Lack of daylight saving makes mockery of reputation as Sunshine State
Sunshine State? Not when the Palaszczuk government continues to ignore calls for another look at daylight saving, writes Peter Gleeson.
Peter Gleeson
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Another 183 hours of daylight saving was lost to Queenslanders over summer as we made a mockery of our reputation as the Sunshine State.
Moves are underway to rename the rego plates in Queensland. We could either be the Secret State, highlighting Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Government’s obsession with a lack of transparency and accountability, or the Backward State because of an unwillingness to adopt daylight saving.
As the rest of the world embraces more sunshine by changing its time zones, we just put the shutters up.
According to Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner, South East Queensland missed out on close to $22 million a day over the past six months because we were not on the same timezone as the southern states.
“There are four billion reasons every year to trial daylight saving Time in Queensland,’’ he says.
“It’s time the State Government gives the three million Queenslanders who’ve never had their say a chance to voice their opinion.’’
It is clear that the only way this is going to happen in Queensland is to have dual time zones, where people north of Gympie maintain the status quo, and the South East goes one hour forward like NSW and Victoria.
The United States is a vast country covering an area of 9.834 million square kilometres, similar to Australia. For the convenience of travellers and economic, social, and commercial purposes, the country has been divided into 11 time-zones.
Of the 50 states, 37 are contained within one time-zone. However, 13 states use more than one time-zone. The states that observe more than one time-zone are Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Florida, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alaska.
Most of Oregon follows the Pacific Standard Time, but around 80 per cent of the northern part of the Malheur County uses the Mountain Standard Time. Mountain Standard Time is used in most of Idaho while some parts use the Pacific Standard Time and Central Standard Time is observed in North Dakota.
You get the idea.
And guess what? The world hasn’t ended. People get on with their lives, coming to grips with the different time zones. The cows are fine. The curtains don’t fade. Mind you the bulls get a bit confused, especially around breeding season. But that’s a small price to pay for Queensland embracing the 21st century.
We need a referendum in the South East on daylight saving. Not being on the same time zone as NSW and Victoria in summer is costing Queensland enormous reputational damage.
It’s time.