Why, you say?
Well for a start, Perth (without allowing for the “clock-changing experiment”) is on the same time zone as the third of the world who are rapidly becoming our major clients. Western Australians can also pick up a phone and communicate during normal business hours with U.K., India and Africa.
Clock-changing (or “daylight saving” as it is called for some reason), despite the resultant power consumption increase, may have made sense a few years ago when Perth was a remote outpost of Sydney, but the world has changed as noted market commentator, Charlie Aitken (Southern Cross Equities), comments:
“We believe we are watching a very significant long-term change in world equity market order. We believe we are witnessing the relative decline in power of the US equity market and the relative increase in power of Asian markets. This also clearly has ramifications for currencies.”
But time zones are only one of Western Australia’s competitive advantages as we see an unprecedented avalanche of people traveling in both directions, as we play our role in this resource-driven activity; evidenced by new flights and new airlines joining the rush.
Perth, Western Australia will have its fourth ($10 million) referendum on daylight savings (clock-changing) in 33 years on 16 May 2009. What do you think?