That’s the gauge by which Premier Anna Bligh today decided to not consider Daylight Saving for Queensland this year, or any year. Today’s decision by Anna Bligh not to consult the people on the issue of Daylight Saving reads like the fix it is.
Queensland’s population as at March 2007 was 4.16m. The State government survey petitioned 1,600 of those 4.16m, and from the responses, made a decision which impacts the rest of that 4.16m. I wasn’t surveyed. My other half wasn’t surveyed. No-one I’m aware of in my family, workmates, clients and so on has been surveyed, so just how thorough was this survey process? 1600 people statewide. Thorough? Pig’s-friggin’-arse!
This is a salve by the Labor Party to the poor, hard-done-by cockies west of the great divide and north of Gladstone. Those same poor, hard-done-by cockies who’ll claim residents of Mt Isa have to send their kids off to school in the dark and can’t get them to settle into bed before 10pm. It’s a load of horse patooties, people! Mt Isa is on the same longitudinal meridian as Tanunda Bay, Coorong . We don’t hear about ‘Mexicans’ and ‘Crow-Eaters’ going through this annual bullshit of do-we-or-don’t-we?
Cows still milk as cows do, grass still grows and curtains do fade, but only in the same manner as they do in any other part of the globe during summer. Country people, in my extensive experience of living and working outside of the south-east corner of Queensland, just don’t like, nor accept change very well. Daylight saving – the simple act of advancing a clock by an hour – seems to put the fear of a terrible deity into normally rational people, who come up with all manner of irrational excuses for not supporting something which benefits a huge majority, not to mention brings the Australian east coast into the same time zone for six months of the year. And why? Because the Sun doesn’t set until 8:00pm by the clock? Frankly, I’d much rather have a 07:42pm sunset than a 04:48am sunrise, especially if we’re to continue to run our days by a mechanical timepiece. Temperatures don’t change because the clock has, so please….don’t try to tell me it’s hotter for longer. Get a fan or better still, shell out for a small aircon in the bedroom. You’ll find that clock time suddenly becomes irrelevant.
The only real survey is the vote called ‘referendum’. Political favour playing has no place in such a decision. Anna Bligh has cheated the people of Queensland in this decision. Give the people a voice, instead denying it to them for political convenience.