Daylight saving. It’s an issue that divides the nation, pitting the bush against the city and states and territories against each other.
Now, there are fresh calls from farmers to further fragment Australia’s complicated array of timezones.
On Wednesday, delegates at the New South Wales Farmers Association conference voted that the organisation should campaign for daylight saving to be shortened in NSW.
The farmers argue the daylight saving period has gradually become longer in the state – expanding from four months in 1972 (November to February); to five months in 2002; to its current six-month window (the first weekend of October to the first weekend in April).
The motion was not without controversy. Delegates were initially asked to back a motion that called for daylight saving to be shortened to four months again – but that was amended to be less specific. The motion that passed simply stated “that NSW Farmers seek the shortening of daylight saving”.
The NSW Farmers Association president, Xavier Martin, said “the protracted daylight saving period – which seems to get a couple of weeks longer every few years – was debated with delegates pointing out the huge difference in sunrises and sunsets between Sydney and Broken Hill”.
A six-month daylight saving period remains popular in coastal cities where people can do outdoor activities and swim after work later into the year. But the farmers’ motion claimed that in the first and last weeks of daylight saving, children are going to school on rural roads when it’s dark.
One supporter of the motion said they left home at 7.15am to drive their child to catch the school bus. Having the “whole family up in the dark” upset the sleep of everyone in the house, they said, adding that driving at that hour was dangerous due to the increased risk of fog and animals on the road.
They argued children were sleep-deprived and arrived at school having not eaten breakfast affecting their mood and attention. If there wasn’t daylight saving, 7.15am would, of course, be 6.15am so people would be sleeping for longer while it was dark.
The farmers association motion mentioned studies that point to harms caused by disrupting the body’s circadian rhythm and how Covid restrictions reset expectations of work hours and flexible arrangements.
“The debate should not be ‘Why don’t Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia have daylight savings?’ but rather ‘Why southern states still do’?” the motion stated.
Daylight saving – not “savings” as per common misconception – creates a bizarre patchwork of time zones across the country.
Daylight saving is in place in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the ACT, but not Queensland, the Northern Territory or Western Australia.
Generally, residents in northern and tropical parts of Australia – with particularly harsh summers – prefer sunset to occur earlier in the day.
Residents in south-east Queensland and northern NSW can cross the border multiple times a day meaning they regularly switch time zones.
The health risks of changing time zones are amplified by critics, but daylight saving also boasts many benefits, beyond making a post-work swim a reality.
It can save energy, researchers claim, because natural light is favoured in the morning over the evening transition to darkness. Also, with more people staying out ahead of a later sunset, a traditional spike in post-work energy usage and pressure on the electricity grid is flattened.
In 2010 in the UK, there was a campaign to move the clocks forward one hour for the entire year, meaning there would effectively be two hours of daylight saving during summer and an hour extra of evening daylight during winter.
In terms of carbon emissions, British proponents cited modelling that suggested about 450,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide could be saved annually.
Daylight saving has its roots in energy conservation. During the second world war, when facing an energy crisis brought on by a shortage of coalminers who had gone to fight, the UK temporarily set its clocks ahead an extra hour to save energy. Australia also adjusted its clocks during wartime.
The British campaign for extra daylight saving – which was ultimately torpedoed by a handful of MPs seeking amendments – also estimated that road deaths would be reduced by about 80 in the UK annually if “double daylight time” was adopted.
Studies have also found economic benefits with daylight saving. People tend to stay out later and the increased foot traffic and retail activity boosts the economy.
