Please, vote with intelligence this Saturday in the Daylight Savings referendum.

This Saturday we are voting for something very important. Those of my peer group who are For daylight savings only seem to have one 'argument' and it's kind of embarrassing. They say it just 'feels good' or 'I could go to the beach at 8pm, although I haven't really, but i could!' even though not having daylight saving never bothered them before the trial.

Yet, my peer group is barely affected by the changes that daylight saving brings. At the same time, they seem to be ignoring the thoughts of people who ARE actually affected, be it farmers, Northern WA residents and/or children. So it seems to me their decision to vote Yes is possibly both selfish and extremely shortsighted. But hey, its a democracy, you can vote for whatever you want, anybody can vote without thinking. However, for those who wish to put at least some thought into it, I've written a little guide. Some food for thought.

You can read the official argument for a YES vote here and you can read the official argument for the NO vote here. I urge you to do so, just so you know what you are voting for this Saturday.

For Disclosure: After reading into both sides of the argument I have decided to vote No. In fact I've become very depressed that anyone would vote YES when you consider the consequences at hand. I feel Daylight saving is an extremely outdated ideal and is especially unsuitable for WA which spans an entire continent North to South. WA needs to be more progressive and not go back to the pre industrial revolution days when daylight savings was required in Europe to save on candles (Unfortunately it doesn't save anything in 21st century Perth).

I'd also like to outline my own rebuttal to the key arguments made by the YES campaign. The YES campaign only provides two arguments for daylight savings. Both are seriously flawed.

1. Allows families to spend more time outdoors together after work.

Wrong. In fact its possibly the opposite. Just because daylight moves, It doesn't mean your work or school start and end times change.

Without Daylight savings during summer in Perth, the sun sets between 7.20pm and 7.30pm. The average child between 3 and 10 years of age require between 10 and 11 hours of sleep for a healthy lifestyle.

To get them up between 6am and 7am to either get them ready for school (or ready for day care before your work during the school holidays), you'll need to get them to bed by 8pm at the latest. Most parents I've known generally begin preparing their kids for bed at 7.30pm. Just when the sun is setting normally.

With Daylight savings however, your extra hour of daylight begins at 7.30pm. So do you stay out with your kids for an extra hour and reduce their sleep by an hour? No! They are still sent to bed at the same time, because school and work still starts at the same time! So, really, all you have accomplished with DST is sending them to bed in daylight and guess what, I know this from personal experience, KIDS HATE THAT! The more trouble you have getting them to sleep, the less time you get to yourself and spouse (if you are lucky enough to have one), which from what I'm told, is equally important to the sanity of a healthy family as 'family time'. Not to mention the health and mood benefits of a kid who has had a good nights sleep.

My kid self would hate me if I voted for daylight saving.

In a normal Perth summer, we are very fortunate to have plenty of low UV sunshine between 5pm and 7.30pm to enjoy with our families. Then on special nights, some of Perth's unique activities such as outdoor cinemas, concerts and theatre which we like to picnic and bbq at can start earlier on weeknights and have the improved romantic atmosphere of a balmy Perth night when it gets dark at the perfect time of 7.30-8pm.

(Plus, the extra daylight in the morning actually helps stimulate the Circadian rhythm meaning it's easier for all of us to wake up and be less grumpy, especially kids.)

2. Going to DST saves confusion when doing business with the Eastern States.

Since I spend a lot of time sourcing my film equipment from, and submitting applications to, places ouside of WA I can partly appreciate the idea of this argument. However, from my own experience, the effects of daylight saving actually make it harder to do business with the Eastern States, let alone the rest of the world. See why below:

Why this is wrong part A:
The proposed Daylight Savings Time (DST) regime which you are voting for on Saturday is either too long or too short. It's completely flawed. Our March mornings are already too dark under DST (Sunrises not till 7.20am!), and yet we are STILL out of sync with NSW / VIC / ACT / TAS.

Timezone differences between Western Australia and NSW / VIC / ACT / TAS in any given year if the May 16th referendum is passed:

1. January 1st - Last Sunday in March: 2 hours
2. Last Sunday in March - First Sundday in April: 3 hours
3. First Sunday in April - first Sunday in October: 2 hours
4. First Sunday in October - last Sunday in October: 3 hours
5. Last Sunday in October - December 31st: 2 hours

So in any given year under the proposed DST regime, there will be 5 different periods of time zone difference. Without DST there is only 3.

Between NT and QLD (Who are the only other state/territory who share similar higher latitudes to us) under the proposed DST periods, there will be 3 as well, while without Daylight savings there is NONE!

How does the proposed WA DST make doing business easier?

Answer: It doesn't. Eastern States businesses unfortunately tend to assume that WA changes to Daylight savings at the same time, always causing problems in the transition periods.

Why this is wrong part B:
As the official argument against the referendum intelligently points out, NSW / VIC are now (and even less so in the future) not our most important business partners. Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Beijing all share the same timezone with some very special people. US! Yay, this gives the WA economy a strategic advantage over NSW / VIC as an increasingly larger percent of our business is done with Asia. Globalisation is a reality we must face and if Australia is to become a stronger economy, Asia is the key. All of us in WA benefit from a stronger economy. If we go to DST, we are losing part of that unique advantage.

Also, as all of you should know quite well, phone support centers for most companies are now spread out around the world and they 'Follow the Sun'. I could go on even more about the effect on farmers and how legacy software (Even modern software like this blog!) is largely ignorant of DST in Western Australia and this impacts small businesses the most but surely you get the idea now!


You can dispute my points in the comments but please, vote intelligently and just remember, (to my peers especially) nobody ever complained that our Summer nights were too short before the DST trial came in. Think about it, you still had a great time, because Perth summers are already the best in the world! You can vote NO and still have great Summers for years to come. It's a win-win situation. Although today you may live in Perth and have free time to idle away in the evenings, one day in the future you may have a job on the mines, or have a young family and you, like the last generation has finally realised, may come to regret your narrow view today.

How To Vote

Australians aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.  We regularly complain about governments yet it seems that the majority of us only vote for one of two political parties and as a result have very little affect on government policy.

It seems to me that this is not because we don't care about politics, it's just that nobody bothers to understand how our voting system works.  Every election I come across many people who claim to be intelligent yet fall victim to the myths of voting.

We use a preferential system of voting and there is a common misconception that if we don't place either Labor or Liberal first on the ballot sheet, we are wasting our vote.  This is absolutely incorrect.  In fact, it's likely the opposite.

If you look on your ballot sheet you'll see that you have the option to number boxes from 1 to whatever. This gives you the chance to have PREFERENCES.  If you vote for a smaller party first, say for example The Greens, and the Greens candidate does not win the election, then your vote goes to your second preference!  If your second preferred candidate does not win, your vote goes to your third preferred candidate and so on and so on until there are only two candidates left in the running.   As long as you fill out your ballot correctly, your vote is always counted towards one of the two most popular candidates.

Even if there are 8 candidates and you vote the Liberals 7th and Labor 8th, that still gives you the chance to have a say over which major political party you prefer, in this example, The Liberals.

By voting either Labor or Liberal first, your democratic voice is saying that you agree 100% with that party's policy.  As a result, if you do not agree with them 100% then you are not correctly expressing your democratic choice and you put no pressure on either major party to do anything but try and contradict the other.

For example....   If you would ultimately prefer a Labor government over a Liberal one, but you feel the Labor policy on the environment was not as 100% committed as another party such as the Greens, you can vote the Greens 1st and Labor 2nd (or at least above the Liberals).   You are then using your democratic voice to say, yes, I do prefer Labor over Liberal but I would really like Labor to improve their policy on the environment.

Considering smaller parties and using your voting preferences to their full potential maximizes the power of your vote.

Putting one of the two major parties 1st on your ballet sheet means your vote will never make it past the first round, and in my opinion, that is a truly wasted vote.

Oh Please Lord

Please!  Do not let them spend six years and over a billion dollars on stadium that looks like this!

I'm guessing they are trying to go for some kind of design that looks like Spinifex on ochre dirt....  Ok, I get it, but does it actually look any good?  No.  Will it ever look good?  No.

There are so many other colours that represent our amazing state and they would all have a better chance of having style and elegance.

Who would have thought that they could possibly create anything worse than the Perth to Mandurah Railway system?

I'm glad they made the sensible decision to build at Kitchener park as well so that Subiaco will have to be knocked down to build it, leaving the city without a proper stadium for three whole years!  So smart!  I bet they will conveniently have to knock down the 100 year old trees around Kitchener Park as well.

Who makes decisions on these kinds of things in Perth?

Respect The Retail Trading Hours Referendum!

On the 26th of February 2005, a referendum was held in WA asking to extend trading hours in the Perth Metropolitan Area to allow general retail shops to trade until 9 pm Monday to Friday. It also asked if all shops can open on Sundays. Both proposals were rejected by the WA public.

Holding a referendum on the subject and having it rejected should be enough to stop all nonsensical talk of shopping hours deregulation for the next decade. However, here we are, not even three years later and not only has the government allowed freestanding liquor stores to open on Sundays but they are still considering forcing changes through parliament, going against the public's wishes.

