When we compare daylight saving across nations, states and territories its economic impact is mostly positive.
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But this breaks down in the “transition” in and out of it, such as the days before and after, and when people cross borders between states that have daylight saving and those that don’t.
The easiest way to resolve this would be for daylight saving to be applied uniformly across Australia as it is in nearly every other nation that has it.
The problem in Australia is unique.
While a similar size, the European Union has just three time zones year round, with the shift to and from daylight saving time synchronised throughout since 1996.
Likewise the mainland United States has four time zones, with uniform daylight saving everywhere but Arizona.
When daylight saving ends in Australia, the nation will revert from five different time zones to three.
The time difference between the east and west coast will also change from three to two hours.
Daylight saving time positively affects the economy in a number of ways. It reduces street crime in darkly lit streets, for instance, which means less costly and better targeted policing.
This at least partially explains why there is an ongoing debate about adopting daylight saving in states that do not have it, such as in Queensland and to a lesser extent in Western Australia.
Ultimately, Australia needs to simplify what is one of the world’s most fragmented national sets of time zones.
The administration costs of scheduling business across time zones, and through the transition, are a burden on business. This has an economic cost in terms of lost profits (and therefore taxation), as well as employment.
While technology has no doubt made this co-ordination easier, research in the United States still suggests that economies are more productive when there is greater time co-ordination. This is a strong argument for nations having as few time zones as possible.
Introducing daylight saving in Queensland would avoid significant business co-ordination problems with the other eastern states.
Its economic benefits suggest it would be much better for daylight saving to be adopted throughout Australia.
