Daylight saving: time for Perth to fall behind once again

ANOTHER year, another missed opportunity.

That’s right, it’s that time of year when everyone living in WA is reminded just how far they are behind the rest of the country.

This Sunday, October 7, the rest of Australia (excluding Queensland and the Northern Territory) will put their clocks forward an hour for daylight saving.

Those lucky folk living on the east (and south) coast will have an extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day with which to enjoy the warmer months.

If they choose to go to the beach after work, they can do so knowing that they won’t be swimming in the dark at 7pm.

If they fancy a lovely dinner at a restaurant with a view, they could do so with enough daylight to enjoy the view before night falls.

But not us.

No, here in WA we are once again reminded how far apart we truly are from the rest of the country – as if the geographical distance wasn’t far enough.

For the next six months, anyone doing business with the colleagues on the east coast of Australia will need to factor in an extra hour.

If we have a question that needs answering by someone in Victoria and it’s 2.15pm our time – well, bad luck.

If we want to put in a phone call early on in the work day, we’d better make sure it’s not between 9am and 10am, because that will land right in the middle of lunch time.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that the differences from state to state mean that Australian will have five different time zones.

If WA wants to be taken seriously as a part of the country, we need to jump on board with daylight saving ourselves.

I’ve written about this before and it always seems to generate a pretty strong response.

Some people argue that WA is too warm to have an extra hour of daylight in the evening at the end of a long, hot day.

That may be the case on some days, but I didn’t hear about anyone dying from heatstroke during the trial we held here from 2006 to 2009.

And the flip side of that argument is that you have cooler mornings to kick off your summer days.

It’s my opinion that we never should have had a referendum on daylight saving, let alone four of them.

Referendums should only be used when changing the constitution.

When it’s a decision that will serve the State better as a whole, it is the role of the Government to make that call so we can all move on.