Does Australia really need 3 Time Zones?

[old man emu]

In a country of 25 million people who tend to live a 24/7 lifestyle, does Australia really need to be operating on three time zones? Would it be more convenient for the economic life of such a relatively small population for everyone to operate on the same time?

 

It might have been important in the past when life tended to follow a "rise with the Sun" regime, but with lighting at one's fingertips and instantaneous communication, does the position of the Sun in the sky matter any more? Our present time zones do make conducting business inconvenient. Workers on the east coast can't contact their colleagues in Perth until 11:00 am Eastern time, and those in Perth can't reply after 3:00 pm Western time. That leaves only four hours for business to be conducted between coasts.

 

Would it not be better to base Australian time on the one meridian of longitude as the time reference? Perth is GMT +8 and the east coast is GMT +10. Why not set the time in Australia to GMT +9 for everyone? Then everyone would be working at the same time reference. A single time zone works for China, which is about 50 degrees of longitude wide, or three 1 hour zones.

 

Such a change would not affect aviation which works on UTC, measured from the Prime (Greenwhich) Meridian.

 

 

[facthunter]

If you force people to operate in disregard of the sun's rising and setting you are ignoring a fundamental reality that circadian rhythm does affect how we Live health  wise, and just because some have to do shift work doesn't mean all should be disconnected from the real beginning and end of natural sunlight.  15 degrees of longitude equals one hour  and Australia is BIG in east to west  size.   It's not a goer. Farmers etc arrange their work  by real time Nev

 

 

[onetrack]

OME, the idea would never work. All the W.A. business people I know, handle the time differences easily.

 

If they have large volumes of East Coast business to carry out, they merely rise earlier and finish earlier.

 

After all, sizeable amounts of business dealings are carried out between Australia, the U.S. and Canada - with up to 15 hrs time differences.

 

It's just another factor to be added into the business transaction/dealing arrangements.

 

And to finalise my argument, the U.S. - the worlds largest economy (yes, it's still bigger than China - just) - has no less than 6 time zones - and the U.S. hasn't had any problems becoming the worlds largest superpower, and the manufacturing and technology powerhouse of the world, despite being "hampered" by 6 time zones.

 

 

[Yenn]

I do a days work outside and after that I look at the news on TV. Change to one time zone and I will probably have to se the news before I want to knock off work.

 

We have had a similar idea in Qld, where the South East corner want to go onto NSW time in Summer. Doing that will result in kids getting up in the dark to go to school and coming home in the hottest part og the day.. I just wouldn't work. Across the Nullabor the towns use different times from SA and WA to make life easier.

 

 

[Thruster88]

 Workers on the east coast can't contact their colleagues in Perth until 11:00 am Eastern time, and those in Perth can't reply after 3:00 pm Western time. That leaves only four hours for business to be conducted between coasts.

 

So the sand gropers will get up in the dark and we on the east coast will go home in the dark just so we can have more time to talk, good luck with that

 

 

[old man emu]

So the sand gropers will get up in the dark and we on the east coast will go home in the dark just so we can have more time to talk, good luck with that

 

At least it will stop the curtains fading.

 

 

[cooperplace]

There was a move in SA about 25 yrs ago to move to eastern states time. It wasn't popular. People are very proprietorial about their time zones. Personally I think Australia could run on 2 time zones, eastern, inc SA and NT, and western. But it will probably never happen.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

The only possibility of it being implemented is under a dictatorship (which may not be far off).

 

Check out old atlas maps of world time zones. The USSR was an hour ahead of everyone else for decades after daylight saving was implemented, possibly during The Great Patriotic War". I suspect the bureaucrats in charge of changing the clocks back one hour either went to the Gulags or were too chicken to mention the anomaly to their masters.

 

 

[facthunter]

Keep it as close to real time as you can. When you drive the Nullarbor, it's obvious then when you are getting out of whack with the suns position and what your clock says. Anyhow if you were serious you would use a 24 hour clock and forget AM and PM to avoid confusion As GMT does. Nev

 

 

[Litespeed]

Listen fellas and listen good....

 

I have enough trouble getting up in time and dropping my pants so you buggers can see in the day as it is.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

We need three time zones so the people at Camerons Corner can have three New Year celebrations half an hour apart.

 

 

[old man emu]

The westernmost point of Australia is Steep Point WA, 113 degree 09' 20" East. The easternmost point is Cape Byron 153 degrees 38' 20' East.

