FARMERS should “definitely” sign Member for Northern Tablelands Adam Marshall’s petition calling for daylight saving to be shortened, a NSW Farmers Association spokeswoman has said.
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Rural affairs committee chairwoman Sonia O’Keefe said most people on the land were “disgruntled” that daylight saving had been increased to six months, and it had been association policy “for years and years” to push for its reduction to the longtime standard of four months.
Mr Marshall’s statewide petition is for a reduction of only one month at the end of the daylight saving period, but Miss O’Keefe said that was better than nothing.
“What daylight saving does is create conflict between sunrise and sunset each day and the time that society runs by,” she said.
“Some might say it’s easy for farmers because they run their own business and can set their own schedule.
“To some extent that’s true, but we are also members of society and have to fit in with the timeframe everyone else is operating on, for business and even social hours.”
Miss O’Keefe said some of the major issues for people on the land were the natural rhythms of livestock, meeting other operators’ morning deadlines and sometimes long travelling times to nearby towns.
“Farm practices are very much dictated by sunrise and sunset, and for six months they have conflict trying to manage that,” she said.
“There are a lot of people who enjoy daylight saving, including some farmers … four months of the year we could live with. Particularly for October and March, it’s very difficult when what you’re trying to do in the morning, you’re trying to do in the dark – we don’t have streetlights on our farms and our stock don’t fit in with what time we tell them it is.
“Particularly during the beginning and end of daylight saving, [children] are getting up in the dark to get to school – and you hear of quite a number of them standing at the side of the road waiting for their bus, still in the dark.”
Miss O’Keefe, who lives in Walcha, said she’d had to catch a plane at 10am in Armidale recently – during Eastern standard time.
“I had time to check my heifers that are calving, do some chores and still be in Armidale in time for my flight. This week I wouldn’t have time – I wouldn’t have daylight – to do that.
“I got an email from a banana grower, saying, ‘Oh great, daylight saving: I can start work in the dark again’ – the delivery truck arrives in the morning and he has to have the bananas cut by a certain time.”
- Petitions can be found at all Northern Tablelands council offices.