From The Summary Podcast - Is Daylight Saving Killing Australian Productivity?

Time zones have existed for a little over 100 years.

And almost immediately when time zones were implemented, people realized that they were not fit for purpose year round.

There had already been some movements to... observe sort of an informal daylight saving.

In fact, when Benjamin Franklin visited Paris in the 1780s, he observed that they were observing summertime in Paris to save on candle wax.

So this idea that humans have shifted their activities forward or backward around the clock has been a longstanding thing.

Now, Australia and other countries experimented with daylight saving during the wars, so 1917-ish and around 1943 as well.

And then it came into statutory practice from the early 70s onward, as predominantly the southern states realized that it would be beneficial to lifestyle and to economics.

And so is that one of the reasons that Queensland has been hesitant to adopt it because they don't see those same lifestyle benefits because of the difference of the days there?

Yeah, it's a tricky one.

The Queensland issue has more to do with geography.

Queensland is a huge state, right? Many times the size of Victoria.

And so what's good for one part of Queensland is not necessarily good for another part of Queensland geographically.

And then that's compounded with some cultural factors.

This idea that country folk might like to wake up earlier and city folk might stay up later because of the bright lights, which is certainly true.

You can see it in the data.

And then also compounded by the fact that there are different occupational profiles.

So people in regions might work in resources, they might work in farming, and they might work in occupations that require daylight and therefore adapt their activities to when it's light outside.

In urban environments, we're much more likely to work indoors in offices.

And so the amount of daylight we get is heavily conditioned by the hours that we work or the hours that we're in school.

And those differences in professions and things we often see come out in the reasons why people don't like daylight savings.

Sometimes it's the curtains.

Other times the cows might get confused if you change what time their milk.

So some interesting reasons that people say they don't want to see it adopted.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.