Daylight saving: A modest proposal

Time was that the time only mattered locally. Once upon a time, it didn’t matter that Zurich was a few minutes behind Milan because nothing happened in Zurich that needed to be synchronised exactly in Milan. But the advent of the railway and the telegraph changed all that. Suddenly it made sense for Zurich and Milan to be on the same time. (photo by Glutnix)

As the dominant power of the era, Britain was first to realise the benefit of a single national time. The country adopted Greenwich Mean Time in 1847 and it was set in concrete once the railways adopted it a year later. Their convention was adopted by the world in the International Meridian Conference of 1884. Its governance is still remarkably extant. Australia did not exist as a political entity at the time was represented by Britain to ensure the sun never went down on its empire.

But because Australia did exist as a reality, it is mentioned in the 1884 conference notes. It noted the 150th, 135th, and 120th meridians of east longitude which were “admirably located for governing” represented the eastern, central, and western divisions of that continent. With admirable simplicity, it recommended Eastern Australia to be 10 hours ahead of the motherland. (The time in the West is not specified).

But that simplicity is not what exists today. Overnight, a partial delivery of daylight saving has seen Australia transform itself into a blancmange of time zones and all-round national stupidity. As I write this now it is 8:38pm here in Queensland, it is 9:38pm in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT. It is 8:08pm in Darwin, It is 9:08pm in Adelaide. It is 6:38pm in Perth. It is a mess everywhere.

This is an indictment of how we manage time as a nation. How much of the growing national conversation is wiped out because of these inconsistencies? How much business?

This is not a Daylight Savings argument, this is about consistency across the region. Even in winter, Adelaide and Darwin are still a somewhat pointless half hour out of synch.

So here is my modest proposal, a modification of the 1884 argument: All states and territories (except WA) should go on the one time zone, the one now used by Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart.

This would mean all of Eastern Australia would have the same time. Given that time zones are based around populations as much as geography, it makes sense that the standard time should be that of NSW and Victoria, still Australia’s two biggest states.

If this were the case, Eastern Australia would now be on Australian Eastern Summer Time (AEST). As I write this the time would now be 10:10pm here in Queensland 10:10pm in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT, 10:10pm in Darwin and 10:10pm in Adelaide. A situation everyone would find it easy to remember and manage.

The southern states and territories should have no problem dealing with my proposal as their times don’t change.

The proposal would be far harder for SA which would jump another half hour and NT which would jump by 90 minutes in summer. It is certainly a difficult proposal for them given their position in the centre of the country. But it might not be impossible to sell. Many in urban areas may appreciate the extra half hour daylight saving all year round. More might agree that 30 minutes is a small price to pay for synchronisation with the East Coast. The NT might need further convincing but should not stop the proposal by themselves.

Queensland is more problematic. It would be unaffected in winter but would pick up an hour of daylight saving in summer. The state is currently split down the middle on this issue and Anna Bligh will not hold a referendum on the issue because she knows she cannot control the outcome. If the issue could be re-shaped as one of national interest, it may be less divisive. If South Australia which is further west could be convinced to say yes then there is no reason for Queensland to reject it.

Time should be a federal matter and Queensland should not be allowed to make a decision of this importance on its own. Australia should be making the decision not the states because the problem of time zones affects the country as a whole, not just the states. It is an economic problem of communicating across the nation in real time. And it will only get worse.

I will admit here and now to this being a personal preference based on my own location.

The South-East of Queensland is a peculiarly anomalous zone of timekeeping. Brisbane is the most easterly city in Australia but lags an hour behind Sydney and Melbourne for six months. The fact that even Adelaide is half hour ahead of Brisbane for that period is completely absurd as a casual glance at a map will confirm.

Hopefully in a hundred years or so, this lack of standardisation will look as idiotic as the lack of common gauge rail system. China is bigger than Australia but has just one time zone. The curvature of the earth imposes limits but I expect the pressure of global 24 x 7 communication will only inspire further consolidation.

Synchonising Eastern Australia would be a good start.

ACF calls for public to oppose Olympic Dam uranium expansion

The Australian Conservation Environment is calling on Australians to challenge BHP Billiton’s (BHPB) uranium expansion plan at Olympic Dam by making public submissions in the next two weeks. The proposal will represent another difficult decision on uranium mining for Environment Minister Peter Garrett. Having approved the new Four Mile mine last week, it will be his job to make the final decision on BPHB’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project. The ACF says Australia should not become the uranium quarry to the global nuclear industry. “Our uranium exports fuel unacceptable nuclear risks and unresolved nuclear waste management around the globe,” says its statement calling for public submissions.

The ACF call is supported by local indigenous groups who have labelled the expansion “environmental genocide”. Rebecca Wingfield is a Kokatha custodian and an international human rights campaigner for Aboriginal people. She is also a traditional owner of the land around the Olympic Dam site. Wingfield disputes the claim of the SA government and BHPB that there is no scientific research proving the environmental harm of uranium mining. She also referred to the Manila Declaration signed by Indigenous organisations from 35 countries which says that mining exploitation without consent has led to “the worst forms of environmental degradation, human rights violations and land dispossession and is contributing to climate change.”

Unsurprisingly BHPB don’t quite see it that way. Their Olympic Dam is already a massive copper, uranium, gold and silver mine situated south of Lake Eyre in remote northern South Australia, about five hour s drive north of Adelaide. According to the Draft EIS for the expansion project, Olympic Dam is the world’s largest known uranium deposit and world' fourth largest reserve of copper. The massive 11 year expansion project involves the creation of a new open pit mine, an upgrade of the smelter and new concentrator and hydrometallurgical plants to process the additional ore. There would also be a desalination plant at Whyalla, a new rail network, a new airport, a new port at Darwin, a new barge landing facility at Port Augusta, and 270kms of additional electricity transmission lines also from Port Augusta.

The company town 14km from the mine will also be expanded. Roxby Downs was established in 1988 by Western Mining Corporation to service the uranium mine. BHPB bought out the mine in 2005 and with it the town. According to the 2006 census 4,054 now live there with continued growth expected. It is a young population – only 150 are over 55 and the town’s cemetery is empty. The residential population is supplemented by a fly-in/ fly-out workforce which brings the population up to 5,000. The local council claims that theirs is the most affluent postcode in the state: in 2006, the median individual weekly income was $1,103, more than double the national average.

But not everyone there seems very interested in the plans BHPB have for the town. The blog Stories from a Communist Lemon Factory reported that at the end of May the company held an EIS information session at the Roxby Downs leisure centre. However hardly anyone from the community attended. But the town won’t escape the development. The expansion will double the workforce to 8,000 and the new arrivals will need homes, shops, schools and other infrastructure.

Pro-development South Australian Premier Mike Rann also says the mining expansion will have big flow-on effects for the Roxby Downs community. “From the childcare to the local school, to a big increase in the size of the police station, particularly to do with the construction camp that will be part of the process of shifting a million tonnes of rock a day,” he said. The South Australian government is keen for the plan to go ahead. Rann has already given a go-ahead for a $10 million police station for an extra 30 officers to be operational by September.

The ACF does not dispute the economic growth the new project brings to Roxby but says that uranium is not the only option. ACF Nuclear Free Campaigner David Noonan says that the mine should expand with copper. “Setting out a path for Olympic Dam to process all its copper products in South Australia, instead of processing a bulk radioactive copper concentrate in China, would boost local jobs and be much better for the global environment,” he said. Noonan says the risks associated with uranium mining are too great. He says the EIS must explain how BHPB will manage the expanded mine’s bulk radioactive tailings waste for the 10,000 years they remain a radiological hazard. The writer behind the Communist Lemon Factory had similar concerns. “I have to wonder if Olympic Dam will become the next Woomera, forever haunted by its relationship with radiation,” she said.

Public submissions on the EIS must be in by Friday 7 August.

