It is fair to say, before I moved to the country nearly 30 years ago, I had a lot of fun with rural arguments against daylight saving. The most infamous of them all was that of Flo Bjelke-Petersen, the former senator, wife of former Queensland premier Joh and maker of pumpkin scones. She argued that the curtains would fade and milking cows would get confused.
While no one argues on the grounds of cows and curtains any more, perennial reasons cited in the bush against daylight saving include getting up in the dark, putting kids on buses in the dark and daylight differences between the western and eastern reaches of the states.
The existence of daylight saving and its length is one of those issues where preferences mostly divide along city and country lines. It has hit the news again because the NSW Farmers Association recently voted in support of a campaign to clip the hours of daylight saving from the current six months each year.
For those of us in New South Wales, the time change starts in October every year and I must admit, by about the end of February I have had enough.
It is not something they put in the water out here. I have not been re-programmed into some country-style Stepford Wife. I just like rising with the sun. And studies show there are good reasons to do it if you have that luxury. I don’t use an alarm unless I have an early morning appointment or a plane to catch. I like watching the sun rise, using it to exercise and not feeling in a rush to start the working day.
I’m not going to argue that farmers are a special breed who get up before everyone else. I know some of my city relatives get up a lot earlier than we do to beat the traffic and commute across the vast network of clogged metropolitan tollways or to stick to a rigid work schedule that requires them in the office by the crack of dawn.
That means their kids – city kids – are also getting up in the dark, prodded awake when they are sleepy or cranky, with their stomachs not yet in gear for breakfast, before they head off to school or childcare or grandparents.
Yet still those families prefer daylight saving. This is a cultural divide as much as anything else. Evidence is thrown around on both sides, such as the effect on sleep of changing clocks or the (erm), inconclusive findings on energy savings by using more daylight hours. Honestly, my preference is as scientific as how I use the day. I wake up with the birds.
In Queensland, land of Flo, I reckon there have been more fights about daylight saving than anywhere on the planet.
Queensland did introduce daylight saving with the first world war, as did the rest of Australia and it was reintroduced in the second world war. Then it was dropped acround the country until Tasmania introduced it in 1967 to save on hydroelectricity because of a severe drought. Less water meant less power.
From the 1970s, different states introduced different regimes – or none, in the case of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland.
In Queensland, it borders on a culture war, where the south-eastern part of the state votes differently to the rest on daylight saving (and most other issues).
In March 1973, then premier Bjelke-Petersen appointed a committee on daylight saving to look at the effects on Queensland – not of a potential daylight saving change in the state, but of the effect of daylight saving in other states on Queensland.
There is a political adage that you never call an inquiry unless you know the answer. Joh’s committee found there was an “overwhelming majority” of Queensland’s women who did not favour daylight saving. Nor did farmers or elderly people … Queensland’s geography, it concluded, was simply not suited to it.
Then in 1992, Queenslanders were called to vote in a simple referendum: are you in favour of daylight saving? They were not, with 54.5% voting no and 45.5% voting yes. If you split the results between urban and rural, the difference was – well – day and night.
According to Antony Green, of the 53 seats in the urban south east, the yes vote won 60.6% to 39.4%. In the southern Gold Coast it was 70% in favour. In Warrego, in the south-western corner of the state, the no vote was as high as 91% and other western and northern seats were close behind.
“In the 36 seats covering the rest of the state, the yes vote was clobbered 22.9% to 77.1% no,” he wrote.
Frankly, I think the cultural divide is not so much about agriculture, although farming lobbies have strong views on it and most farmers tend to be out at sparrow’s fart. I suspect it is the difference of place, of life preferences and the options open to them.
A 1990 Queensland cabinet paper before the vote suggested factors that influenced the no vote in submissions to government included “non-specific” (22%), climate (13%), children and school (both 11%), family lifestyle (10%). Primary production was only cited by 6%. I interpret non-specific as “I know what I like”.
Those submitting in favour of daylight saving included business (23%), recreation (21%) and tourism (21%). When you live or work close to the border, dealing with companies and office hours across time zones is a bit of a nightmare.
Back in NSW, premier Chris Minns has knocked the NSW Farmers’ idea on the head. His was a numbers game, that being democracy. Unlike Flo, I don’t rule my state so I know I won’t win. But I might try to bake some of those pumpkin scones. And I will be doing it first thing in the morning.