How Daylight Saving could benefit Coolangatta-Tweed communities

As if the poor buggers around the Tweed-Coolangatta border needed any more grief in their lives, along comes daylight saving, writes Peter Gleeson

HERE we go again. It’s that time of the year when Queensland officially confirms it is an hour behind the rest of the world.

As if the poor buggers around the Tweed-Coolangatta border needed any more grief in their lives, along comes daylight saving. Tomorrow morning, the southern states will put their clocks forward an hour, meaning they get more daylight.

In Queensland, according to the geniuses that don’t want daylight saving, allowing an extra hour of sunlight fades the curtains and makes the cows go giddy.

Coolangatta-Tweed residents will face another difficulty when it comes to crossing the border amid the return of Daylight Saving. Photo: Scott Powick

Both premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Opposition leader David Crisafulli are on a unity ticket with daylight saving. Both have filed it into the too hard basket. Both need to wake up.

The fact is daylight saving in other states causes untold chaos in Queensland with business meetings and missed flights, although with Covid-19 bringing the aviation industry to its knees, those days of missing planes are now virtually over.

We know the cross-border issues have been dire, and heartbreaking, for many families torn apart by border closures and changes to quarantine hotel protocols.

Griffith Street, Coolangatta, has gone from a thriving, bustling precinct to a ghost town. Same with Surfers Paradise, Cairns and Port Douglas.

But while the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19 seems inexorable, daylight saving is a policy decision that can be changed.

Unfortunately, unless there’s a referendum in Queensland, the summer time zone madness is here to stay.

NSW and Victoria are wedded to their extra hour of daylight, while Queensland remains in the Dark Ages.

It’s a terrible indictment on the lack of courage on big issues being applied in Queensland. Risk averse political decision-making is not leadership.

Whether it’s not deviating from the health advice, or consigning Queensland to a different time zone, politicians need to aim up.

I have no doubt – no doubt – a daylight saving referendum would be carried in Queensland today.

A new petition is calling for Daylight Saving to return to Queensland for the first time in 30 years. Picture: Supplied

The amount of people in the southeast corner, the majority in favour of gaining the extra hour, would carry the vote handsomely.

Yet politicians, scared witless of the bush turning on them, make the decision not to make the decision. .

Queensland observed daylight saving until 1972 and other than a brief experiment between 1989 and 1992, it has never embraced the southern states’ time zone.

However, new research shows the overwhelming majority of Queenslanders now want daylight saving, like their southern counterparts.

Lead researcher Dr Thomas Sigler says the state loses $4 billion a year because of the decision not to be in sync with the other states.

He says the different time zones cause a disconnect with the other states and international companies. The University of Queensland research shows 60 per cent of Queenslanders would vote for its reintroduction.

In Brisbane and the Gold Coast, the number is even higher at 70 per cent. Just 46 per cent of those in the Northern Tropics supported it.

The biggest loser is tourism. So here’s the play premier Annastacia Palaszczuk needs to roll out as we head into a summer of darkness under her government’s terrible Covid-19 response.

To give the industry a much-needed boost from the border closures, the Palaszczuk Government should introduce daylight saving between Noosa and Coolangatta.

They argue it divides the state but that’s bollocks. It’s an imaginary line, like borders. The people of North Queensland have more in common with Northern Territorians than they do the southeast. They actually don’t like people in the south. That’s why they’re constantly talking about going it alone with their own separate state.

Debate returns on whether Daylight Saving should return to Queensland. Picture: Ariel Ocampo

As long as the Cowboys are winning and the barramundi are aplenty, they’re a pretty easy going lot.

Crisafulli needs to campaign for a southeast time zone. He’d garner plenty of votes because people are sick and tired of the annual confusion.

It works at Broken Hill in NSW, which runs on Adelaide time, half an hour behind NSW and Victoria.

No more missing flights, late for Zoom calls or even missing the first race at the track. It’s a win, win, win for everybody.

And if there’s one thing the Gold Coast needs now it’s more sun in our lives. After all we are the Sunshine State.

Originally published as How Daylight Saving could benefit Coolangatta-Tweed communities