Section 51 of the Constitution provides that the Commonwealth Parliament has the power to make laws “”with respect to weights and measures”.
I have been reminded of this most mornings in the past three weeks around 5.30am when the sun has woken me up and Radio National has told me that it is a sensible 6.30am in Tasmania.
Like most urban dwellers light between 5.30am and 6.30am (two hours or more before work and business begins) is not as valuable to me as light after work hours.
In rural areas, daylight saving is detested. It is odd because more people in rural areas can live, work and play by the sun irrespective of what hour and minute humans call sunrise or sunset.
As a result the National Party in NSW exerted its influence on daylight saving so that we get five months of daylight saving (in fact five months less a week). Only Victoria’s insistence on daylight saving till the end of March to embrace Moomba saved us from daylight saving being cut to four months. The rural rump in Queensland and Western Australia were even more powerful, resulting in no daylight saving in those states, despite the desire for in the capital cities.
Opposition to daylight saving usually increases as you go north and in the eastern states as you go east.
There is a solution to this, but it would require state premiers to think beyond their state boundaries. We should have a national daylight saving zone, rather than setting times along state boundaries. The zone would include all capitals except Darwin and the major population centres of the south-east and south-west, leaving the north and the rural areas without daylight saving.
The daylight saving zone would be defined by a line running roughly from Gladstone in Queensland to Griffith in NSW and via Port Augusta to Streaky Bay. In the west it would be defined by a line running from Geraldton to Kalgoorlie and down to Esperance. See map.
It would satisfy a lot more people than the present state-boundary system. Moreover there would be a lot fewer transactions (physical and electronic) across that line than the present time-zone boundaries that put Brisbane on a different zone than Sydney and Melbourne for nine months a year.
Various local government zones or towns near the boundary might have referendums so the boundary, without being too meandering, would more closely reflect public opinion.
It is not outlandish to have a time zone cut through the middle of a state. It already happens. Broken Hill, in western NSW, runs on South Australian time. It is legislated for. Twenty kilometres east of Broken Hill you come across a sign on side the road (in an area populated only by kangaroos and a garage) telling you to wind your clock forward half an hour. It is a great place for a time-zone boundary.
The present political compromise is self-evidently flawed. Today the last day with no daylight saving will have 13 hours 25 minutes of sunlight. Yet at the end of March when we do have daylight saving the day is 11 hours 50 minutes long. In the new daylight saving zone we should move the clock roughly at the equinox, on a weekend. The first weekend in October and the last weekend in March.
The Tasmanians have got it right.