DAYLIGHT SAVING

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (15:41): I have had a great sense of relief and freedom over the past week to 10 days, because at last the hour that is traditionally stolen from me at the end of October has been returned. It is no secret to anyone in this chamber that I do not support daylight saving; however, I do acknowledge that the majority of people who choose to huddle on sidewalks and sip lattes enjoy daylight saving. However, we have been subjected to yet another 'trial period', where daylight saving now extends into April. If it was a trial, it has to be acknowledged that it was a resounding failure.

I happen to get a rural newspaper from Victoria in which it is revealed that even in the Yarra Valley people are complaining that it is dark at 6.45. Therefore, spare some sympathy for those on Eyre Peninsula, where the sun, at the end of this daylight saving period, was not rising until 7.40—some half an hour after those at the end of the school bus runs got onto the school bus.

The Kimba Area School decided, after its bus drivers complained, that there was a real health and safety issue, given that they were driving at dawn, which is the most dangerous time for kangaroos on roads, and given that they encountered over the previous week 15, 12, 10, 26 and 12 kangaroos and narrowly avoided hitting them. The school council then decided that it would experiment with starting school at 9.50 in the morning and finishing at 4.30. That, too, was a resounding failure, given that many of the mothers of those children worked in the town. It meant that they either had to take their children to town with them and sit them outside the bank, or wherever, or leave them at home alone for that additional hour. It also meant that the visiting music teacher, dance teacher and tennis coach all had to either shift their times or the kids had to miss an hour or so of school.

It is well-known that, many years ago now, I chaired a select committee in respect of this issue, only to discover that, in fact, the time meridian in South Australia does not even run through South Australia. For historical reasons, that is, for the convenience of sending cablegrams in 1899, our forefathers decided on the wisdom of putting us effectively on half an hour's daylight saving all year around. Our time meridian in fact runs through Warrnambool in Victoria.

If we were to apply the commonsense solution of having our own time meridian through our own state and three equal one hour time zones in Australia, many of the problems that we are now experiencing would be alleviated, or certainly reduced. But that does not detract from the fact that we are now looking—I believe by stealth—at having six months of daylight saving per year.

Watch this space! I believe that, experimentally, the Rann government, together with its Labor mates from the East Coast, will introduce daylight saving to the end of April. And I am just spiteful enough to hope that those in the city suffer the same inconveniences that they are imposing on those on the western side of the state.