill was via Adelaide so they adopted SA time, which also brings me to a “trivial” point. If Qld did split into two zones, would rail services across the state run on Sydney time or Qld time?
And maybe I’m just perverse, but frankly I’d be much happier if we just shifted permamently to GMT+11 time. I really, really want an extra hour of evening light in winter and I’m prepared to accept an extra hour of blazing heat in the summer evenings to get it.
d
Well, you good folk insist on living at those ridiculous temperate latitudes, with all that wild diurnal variation over the year. You’re gluttons for punishment. Move north, people!
(Actually, on reflection, don’t. I like the empty space. And you lot will just impose some bastardised version of daylight saving on us all natural northies, just so you can maintain some soppy nostalgic link to the ‘old country’ and it’s ‘traditions’.)
Signed
Homo australis (ssp. tropicalus)
Most people in SEQ seem not to quite realise the difference in daylight by the time you get to Cairns. Obviously you are much further west, which delays sunrise by a substantial amount. A second point I have yet to see made anywhere, is that the closer you are to the equator, the quicker the sunrise and sunset, and shorter the twilight. The result is that during the begining and end of daylight saving you are getting up in the dark. I remember the trial we had years ago. Just when the mornings were getting lighter, we switched forward an hour. It was like having winter for 3/4 the year. Horrible.
An extra hour of daylight? Our curtains are gunna fade faster…
Stupid Queenslander says it all. I’m amazed at how many variations of that old turkey have cropped up here.
Flotsam, just tune the shortwave onto Indonesia, Auckland, London and whatever – you could have 10 timezones per room – including Nepal which, intriguingly, has a 10 minutes time difference from India!
I don’t see what people are getting fashed about.
We’ve got a perfectly logical 24hour system of identifying the hours – many transport systems already use it.
We have a communication system that allows workers to be accessible anytime and anywhere.
We have an employment regime that enables each and every worker to have a separately negotiated timetable that should enable staggered hours of travel, helping to overcome some of the present transport problems.
We have a financial system capable of handling transactions 24/7.
When this canard gets trotted out again, and everyone gets hot under the collar, there’s got to be something the pollies want hidden….