Alex Livingston writes:

...

I was told recently that the town (district probably) of Kunumurra, in far north east Western Australia has switched its time zone to be the same as that of the Northern Territory instead of using WA time (they're just over the border, and the WA time zone is wildly inappropriate, so it makes sense).

To say that the WA time, 08:00 ahead of UT, in Kununurra (I presume that is where is meant: there were no matches for Kunumurra on an AltaVista Web search but about 200 for Kununurra [and 9 and 7 for Kunnunurra and Kununnurra respectively]) is wildly inappropriate is more than an overstatement. The WA-NT border runs along the 129 deg. E meridian, so WA time in Kunnunurra is less than 36 minutes behind LMT. Is that particularly inappropriate?

If Kununurra adopts / has adopted NT time, 09:30 ahead of UT, then its time will be / is more than 54 minutes ahead of LMT. Isn't that even more "inappropriate"? It is Australia's "Central Time" (09:30 ahead of UT) that is inappropriate. The closest it comes to being "appropriate" is on SA's eastern border with NSW, where it is still 6 minutes ahead of LMT.

According to Doane (1972) nt.au and sa.au adopted GMT+9 when they first adopted standard time 1895-02-01, and then moved to GMT+9:30 on 1899-05-01. Like many places, they moved from the right time to the wrong time. I believe that the change was made because Adelaide (138E35), the largest city in the two states/territories is right on the eastern edge of the time zone and prefers to be on LMT+0:16 to LMT-0:14.

IMHO Australia's time zoning is a farce. Australia is wholly responsible for 3 of world's "off the hour" time zones (central zone, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island) and partially responsible for another 1 (Cocos Islands - same time as Burma).

While I would be opposed to current ACT if I lived there, I do not regard off- hour zones to be a bad thing, if it is a better fit to LMT. (ACT, of course, does NOT meet this standard.) If I lived in Portugal or Ireland, I would be in favor of GMT-0:30 instead of GMT or GMT-1. In the USA the row of states from North Dakota to Texas would be better off on GMT-6:30 instead of -6, especially since they all keep DST until late October. The least justifiable of these is "Central Time", and Lord Howe Island comes a close second, what with its almost entirely pointless daylight-saving practices. (I started a message about the latter several weeks ago but haven't got round to finishing it yet.): There seems to me to be two main options for the central zone:

1: Put the whole zone on UT+10 year-round (no more inappropriate than Argentina, not to mention China), with the possible exception of the southwest corner of SA (where hardly anyone lives), which could keep on UT+9 (whether "officially" or otherwise) along with the southeast corner of WA (where even fewer people live) which already keeps UT+8:45 year-round (ugh!).

Actually if I lived in Kununurra I would want to keep UT+8:45 as opposed to either UT+8 (and certainly +9:30!). Given that LMT is probably about UT+8:35 (since the WA-NT border is +8:36), +8:45 is better than +8, +9, or +9:30. It would also be WA+0:45 and NT-0:45.

2: Put the whole zone on UT+9 during a standardised non-daylight-saving period, advancing the southern section to UT+10 during a standardised daylight-saving period.

I like this idea better than idea 1.