… I’ll just leave this here … 
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I have advocated making time zone discrepancies narrower for years. I think this is one of the few times I have heard/seen anyone else has mention it.
Personally, I am anti DS, but that aside - the 3 hour difference between WA and the Eastern states during DS makes all sorts of things tricky - including doing business. Flights take on a new stamina test status when you ‘lose’ 3 hours just because you want to change coastlines.
Rather than the Eastern states taking on DS, if WA utilised it, the time discrepancy between zones narrows to 1 hour. Seems far more sensible to me.
Is the reality that we don’t need to get too fraught about time zones? They do not change the earth rotational position for when the sun rises and sets. Daylight saving or wasting cannot make the sun shine for any less or longer each day. It’s a fixed daily quantum of sunlight varied only by the day of year and weather.
Today with a few notable exceptions a business is able to open and close as needs. We’ve even adopted flexible hours and working from home.
Should we just leave it to each business to decide what hours best meet the needs of it’s customers and agreement of employees?
P.S.
The benefits of living closer to the equator include the daily hours of light in winter and summer are nearer the same than different, vs living way down south where winter frosts abound, the winter days are short and the summer sun shines into night.
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Another difference that is rarely noticed is that at low latitudes the rising sun wanders back and forth but never gets far away from East and the Setting sun never far from West. At higher latitudes the sun rises and sets more noticeably towards the pole (South in Oz) during winter and towards the equator (North) in summer. Such differences matter for house orientation and gardening if you are keen. If you ask people where does the sun rise and set they will look at you strangely and say “east and west” but it rarely does.
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I stopped setting my alarm clock a few months ago, as I generally seem to be awake at around the time I had been setting it. I thought leaving daylight savings time might cause a problem, but no more than usual.
The location it rises and falls varies, but more significantly for house orientation the sun’s travels across the sky are more perambulatory in winter. My home faces north, and my study gets the winter sun but not the summer sun.
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I am not sure what you mean by perambulatory. Aside from the rising and setting directions in winter the sun is lower in the sky all the way than during summer. What side of the house is the study on?
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It should be mentioned:
- It has passed the Senate. It has not passed the House or the POTUS. In other words, it may not become law.
- It passed the Senate by accident.
- Even if it became law, it does not apply to all states.
For the states where it would apply, it is a change to permanent daylight savings. The other two options are permanent standard time and biannual change. (In my opinion, if you have to change to permanent daylight savings then something else is going wrong and there are other ways of fixing it.)
These days, any change to daylight savings rules has an IT cost that should not be overlooked. Updates have to get created, pushed out and applied. Abandonware will not get any updates and will be wrong (potentially permanently wrong) and that may hasten its demise, discarding and replacement.
It is important to recognise that one size does not fit all. The applicability of daylight savings depends on latitude and there are implications of longitude as well. This has two consequences:
- In a big country, it is not the case that everyone will ever all agree.
- Any central government that imposes a single answer on everyone is prioritising the convenience of a few ahead of logic for the many.
I support biannual change for my latitude.
True - but that’s barely relevant to daylight savings.
True - rises/sets east and west at the equinoxes (as close as is possible) i.e. two days a year, but otherwise never exactly. If you literally insist on e.g. a sunrise in the exact east for your current location, it may never happen in your lifetime, which is even rarer than rarely. 
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Just as we can divide the Earth into a north and a south hemisphere based on the equator, we can divide the Earth into east and west hemispheres.
It is quite correct to say the sun rises at all times, in all locations, in the east, and sets in the west.
But if you want to get pedantic about east as a specific direction, do you mean true east, or magnetic east? In my city, the difference is approx 12.5°
True east.
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Yes but that is arbitrary and not as straightforward as the equator dividing north and south. If the British had not been a major seafaring nation, whose people addressed the question of determining longitude early, the zero of longitude could have been elsewhere. I don’t see what that has to do with where an observer says the sun rises and sets.
What do you mean? When I said the rarely rises in the east or sets in the west I meant the direction from the observer.
It is simpler if we talk about true bearings. Anywhere between the arctic and antarctic circles the sun approximately rises due east (or sets due west) for a few days a year. As mentioned by @person it may never be exact. In the arctic or antarctic zones it never happens.
In Oz you get a similar outcome if you use magnetic bearings, the details will be different but the general result the same; depending on the accuracy you want the event is rare or never.
This has nothing much to do with the topic of the thread, do you want to take it to the departure lounge?
Agree it has nothing to do with the topic. But then, I didn’t bring it up.
Or maybe not.
Just as the earth’s spin provides the basis for locating the equator, the earth’s spin also determines the direction of east and west - and it is the direction that we refer to when we say that the sun rises in the east.
For sure, the zero of longitude is completely arbitrary but, no matter where the zero of longitude is, the sun would still rise approximately in the east (excepting in the more exotic cases inside the polar circles where it doesn’t rise or set daily at all, which you mention).
This is hardly surprising since it is the earth’s spin that causes the daily sunrise and sunset.
