There are good reasons for DST and Non-DST, but which carries weight depends entirely on where you are, strongly biassed by what you are used to, as is apparent from comments in this thread.

If you are far from the equator, don’t want to be woken up by bright sunlight at 4 am but like lively outdoor cafes and bars in the twilight at 8 pm, then DST is for you. Non-DST is for morning larks who like to spend their leisuretime daylight not waking up the neighbours and not going to closed shops and pubs.

If you are close enough to the equator that the sun rises at 6 and goes down at 6 all year round anyway, and for daylight in summer to imply that outdoors is a stinking, sweaty hell, then you’d probably prefer sunset as early as possible.

The boundary between these regimes, for most, probably lies very close to Brisbane.

It amazes me the furphies that people put out to justify their preference as an absolute, be it time zone disparities or curtain-fading!

hendo@42. Yes, it sounds like moving north is for you. As an archetypal evening person who likes staying up, hates mornings but likes my sunlight, I’ll stay here at higher latitude, enjoy DST, and wish we had it all year round. I love light evenings. Those bl**dy jammy Europeans have DST from late March to late October: 7 months. We used to have only 5 months. Roll on late September – late April DST!

Graham@33. Nope. This would be silly. Some of us need our daylight at sensible times. But I’ve never understood the HALF hour jump between SA/NT time and Eastern Australian time. Why not go the whole hog and make it a full hour?

Mind you, one of the silliest justifications I heard was a couple of years ago, when some pro-DS wallah said the current situation “was bad for Qld’s trade figures” because Queensland lost some trading opportunities with NSW and Vic. because it didn’t wind the clocks forward for summer. As Queensland does more trade with Tokyo and Beijing than with Sydney and Melbourne, one would think that was an argument for winding the clocks back a couple of hours, putting Brisbane in the same time-zone as Perth and Beijing.

Perhaps this is my workaholic showing, but my major problem these days is that I end up at work much later than I intend because the daylight keeps making me think it’s earlier, so I’ve got time to finish one more report/review/whatever. And you’re right about the cold in October.

And to be perfectly honest plural of anecdote not being data aside, a majority of the people I’ve encountered in favour of Daylight Savings for Qld have been folks who moved up from NSW and Vic (says she who moved up from NSW herself), and it’s taken a fair amount of restraint for me to not tell them that if it’s so darn important, maybe they should move back down south. Of course, my partner and I have been joking for the last two years about petitioning the ACT to remove daylight savings.

Oh and to those who say it’s best for the southern states, I say meh. I’m in Canberra, so starting daylight savings at the beginning of October this year means it is bloody freezing again in the mornings. Then, by the time you get to November, the light doesn’t properly fade until around 9pm. blargh.

Then again, we could do away with local time zones all together and adopt UTC. We are after all a 24/7 society, aren’t we? It works well in the aviation industry, so why not adopt it for all of society.

Well we could benefit from moving away from the 9-5 work hours for the majority. There’s many jobs out there that wouldn’t be adversely affected by people working a range of hours (eg 7-3, 9-5, 11-7) – whatever fits them best. It would also help reduce traffic congestion and reduce the load on public transport by reducing the peak demand.
Can also be much more family friendly, especially if you let people (where it can be done) break up their work day.

Bah!

If you lived in the north west of Western Australia, however, north of the 26th, the tropic of Capricorn, I would suggest ‘daylight spending’ during the southern summer and not ‘day light saving’ would be the best proposition. Instead of putting the clocks forward an hour, put them back an hour.

Most days from mid September to early May are above 37′C, quite often into the 40s. It is not bearable to be outside during day light hours. Most outdoor activities specially children’s sports, do not start until the sun goes below the horizon. and are conducted under lights.

Then again, we could do away with local time zones all together and adopt UTC. We are after all a 24/7 society, aren’t we? It works well in the aviation industry, so why not adopt it for all of society.

Jacques, I was being IRONIC!

Ah.

To the Devil with Daylight Saving and with all the Time Zones confusion …. have the whole of Australia, every bit of it, in the one time zone for the whole year; that time zone should be +9hours UTC [=GMT] …. and if that happens to be the same time zone as Tokyo, well, there you go.

Yep, so no effective change to the mornings, but an opportunity to take the boy to the oval to practice his footy after work, which I can’t do at the moment.

d