Adelaide throws the baby out with the backwater

The long-time rivalry between Victoria and South Australia was stoked up earlier this week by Victorian Premier John Brumby’s offhand comment that Adelaide was a ‘backwater’. The comment hit home hard in the South Australian capital and has been the subject of intense media attention all week. Brumby made the remark while discussing the possible consequences of stopping the controversial Port Phillip Bay channel dredging project.

The Port of Melbourne wants to dredge the bay to allow bigger and more heavily laden ships to enter Port Phillip Bay, but the environmental effects of the project are still in question. The project was called into doubt after the head of the ANL shipping company said dredging should not include the mouth of the Yarra River. Brumby claimed that unless Victoria pushed ahead with the $1 billion plan to deepen the channel, Melbourne would end up like Adelaide. "If you want Melbourne to be a backwater, if you want Melbourne eventually to be an Adelaide – as someone described it the other day – well, don't do this project, and Melbourne will just die a slow death," he said. The dredging project has caused deep division in Melbourne because of environmental concerns.

But the pros and cons of the dredging project were immediate lost in the firestorm over the ‘backwater’ slur. The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper led the charge back with a series of xenophobic headlines about Victoria including its "party idiots Wayne and Corey" and its loss-making Grand Prix. However a poll in the same paper found more than half of voters agree with Brumby. Adelaide Mayor Michael Harbison also concedes there could be some truth to the backwater slur. "Certainly Premier Brumby's comments have attracted a lot of attention, I think it did touch a nerve. I think there are areas that we do need to move faster," he said. "Like Melbourne, we went through a few terrible years following the collapse of the state banks in Victoria and South Australia. And perhaps we haven't pulled out of that as quickly as Melbourne.

Writing in the Griffith Review Autumn 2007 edition “Divided Nation”, South Australian writer Tracy Crisp was also keenly aware of Adelaide’s limitations. She said South Australia’s growth in the last ten years was the slowest of all states except for Tasmania. She cites Australian Bureau of Statistics figures which said SA's population would peak at 1.65 million in 2032. It will then decline and age so that by 2051 the population would be 1.58 million of which 30 per cent will be over 65. Such zero growth is a key barrier to the continued economic and social development of the state. If it isn’t a backwater now, Crisp seemed to be saying, it will be in 40 years time unless it can somehow increase its population.

Brumby himself refused to take back the backwater comment despite SA Premier Mike Rann’s demand for an immediate apology. Rann then retaliated by saying Brumby's comment was "born of Victoria's insecurity" and stemmed from losing the $6 billion Air Warfare Destroyer contract to South Australia. Radio talkback discussions degenerated into dubious rival claims about the small size of Melbourne’s fish, to the superior quality of South Australian wines, beaches, and Aussie Rules football teams.

While Adelaide media ran hot with the backwater issue all week, reaction in the blog world was mixed. Adelaide Green Porridge Café pointed out that both Melbourne and Adelaide ranked highly in a Economist 2006 global survey of most liveable cities (Melbourne was second to Vancouver and Adelaide was 6th) . Fellow South Australian resident Angrypenguin was less forgiving, calling Melbourne boorish and “the pits as neighbours”. On the Victorian side of the fence Patra’s Other Place was embarrassed and “appalled at the comments” and said politicians should keep their thoughts to themselves when it comes to other parts of Australia. More whimsically, My Big World of Crap pointed out that “one thing that Adelaide will always have though is its crown as serial killer capital of Australia!”

While South Australia raged over the slur, the news that defence contractor BAE had successful gained an exemption to state anti-discrimination laws went relatively unheralded. BAE successfully argued in the courts it needed to prevent some employees with dual nationality (including citizens of China, Iran, Syria and Sudan) from working on top-secret projects with United States contractors. The South Australian government showed no concern for the loss of rights and instead welcomed the decision. State Attorney-General Michael Atkinson said "Billions of dollars in defence contracts for SA are now assured and I think more will come to SA now that this difficulty has been removed.” Financial issues matter more than human rights to the managers of this backwater.