SOLUTION FOR QUEENSLAND - A Dual Time Zone Arrangment

Support for Daylight Saving within Queensland is, and has always been, geographically divided. The majority of residents in South East Queensland are supportive of Daylight Saving, while the majority of Queenslanders residing outside this region, oppose its introduction. In the 1992 Referendum, all 51 electorates that voted in support of the concept, were concentrated in the South East region. The results of numerous surveys undertaken since the Referendum, have also displayed this trend. This includes the Queensland Government commissioned Nielsen Company review undertaken in 2007. The findings of this evaluation indicated that 69% of South East Queensland respondents support the introduction of Daylight Saving, while 59% of those outside this region are against its introduction.

It has been 18 years since the one and only Queensland Referendum on Daylight Saving was held, which gauged support for State-wide Daylight Saving in Queensland; and was defeated. Since the 1992 Referendum, more than 1.1 million voters have been added to the Queensland electoral roll, and are eligible to have a say on the issue of Daylight Saving; just under 950,000 of these additional registered voters, live in the South East region.

In this time, there has been an overwhelming increase in support of Daylight Saving, indicating that the majority of Queenslanders are in favour of its introduction. A number of surveys have highlighted this, including the 2007 Queensland Government commissioned Nielsen review. The findings of the review, illustrated that 55% of State-wide respondents were in favour of Daylight Saving.

Added to this, a very large number of people are affected by the current disruption that is caused by the ‘time border’ running through the densely populated Gold Coast-Tweed region. Logically, if the ‘time border’ was shifted to a sparsely populated area, north-west of the urbanised South East Queensland region, the number of people disrupted would be significantly reduced.

It has also been well documented, that not adopting Daylight Saving is a burden on South East Queensland businesses, due to unnecessary travel and extended staff hours, in order to accommodate Daylight Saving business hours in other states.

Given all of this information, it is easy to understand why the issue of Daylight Saving within Queensland needs to be revisited, and that the most logical solution to resolve this issue, is to introduce a dual time zone. A dual time zone would assist businesses in the South East region, and would also satisfy the majority of ALL of Queensland’s residents, not just the minority, as is currently the case.

The dual time zone border proposed by Daylight Saving for South East Queensland Party includes the majority of the population of Queensland and is aligned to a number of local council boundaries, passing through sparsely populated areas, and is outlined below.