Ian Daley chimes in with this:

I really enjoyed reading your post on daylight saving. I live in Queensland Australia, and about 15 years ago, we decided by referendum here not to have Daylight Savings. The big problem is that the other two states of Australia on the east coast, NSW and Victoria, both have daylight savings. [Ed. note: There’s no "s" in saving. Really. I’ll leave it in because, hey, it sounds better.]

At the time the arguments against trolled out were amazing. Bear in mind that QLD is a mostly rural state, but 75% of the population live in the Metropolitan areas of Brisbane and Surfers Paradise. Anyway, here are some of the brilliant ideas that were put forward to stop Daylight Saving.

"It would confuse the cows, they wouldn’t know what time to get milked as cows aren’t very smart" (please don’t laugh at the irony of this.)
"It will fade the curtains. The Queensland sun is very harsh, and an extra hour could really do some damage"
"It would be uncomfortable having dinner at 8 pm and it still being daylight"

The arguments for were:

"Sydney is the business capital of Australia and it has Daylight Savings"
"Co-coordinating differences in flights, phone call rates, meetings and general business between the states will be more difficult without daylight savings than with."
"The Australian population is more transient and having a shifting time difference throughout the year is going to make doing business in Queensland awkward."

As history recalls, the country folk’s faded curtains won over the city people’s pressing need to do business. 15 years on, whilst we persevere with the time difference, it still causes many problem and I would consider it a major pain in the proverbial. However, since we decided by referendum to not have daylight saving, it would take another very costly referendum to change this.

People definitely get the governments they deserve.