Farmers vote for reduced daylight saving months to reduce impact on work, families

In short: 

Farmers in NSW are calling for daylight saving months to be cut back.

There is growing scientific evidence to back their call, but Premier Chris Minns has ruled out any change.

What’s next?

A private member’s bill will test the political support.

Farmers in New South Wales are calling for change as a growing body of evidence suggests daylight saving is bad for people’s health.

Sleep Health Foundation chair Shanthakumar Rajaratnam, a professor of sleep and circadian medicine at Monash University, says people lose sleep in the transition in and out of daylight saving.

Dr Rajaratnam said that could affect their mental and physical wellbeing but there were serious long-term impacts as well. 

“There is a worldwide movement now looking at whether daylight saving should be discontinued on the basis of its health effects,” he said.

Dr Rajaratnam said there was a rise in cardiovascular events and motor vehicle accidents in the transition periods, but long term it could impact on mood, depression, anxiety, stress and burnout. 

“Certain kinds of heart disease, diabetes, certain kinds of cancer and reproductive disorders are all linked to disturbance of sleep,” he said. 

A growing number of countries have abandoned daylight saving, including all of Asia and most of Africa, Azerbaijan, Iran, Jordan, Namibia, Russia, Samoa, Syria, Turkey, Uruguay and Mexico.

About 70 countries continue the practice.

Daylight saving was introduced nationally in Australia during World War I as a fuel-saving measure and has been in and out of favour in different states since.  

This year, clocks in states and territories with daylight saving will go forward by an hour at 2am on October 6, and return to standard time at 3am on April 6 next year. 

Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory don’t have daylight saving, creating five time zones across the country in the warmer months.    

Young people at risk

University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine and Health, Translational Research Collective, Brain and Mind Centre research fellow Mirim Shi was also concerned about the impact of daylight saving.

Dr Shi said some studies had reported an increase in suicides.

She said the impacts could be greater in young people who naturally slept later. 

“They suffer from loss of sleep, increased depressive symptoms, higher caffeine intake, and even substance use,” she said.

The NSW Farmers Conference in Sydney this week debated a motion to start daylight saving a month later and finish a month earlier, cutting the duration from six to four months.

That motion was changed to a call for “any shortening of daylight saving” and was passed by the NSW Farmers Association members.

They said farmers couldn’t start work on time when daylight saving kicked in because it was too dark. 

The sun came up at 6:53am in Sydney on Wednesday but rose at 7:07am at Bourke in the far west of the state.

NSW Farmers Association president Xavier Martin said the impact on farm households was extraordinary, especially for children in remote areas.

He said some had to leave home in the dark to take a long bus journey to school when daylight saving started in October.

“Right when they’re looking to wake up with the sun, we plunge them back into darkness and they’re out there at the mailbox having to get on the bus in the dark again,” Mr Martin said.

“Children don’t want to go to sleep when it’s light either, which is hard on young families.”

Political support

Labor in NSW has ruled out making changes to daylight saving, with Premier Chris Minns saying it helped get people out in the sunshine.

The NSW Liberal Party hasn’t supported previous bills to change it, but the NSW Nationals would. 

North Coast NSW MP Geoff Provest has been drafting a private member’s bill to get daylight saving changed.

But it would need support from the Liberals and independents on the crossbench in NSW to get it passed.

He said the time difference with Queensland made life difficult for those on the border and there was no advantage to daylight saving anymore, as people were often working from home and had flexible work arrangements.

Dr Rajantarum wanted politicians to look at the evidence on health impacts.

He said his research was continuing, but one solution could be to drop daylight saving and stay with normal time zones.

“It is critically important that we prioritise sleep health and circadian health as a basis for important government policies like daylight saving,” he said.