It’s Daylight Spending time.
That’s what I call the first three weeks of October. It gets light at an absurdly early time, several hours before business hours. We are awakened by magpies three hours before we need to be at work. Or the light is squandered as many people do not get up to use it. Yet, after they come home from work they have to puts lights on an hour earlier than they should, if only the politicians who set the business hours could set the clocks more appropriately to the sun.
The present system is illogical. It is the creature of political expediency and political narrow-mindedness. But, with a little intelligence and goodwill there is a way to satisfy nearly everybody — at least, a lot more people than are satisfied now.
First, to the illogicality. Last summer, daylight saving began on October 28. The previous day the sun rose at 5.06am and set at 6.29pm. The day was 13 hours 23 minutes long. Daylight saving ended on March 30. The previous day the sun rose at 7.14am and set at 7.03pm. The day was 11 hours 49 minutes long.
There is no consistency here, in either sunrise time or length of day.
If you used a day of 11 hours 49 minutes as a daylight-saving benchmark, it would have started on September 14. If you used a 7.14am sunrise as a benchmark, it would have started on September 8.
Conversely, if you used a day of 12 hours 23 minutes or sunrise at 5.06am (standard time) as the benchmark, daylight saving would end in early February.
It would make more sense to use the 12-hour day — the equinox — as the benchmark for both the beginning and end of daylight saving. That means at present we are starting daylight saving several weeks or a month too late and perhaps ending it a few days late.
The changeover should be at a weekend, and probably on the first or last weekend of a month so it is easier to remember. That means it should start on the first weekend of October and end on the last weekend of March, giving us just shy of six months daylight saving.
But, at present, logic has nothing to do with the setting of daylight saving. It is driven by political expediency, excepting in Tasmania, which has consistently stuck to its six-month regime.
NSW and Victoria have lengthened and shortened daylight saving according to what the Premier of the day thought was in the best interests of his or her re-election, and the ACT and South Australia have just had to follow them. The Moomba festival, trendy views during the oil crisis, objections and threats by farmers in western NSW have all played their part.
In Western Australia and Queensland referendums (often tendentiously worded and argued) were used in an attempt to overcome the disagreements.
Pragmatic matters like the huge energy saving and reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions were not considered.
From a political point of view, opponents of daylight saving feel more strongly on the issue than proponents. In short, they are more likely to change their vote on this one issue. Politicians tend to appease these sort of people, despite majority opinion, especially if they are concentrated in particular electorates. With daylight saving they are in rural seats.
That’s political expediency. Now for political self-importance and narrow-mindedness.
The Premiers assume their state is the centre of things and that they must rule over their whole state. They cannot think past the boundaries of their state.
Looked at nationally, however, you could satisfy more people by creating a daylight saving zone (for six months) in the south-west and south-east, leaving the rest of the rural, north free from daylight saving, which is what they want.
The map shows a suggested line. (from Geraldton via Kalgoorlie down to Esperance in the west and from Bundaberg down to Dubbo across to Port Augusta via the SA-Vic-NSW junction). No doubt the line would have to be fine tuned, but I bet is shows a far truer reflection of public opinion on daylight saving than the fatuous zones based on state boundaries that we have now.
But the Premiers assume the whole state must have the same time zone.
It is nonsense, of course. Places in the far east of Western Australia run a local time an hour or more ahead of Perth time. Broken Hill runs half an hour behind Sydney. Indeed, that is legislated for. The special time zone is created by legislation and when you drive east about 20km from Broken Hill you come across a sign in the middle of nowhere telling you to wind your watch forward.
This illustrates a further point. The boundaries of the zones I suggest would have fewer crossings and electronic transactions running across them than the present system. The inconvenience for five months between Brisbane and NSW and for one month between Victoria and Tasmania would be avoided. It would be replaced by some inconvenience across the zones I have suggested, but it would be much less because they run through sparsely populated areas.
However, I don’t think the self-important Premiers could be persuaded.
It would need federal action.
The Commonwealth could act because it has constitutional power over weights and measures. (And it doesn’t take Einstein to work out that time is a measure.) But once again we come up against the democratic deficit. Because the aggravation to a few people who would change their vote on the strength of that single issue, majority opinion gets pushed aside. No-one is going to change their vote because the Feds don’t do anything, but quite a few might if the Feds weigh in gratuitously.
That said, some rural voters might be forever grateful to a government that freed them from the yoke of daylight saving.
This government, of course, would be very reluctant to use the foreign-affairs power and greenhouse-gas obligations to change time zones.
So perhaps the ACT could provoke them into action. It could follow Tasmania’s time zone. The Feds could then follow the Andrews precedent by stepping in and while doing so, tidy up the whole sorry mess.
And in October I wouldn’t be awakened by magpies three hours before I go to work.