Daylight saving Qld: Brisbane 2032 Games triggers renewed push for change

Business leaders are launching a major new call for daylight saving to be introduced in South East Queensland.

• Opinion: Message is clear

Business leaders are calling for daylight saving to be introduced in South East Queensland ahead of the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Queensland Hotels Association CEO Bernie Hogan said the hospitality industry would like to see daylight saving introduced in at least the South East ahead of the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games to showcase the region to the world.

“It’s not going to work for the entire state but for South East Queensland, it encourages people to use that sunlight after work and that’s the vibrancy you see in so many world cities,” he said.

Daylight saving starts in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia on Sunday morning but Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory will stay stubbornly on standard time.

Despite Queenslanders again being plunged into the annual daylight saving “time warp” – causing confusion for everything from business and government to travel and even cross-border school drop-offs and pick-ups – Labor and the LNP have dismissed it as a non-issue.

Premier Steven Miles and opposition leader David Crisafulli have both ruled out revisiting daylight saving any time soon, despite new research revealing most Queenslanders support having an extra hour of sunshine and a warning that politicians ignore the issue “at their own peril”.

Queensland’s daylight saving debate is an annual event.

“Daylight savings is not something currently being considered,” a Miles government spokeswoman said.

“We’re doing what matters for Queenslanders including delivering record cost-of-living relief and world-class health care.”

Mr Crisafulli said he had lived and worked at both ends of the state “and I’m not going to do anything that would divide Queensland”.

“Our priority is ending Labor’s youth crime, health, housing and cost of living crises for Queenslanders in every corner of our great state,” he said.

Even Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner, an ardent daylight saving advocate, has toned down his rhetoric amid the state election campaign.

“While I still strongly support daylight saving, I’m a realist and understand it’s not a top priority when our state is suffering a youth crime crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, a health crisis and housing shortage,” he said.

“A new daylight saving trial is inevitable but first, we need to ensure Queensland gets a fresh start.”

In an opinion piece for today’s The Courier-Mail, University of Queensland academic and pro-daylight saving campaigner Dr Thomas Sigler cited his latest research showing 66 per cent of Queenslanders were in favour of the time change.

While most support was in the South East, even 50 per cent of rural residents backed daylight saving.

Pro-daylight saving campaigner Dr Thomas Sigler from the University of Queensland.

Dr Sigler, associate professor of geography at UQ, said the only referendum on daylight saving, held in 1992, was so long ago “that no-one under the age of 50 has had a say in the matter”.

“If Queensland were to have another referendum, I am confident that voters would support daylight saving,” he said.

Dr Sigler said Queensland politicians often avoided discussing daylight saving because they feared it would cost them votes.

“With nearly two-thirds of the state’s population in favour, I’d argue the opposite: political candidates continue to ignore the issue at their own peril,” he said.

But Dr Sigler said the reality was that neither of the major parties would touch daylight saving for now, and Queensland would have a “political impasse that continues into the foreseeable future”.

“Unless it’s someone’s pet project like Adrian Schrinner’s, I just don’t see it getting on the agenda,” he said.