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Doesn’t matter if you are in polar regions. The sun still rises and sets each day. In the east and west respectively. Depending on the season and which hemisphere you happen to be in, the sun may not rise above the horizon or for that matter set below said horizon. But the sun is still there. Go up in an aircraft 10,000 meters above the south pole in southern hemisphere winter and you will see the sun during the day.
Only 10,000 metres?
My maths suggests mid winter it is a far greater number best measured in 100’s of kilometres. But since it has little to do with daylight saving no need to be too precise.
Looking beyond daylight saving, at least there has been some sharing that will encourage others to learn more about the variances in the relative aspect of the sun. Important in getting the most out of intelligent low energy house design, planting your self sustainable garden, and for optimum rooftop solar energy collection.
Aiming to maximise the benefits to be obtained from the sun will most abandon a lifestyle dominated by an arbitrary time zone? Will we benefit more from prioritising following the natural cycle of the sun? It’s not novel or a new idea, apparently.
To right, Friend of Choice Forum.
Lived for 15 yrs in QLD and never had any of this daylight savings BS.
One thing that bothered me, returning back to NSW, where do all those saved daylight hours go, is there a bank we deposit all these hours in, what happened to all that daylight saved and deposited interest, WHO gets it?
How much tax is levied on Daylight saving?
Fundamental question that must be asked to whom whosever thought this ripping people off scheme thought.
Can we withdraw those saved hours when we need them, when we are aged and in dire need of extra time?
Where can we withdraw those saved hours, WHERE?
Are those hours compatible with the future hours when needed, and if not; who will operate the DSCM (Daylight Savings Conversion Machine) so we can access our saved times, plus all that interest owed all those years while saving; and if needed to prolong life,
HOW DO WE WITHDRRAW THOSE SAVED DAYLIGT HOURS all those years ago.
How much will the DSCM charge to do its job?
What is the conversion rate between now and when, in the future we need it.
Me, I need some, if not all the hours I’ve saved to prolong my bodies functioning before it breaks down completely.
WHERE are my Hours that I need now?
I NEED YOU, HOURS, COME BACK TO ME!!
I cant live much longer without you, I need you, extra hours.
Come back to me, Please dont leave me.
To late, you are gone, allocated to the general populous, taken out of my account forever.
How about reverse daylight savings?
That is extra daylight in the morning, rather than in the afternoon.
In summer, put the clock back an hour. If you live in a stinking hot place, there would be more daylight time to do outdoor activities and work before it got really hot by the afternoon, and then the sun would set an hour earlier and giving an extra hour for things to cool down before dinner time and then bed.
Just a thought I had when I lived in QLD. 
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Some history
Posting such things is worrisome since any commentary with the words tax or revenue that is noticed causes one or another government member or their staffer to perk up and ask how to enact it if they even suspect it might add to the treasury or perks or getting a vote. I can imagine a campaign on the policy ‘My party will never support taxing DST!’ and some people will be swayed by it. 
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As no time is really saved or lost the adjustment is just that, IE a resetting of the daily clock. A tax on zero.
History suggests it is inappropriately named. Perhaps EST for ‘energy saving time’ would be more meaningful?
EG
In 1916, locations within the German Empire set clocks ahead one hour in an effort to use less power for lighting and to save fuel for the war effort.
And
During the 1973 oil embargo, the United States Congress ordered a year-round period of daylight saving time to save energy.
It has been about energy saving, the expected benefits of which may not always be realised, as for the second example. For Australia with summer evenings being typically hot, families coming home from school or work an hour early. DST may actually increase power consumption. Air conditioning drives summer peak residential demand. Lighting is a minor demand.
Spare a thought for Norway where the ‘Summer Time’ adjustment is followed as per the rest of Europe. Oslo has up to 18.5hrs of daylight in summer, while further north the sun never sets. With Oslo’s midsummer sunset before adjustment near to 10pm what’s there to save?
P.S.
With QLD heading towards winter, the days humid and the evenings cooler, the sun is setting way too early for my needs. 
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We seem to have some discrepancy here. In normal usage rising and setting refer to becoming visible (or invisible) with respect to the horizon. If the sun stays below the horizon it has not risen.
From the OED under Rise (v)
- a.B.II.8.a Of the heavenly bodies: To come above the horizon. Also transf. of daylight, darkness, etc.
And under Set (v)
- a.B.II.9.a Of the sun or other luminary: To go down; to make an apparent descent towards and below the horizon. (Conjugated, like other intr. verbs of motion, with either be or have.)
You want to make this from some global perspective when the way we deal with it in common conversation, and the way the path of the sun affects your house energy balance and the plants that grow nearby are both local.
So we don’t agree on what directions East and West mean nor on the meaning of rising and setting of the sun. Should you ever need to orient a house to the sun and determine shading requirements (or just converse meaningfully with your neighbour about the weather) your meanings will not serve, so why use them?
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You mean that the Egyptian goddess (Nut) does not swallow the sun (Ra) every evening and give birth to him every morning?
Sorry, just trying to liven-up things a bit
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