Surely this is a crime of democracy!

There a three pathetic arguments 'for' deregulating shopping hours.
1. Nobody else in the world has such restrictions.
2. Creates 'thousands of new jobs' and gives workers greater flexibility in the hours they work.
3. I can do my shopping after work or whenever I want.

Why are these arguments pathetic you ask?

1. If everyone else jumped off a bridge and fell to their death would you do it to? I doubt it. Now, thats a pretty extreme example but the reality is just because everyone else does it, doesn't mean its a good thing.

Perth is consistently ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world and has a booming economy. Have you ever heard the saying 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'? We don't need to make changes to our shopping hours, we already have amazing lifestyles and our way of living is well above the rest of the world. Considering all the other problems this state faces, let alone the world as a whole, extending trading hours is the lowest of the low in terms of priority.

Now a lot of the pro-deregulation idiots just say not changing is 'just so conservative' and start going on about Perth being a backwater as if using Perth's remoteness as an excuse for them being losers. This is incredibly short sighted. Its not a case at all! Leaving trading regulations intact is not just a case of the 'fear of change' its because regulated trading hours is something that makes this city better and special.

I was inspired to write this blog entry after going into the city yesterday to do my Christmas shopping. It was a Thursday and it's the week before Christmas. Christmas is obviously the busiest shopping period of the year and in the lead up to the big day all shops in the Perth CBD are allowed to trade till 9pm. Since it was a Thursday and all shops outside of the Perth and Fremantle CBDs are allowed to open till 9pm as well, essentially every shop in Perth was allowed to open till 9pm. This happens every year and its fairly well known.

So its on this day that we can kind of get an idea of what impact having all shops open at all times has on our shopping culture. I'll come back to this, but lets get an idea for what it is like for the rest of the year.

For some perspective, let's remember that Perth is a 1st world city the size of London, but with a population of just 1.5 million people.

Usually, due to retail trading hours restrictions, Friday nights and Sunday afternoons are reserved exclusively for the shops in the CBDs of Perth and Fremantle. This encourages all citizens who wish to do their shopping at these times to head into the CBDs because the stores closest to them are closed. For fat lazy people, this may be a hassle, but for everyone else, its not a problem. People converge on mass to the shopping districts. Competition for parking is intense, but thankfully the CBDs are easily the most well serviced regions of Perth via public transport. As you can imagine, public transport is a far more attractive option for many people, whereas, if they were going to a suburban shoppping centre to do their shopping, a huge majority would almost certainly drive their own cars. The benefit this has for the Perth environment, and probably the world as whole is probably unmeasured but I imagine it is immense.

There are many other advantages as well. Since all shops in the CBDs know that they have exclusive access to Perth's shoppers on these time periods, you can pretty much guarantee that the shop you want will be open. Less worrying about the opening hours of the stores you want to go to is always less stressful.

Having so many people flock into the cities at these specific times also creates an amazing atmosphere. Lots of people mean more buskers and artists are out and about entertaining and displaying their art. The weekend markets are also set up to catch the hordes. In all my travels I have never seen anything like it, and certainly nothing remotely similar to it in a city of under 2 million people. I love it, I always run into people I know and have a chat. People then start talking about 'how small perth is' but its probably just because everyone is coming to the same place to shop. It's amazing.

Now, what was it like in the city this particular Thursday night? I took a photo (Note, despite being night time it is still very bright because the government has introduced daylight saving despite the people of WA rejecting it at three referendums!):

There are still people there, but not even a 1/4 as many. Half of the shops had closed early, despite the eased trading restrictions. With the foot traffic heavily reduced by competition from the suburban malls, it wasn't worth most of the shops paying employees to keep the shops open. There was only one busker, I saw him arrive and I could see he was clearly disappointed by the turn out and it was Christmas too!

With deregulated shopping hours, Perth will be catapulted towards being yet another soulless inner-city like Brisbane. Perhaps one day when we reach a population of over 3 million like Sydney or Melbourne, it might work, but that is still a long way away. Decentralization is a bad bad thing. We must protect our CBDs.

2. Creates thousands of new jobs??? Perth already has huge difficulty filling all the jobs we already have on offer. Restaurants and stores are in serious trouble because of a lack of staff. We don't need more jobs.

2b. More flexible work hours? I don't think so. I work at a bottle store and just this year, despite the referendum, they allowed all liquor stores to open on Sundays. Hours become less flexible, I have to work Saturdays and Sundays now. I used to always have Sundays free to study or play. Not any more. If I say that I refuse to work Sundays, they can fire me. Not only that but Sunday pay rates were reduced 50%!!!!

