[H-GEN] Brisbane's timezone

[Nick Kwiatkowski]

Hilton wrote on 05/04/2008 07:49:52 AM:

>
> Hi James,
>
> There's quite a number of people who'd like to have DST in Queensland,
> but because of our genetically inferior cows, the dairy farmers have put
> up a fight to keep sanity out of the Queensland Government, and thus far
> it has worked exceedingly well.  Pretty much any person involved in any
> business in Queensland that deals with our southern states can see the
> benefit in Qld DST.
>
> --
> Regards
> Hilton Travis
>

Hi Hilton,

I had to add my two cents in, only that consistently jokingly referring to
our cows and curtains as for reasons why we don't have DST isn't going to
change things here (I'm a victim of doing just that in the past too).

The state government did a report in 2007 on that very subject -->
http://www.premiers.qld.gov.au/library/pdf/DS_Full_Report.pdf

In essence if you live in SEQ, you would be a supporter of DST, if you
lived outside of DST, you would not be a supporter or see little value.
There was also very little support for having two time zones in the one
state - as that would potentially be a nightmare to institute.

Generally speaking, equatorial and tropical countries (lower latitudes)
don't observe Daylight Saving Time since the daylight hours are similar
during every season, so there's no advantage for them to moving clocks
forward during the summer. Hence why for the majority of folk living in
Queensland and NT there is no point to DST, there is no benefit for them.
Since we live in a democracy and officials get (re-)elected on that basis,
and referendum on that subject will fail.

So unfortunately for us, the real reason why we don't have DST - inertia,
people will not change unless there is a compelling reason for the to
change.

Cheers,

Nik

Nickolas Kwiatkowski
Senior IT Architect (Certified)
Architecture Services
Global Business Services - Application Services
IBM Global Services, Brisbane, Australia
phone:  07 3213 2149,  mobile:  0412 121 276,  email:  nickolas at au1.ibm.com
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" - Albert Einstein