No support for time change
Rosemary Odgers and Emma Chalmers
April 13, 2006
ANY hope of Queensland adopting daylight saving has been dashed.
All major political parties on Wednesday ruled out joining the southern states and moving clocks forward an hour in summer.
Labor, the Liberal and National parties agreed there was not enough support throughout Queensland for the change.
This was despite more than 62,000 people signing a State Parliament petition calling on the Government to introduce daylight saving.
Premier Peter Beattie said the petition did not indicate widespread support for daylight saving and it needed to have up to 300,000 signatures to show mass appeal.
Mr Beattie said he would honour an election commitment not to introduce daylight saving and did not expect to change this position at the next poll.
"There are four million Queenslanders and there were 60,000, 59,000 in the petition, to be honest," Mr Beattie said. "I thought there would be at least a couple of hundred thousand.
"I'd take a bit more notice if there was 250,000 or 300,000."
While the Nationals have always opposed daylight saving, the Liberals had been calling for a trial to be held in the southeast corner which would split the state into two time zones.
But acting Liberal leader Bruce Flegg yesterday conceded this policy was now on hold because it was not supported by their Coalition partner the Nationals.
"We're part of the Coalition and like the Labor Party, the divide over daylight saving is between geographic regions," Dr Flegg said.
"Clearly the Coalition with members predominantly outside the southeast corner isn't going to adopt a position in favour of daylight saving for the exact same reason that the Government doesn't.
"Members around the Gold Coast obviously support it, but those in the rest of the state oppose it."
Acting Nationals leader Jeff Seeney said his party did not support introducing daylight saving in any "shape or form" including splitting Queensland into two time zones.
He said it had never been discussed under the renewed Coalition and predicted that any attempt to introduce it as a policy would fail because there was not enough support.
"It is not a burning issue in the community," he said.
, met dank aan Blizzard of Oz ! :humble:
