Anna Bligh tweets for daylight saving

ANNA Bligh has reopened Queensland's thorny daylight saving debate.

ANNA Bligh has reopened Queensland's thorny daylight saving debate, suggesting yesterday that passions had cooled sufficiently for summer time to be trialled again in Brisbane and the state's southeast.

The Premier backed away from her previous insistence that she would not revisit the perennial barbecue-stopper when independent MP Peter Wellington unveiled private member's legislation to split Queensland into two summer time zones: one in line with NSW, the other an hour behind.

Ms Bligh hit Twitter to kick along the proposal, saying: "I'm wondering after 18 years, is it time to give people another say?"

The Premier's office would not comment last night on speculation that Ms Bligh was preparing to announce a trial next summer of daylight saving in the southeast, before a referendum at the state election due in 2012.

Summer time was last piloted statewide in Queensland by the Goss Labor government, but a 1992 referendum decisively rejected it, 54.5 per cent against to 44.5 per cent in favour of putting the clocks forward.

Wayne Goss said yesterday he regretted that he didn't give voters a "third option" of confining daylight saving to Brisbane and the southeast, where support for it was strongest.

"With the benefit of hindsight, I think we should have worked out a way to have done that," the former premier told The Australian.

"I think it is a good compromise."

The opposition said it would campaign for a no vote if Mr Wellington's referendum proposal got up.

"I don't want to make an interstate problem an intrastate problem," Liberal National Party leader John-Paul Langbroek said.

Queensland and Western Australia are the holdout states on daylight saving, with voters in the west last May slapping down the fourth attempt to introduce it there.

The issue was considered so dead in Queensland that reporters had given up asking Ms Bligh about the possibility of change.

Ms Bligh's surprise tweets on daylight saving came on a day when the government was under intense pressure over the bungling of payrolls for state health workers.

However, Ms Bligh is said to have recognised the issue of daylight saving was "not going away" in the southeast, and Mr Wellington's private member's bill meant it had to be addressed.

After meeting Ms Bligh yesterday, Mr Wellington urged the public to get behind the referendum and "be decisive".