 

That means that the continent is 40 degrees 27' 02" wide. Half of that is 20 degree 13' 16", making the midline of the continent at 133 degrees 22' 34"

 

If 15 degrees = 1 hour, then the midline is located 1 degree 47' 26" west of the 135 degree line ( UTC + 9 hrs).

 

1 degree 47' 26' = 5.495 minutes. Therefore we could set out time for the whole country at UTC +9hrs at the 135th meridian which is indicated on this map  Australia.

 

 

 

 

It wasn't until the late 19th Century that rapid travel by railroad created the need for common time zones on land, although Greenwich Mean Time had been used for navigation for several centuries. Standard time was introduced in the 1890s when all of the Australian colonies adopted it, and the three time zones were established. Before the switch to standard time zones, each local city or town was free to determine its local time, called local mean time.

 

"People are very proprietorial about their time zones" is quite true. The debate about Daylight Saving goes on and on in Queensland and Western Australia as the whether to introduce it. It is a done thing in the other States and Territories, although one can hear some guntling from those who see no value in sunrise and sunset being later in the 24 hour period we call a "day". The question begging an answer is why our time indicators have to go forward in summer when there are more hours of daylight, but not backwards in winter when hours of daylight are less.

 

 

[M61A1]

The westernmost point of Australia is Steep Point WA, 113 degree 09' 20" East. The easternmost point is Cape Byron 153 degrees 38' 20' East.

 

That means that the continent is 40 degrees 27' 02" wide. Half of that is 20 degree 13' 16", making the midline of the continent at 133 degrees 22' 34"

 

If 15 degrees = 1 hour, then the midline is located 1 degree 47' 26" west of the 135 degree line ( UTC + 9 hrs).

 

1 degree 47' 26' = 5.495 minutes. Therefore we could set out time for the whole country at UTC +9hrs at the 135th meridian which is indicated on this map  Australia.

 

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It wasn't until the late 19th Century that rapid travel by railroad created the need for common time zones on land, although Greenwich Mean Time had been used for navigation for several centuries. Standard time was introduced in the 1890s when all of the Australian colonies adopted it, and the three time zones were established. Before the switch to standard time zones, each local city or town was free to determine its local time, called local mean time.

 

"People are very proprietorial about their time zones" is quite true. The debate about Daylight Saving goes on and on in Queensland and Western Australia as the whether to introduce it. It is a done thing in the other States and Territories, although one can hear some guntling from those who see no value in sunrise and sunset being later in the 24 hour period we call a "day". The question begging an answer is why our time indicators have to go forward in summer when there are more hours of daylight, but not backwards in winter when hours of daylight are less.

 

A single time zone would be palatable if you could convince the clowns down south just to leave it alone and not be changing their clocks twice a year.

 

If there ever was an argument FOR daylight saving it would be in winter so that you can come home when it's still daylight and get stuff done. Really....who needs dusk to be an hour later when the days in summer are so long anyway? I would much prefer an extra hour of light at the end of a winters day. You're going to work in the dark regardless, and who the hell gets up early and does useful stuff (like flying) BEFORE work? (except if you're on late shift) BTW... if you start work at 0900 or later, you are on late shift. 

 

 

[Keith Page]

Old Man Emu.

 

Post #1..

 

You are on to it -- whole of Australia is in one time zone and the residents have to work out which segment they live in -- stop this rot of Day light Saving and the bitching.

 

KP

 

 

[Downunder]

TIME. Numbers on the face of a clock are rather arbitary and meaninless.

 

We could all go by UTC if we wanted to.

 

What is important is when the sun rises, when the sun sets and using time(as in the actual number) to coordinate dayly activities.

 

We could all be the same time in Australia or even the world.

 

It's just that people would be rising, working and sleeping at different numbers....

 

 

[turboplanner]

And all this emotion coming from a group who are supposed to have superior navigation skills to the general community.

 

In my work I need to know exactly how Australian Eastern standard time and Australian Eastern standar summer time related to US Eastern time and summer time and also US Central time, so in our summer my time get's out of sequence with UTC and in US summer their time gets out of sequence with my time and in one part of the year both summer times have an impact on the relationship.  In 2013 I made up a simple spreadsheet comparing Melbourne time with the two US zones and have been able to just look up at the chart and know exactly what the time was in those US zones throughout the year, althoughy, just to complicate things, both the US and Australia don't set a fixed 15th October to 15th March summer time, but choose a different day every year, so a few days a year it's necessary to check the situation for that year which usually happens after the software starts doing odd things.

 

Australia's daylight savings are a lot simpler than that.

