On Sat, 23 Feb 2013, Peter Stagg wrote:
Is their anything I can do or say to bring some clarity to this issue and perhaps resolve it one way or another?
The tzdata project attempts to follow legislation or official standards, where they are known, or common practice, where that is consistent. In the case of Australia, official standards appear to be defined at the state level (not the Australian Commonwealth Government level), and the relevant state legislation appears to define phrases like "Eastern Standard Time" and "Eastern Summer Time", not abbreviations. Common practice in Australia appears to be inconsistent, with some government and non-government sources using abbreviations like "AEST" and some using abbreviations like "EST". Given the absence of consistency in common practice, the tzdata project has chosen to retain the status quo every time this issue has been discussed. It's probably worth pointing out that the status quo is consistent with the legislation, in that the abbreviations used by the tzdata project match the first letters of the words of the official time zone names. For example, the legislated names "Eastern Standard Time" and "Eastern Summer Time" are both abbreviated to "EST". The two most likely reasons for the tzdata project to change its Australian time zone abbreviations are: 1. If an "official" set of preferred abbreviations were set out in a statement from a recognised national standards body, or in a collection of statements from recognised state governments, and if somebody notices the fact and reports it to the tzdata project. 2. If the people in Australia start being consistent in their choice of timezone abbreviations, and if somebody notices the fact and reports it to the tzdata project. You may be in a position to cause some sort of official statement to be made. You may also be in a position to cause government-related web sites in Australia to be more consistent. --apb (Alan Barrett)