Our managers got no pay increase, but still have to be on call Sundays, if not working themselves.

The weekend is also our busiest trading period so being open an extra day before being restocked on Tuesday creates other logistical problems. We have had to move our 2nd delivery day from Thursday to Friday afternoon. So we are still restocking on Friday afternoon during our busiest period of the week, causing all sorts of discomfort to our customers and guess what! Warm beer! Since the beer doesn't get to spend a night in the chiller before the hordes arrive Friday afternoon, many of them are walking out with warm beer when they came hankering for a cold one!

Now, I only work part time and I have nobody dependent on me but I imagine it would be so much harder for people with families who will likely be forced to work Sunday shifts to keep their jobs. Having Sundays protected for our families is an important part of our West Australian lifestyle.

3. Pro-deregulation argument three is so bad that I now use it to judge personality. If someone uses this argument when discussing trading hours, I can instantly tell that they are ignorant, selfish, small minded people who aren't worth the time of day.

If sacrificing all that I have outlined already just so that you can 'shop when you want' is your argument, then you are a pathetic piece of flesh.

Need some bread and milk? Go support your local deli!
Need something more complicated like meat and vegetables for your bbq? Go to your local independent Supermarket. Mine is open 8am to 8.30pm EVERY DAY!
Need something at 2am? Go to Fresh Provisions, Easy Plus or the many many service stations that are open 24 hours a day!

Need consumer goods not found in super markets? Buy it on the internet or get up off your fat ass and go to a real shop. Suburban malls are open till 9pm on Thursdays. The city is open Friday till 9pm, 9-5 Saturday and 12-5 Sunday.

Weekend markets are open on Sundays as well! Why don't you check them out.

3b. I've asked people who have come into my store (owned by Woolworths) why they like our store being open on Sundays, when you have always been able to buy liquor on Sundays from bottle-shops attached to the local pub. The only somewhat sensible answer I ever get is because 'BWS is cheaper'. This is slightly true, but we are only cheaper on a few shitty products and these lower prices come at a huge expense to the consumer. Choice.

To get these lower prices, we are heavily sponsored by the biggest liquor companies, for example, Fosters. Fosters gives us their products at cheaper prices on the condition that we remove as many competing products from our shelves as possible. Fosters products are always given priority in product placement and stock kept on hand. In the three years that I have been working at BWS, the range of products that we keep in store has easily halved. Not only that, since Fosters is Victorian, many West Australian products have either been removed or have been totally ignored in favor of Eastern States products, no matter how bad these eastern products are.

Our entire Cask wine fridge was replaced with a new fridge that just holds Jim Beam and Cola products! We now have 60 Jim Beam 6-packs ready to go, when we only sell 10 a day, yet we have halved the amount of cask wines (which is our store's biggest product sector) that we can keep cold and they are in the large chiller with all the beer carton's so all the grannies on the pension have to risk pneumonia just to get their weekly cask.

I'd estimate that around 90% of the bottle stores that were allowed to open before this year's deregulation were independent and stocked whatever products they wanted. Independent stores, although sometimes more expensive, kept products in their stores according to quality, not sale price. They have a far wider range of products on offer than BWS will ever have. Allowing them to open on Sundays alone, gave them a small advantage over Woolworth's and Coles owned liquor stores and encouraged them to maintain a good range of products. Now that advantage is gone and as a result, they will need to cut corners to compete against these huge corporations and it will be the consumer that suffers the most.

Despite what you might think, the ONLY parties getting any benefit from extended trading hours are the largest corporations.

Pro-deregulators will then argue that we live in a capitalist society and so we should have no rules and let it be a free for all, live or die. Don't they realise that sometimes we have rules for reasons. Don't we have rules, such as laws, that are designed to protect us and make our quality of life BETTER!

What good would sports be if we started easing back the regulations. Why do we force cricketers to bowl the ball instead of just throwing it at the batsmen? Wouldn't throwing it be more efficient? Why don't we let footballers just throw the ball around instead of punching it? Shouldn't we just give them the freedom to do what they want? Sure... you could... but it would ruin the beauty of the game.

Extending trading hours will ruin some of the unique beauties of this wonderful city, all for the sake of some stupid lazy slobs. Its not about 'shopping when you want' its about protecting our unique quality of life and stimulating our own culture.

If you can't EASILY buy what you need in Perth at the moment, then you need more than just extended trading hours. You need a bullet in your poor ignorant brain to put you out of your misery.