 

In another part of my work I operate nationally, and have found:

 

1. Queenslanders have never stopped whining about daylight savings in other states.

 

2. Queensland is the one state which gets out of synch every summer and confuses the most people.

 

3. As someone else said, it's necessary to schedule one end of the day to do business with WA, and than can make your business days long, and flying from Melbourne to Perth and straight into a day's meetings are the most grinding days I've ever experienced.

 

I can understand some of the Queenslanders' complaints because there is the latitude factor which introduces a climate factorwhich means they could use the extra daylight in the early morning rather than the hot evenings when quite often it's also raining.

 

In the southern states the tourist boom saved us from catastrophe after the minerals boom collapsed, and the after-work sporting and social activities are also something southern states are not going to give up.

 

In theory you could still manage these with a single time zone, but practically, which I found out on a recent exercise involving millenials people of today have difficulty un-relating a fixed time from their activities, so changing the zones, once people understand they just can't book dinner for 7:30 pm is probably a dead duck.

 

Another unrelated discussion is why we gave up the Imperial system of measurement and adopted the metric system. That was a dumbing down change which succeeded in out time, but there's a book by Alexander Thom called the Megalithic Yard. It started out as a person's obsession with how buildings in the north of Scotland could be built to the same precision as buildings in the south of England before rulers existed, and the answer was certain people carrying a calibrated stick. The book then goes on to discuss the imperial system to the point where you wonder why we gave up such precise references to adopt a much more backward system.

 

 

[dsam]

Spare a thought for Canada with 6 time zones!  Being close to the geographic North Pole, the lines of longitude narrow considerably, especially in the arctic regions. The north magnetic pole is actually wandering about within Canadian territory - just to add to the navigational complexity. Northern bush pilots really have their work cut out for them!

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1

 

 

 

[facthunter]

It doesn't affect pilots except when they are making PA's which include arrival times on local time. Pilots work in GMT.  Nev

 

 

[dsam]

It’s not exactly a time zone issue, but early Canadian bush pilots had very short daylight hours, long inhospitable distances, high winds & blizzards, whiteout weather, as well as large & rapidly changing magnetic variation to account for when navigating the north.  Not for the faint hearted.

 

 

[onetrack]

I'm still trying to get my head around how we can be travelling through space at 1600kmh, and yet it feels like we're standing still! - let alone stuffing around with various clock times, for various locations! 

 

You see, the sun doesn't rise or set - we are actually just getting flung around and around, and we just see the sun going past us, on a regular basis, as our high-speed rotation happens!

 

 

[Yenn]

If you flew along the equator at 900kts in an Easterly direction you would not really need time. Just every 24 hours you could change the day. That means no watch necessary, just a calendar.

 

 

[old man emu]

Here's a table showing sunrise and sunset times for the major cities on the shortest day of the year. 

 

 

The first two columns show what we are working with now. The fourth and fifth columns show the same times, but in UTC (GMT). The last two columns show what sunrise and sunset would be if we set out time according to the meridian that passed closest to the centre line of the continent (135E).

 

If we advanced our clocks for winter, instead of summer, then sunrise would be around 7:00 for everyone, except WA, which could choose to stay at UTC +8 and wake up with the rest of us. It would put sunset before the usual close of business for financial institutions, but our English mates put up with going to work and coming home in the dark during winter.

 

 

[facthunter]

 It's only at the equator you do the full distance and speed. relating to the rotation of the earth. You have to go west to stay with the sun (or get longer days.) Easier nearer the poles. The Earth is moving in orbit around the sun at 22/7 X 90 million miles a year and the solar system is also moving within the galaxy, which is moving in relation to the rest of the universe so you're on a wild ride. Tropical dwellers get balmy days with no real twilight but in more temperate areas in summer the day's much longer so why wouldn't one want to adjust their work times to take advantage of that and get a bit of recreational activity done.. Horses for Courses.. . Nev

 

 

[old man emu]

I'm saying that we should do daylight saving in winter because there are plenty of hours of daylight in summer. But discussing daylight saving is drifting off the track of this thread. It is about having only one time zone for the country based on the 135th meridian, being UTC +9 hrs.

 

 

[spacesailor]

"2. Queensland is the one state which gets out of synch every summer and confuses the most people."

 

?,  If the rest of Australia  Didn't alter  their clocks to suit the state government,

 

There would be NO confusion.

 

Or problems altering integrated car clocks. And other technology that needs adjustment twice a year.

 

IF you feel the NEED to get up earlier, PUT the alarm on an hour earlier.

 

If I NEED to talk to England/ Ireland (on the phone (while iv'e got it))  I get up early in the morning .

 

spacesailor