Let there be light

From the end of this September kiwis will get more light. The Government has just decided to extend daylight saving up to 27 weeks, three weeks extra.

Clocks will go forward an hour a week earlier than usual - on the last Sunday in September - and back an hour two weeks later on the first Sunday in April, instead of the third Sunday in March.
It's the first change in daylight saving since 1990 and comes more than 30 years after clocks first went forward an hour to extend summer days.

It will be a huge relief to know that we'll be able to get longer days after feeling a little short changed this year when the clocks went back some weeks ago.

New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to officially adopt a nationally observed standard time. New Zealand Mean Time, adopted on 2 November 1868, was set at 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. Greenwich Mean Time was established by British Railways in the 1840s but was not made Great Britain's standard time until 1880.

In 1941, due to emergency regulations in the Second World War, clocks were advanced half an hour in New Zealand. This advance was made permanent by the Standard Time Act 1945. The Act provided that New Zealand Standard Time was set 12 hours in advance of Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Time. In the late 1940s the development of the first atomic clock was announced and several laboratories began atomic time scales. A new time scale based on the readings of atomic clocks, known as Co-ordinated Universal Time, was adopted internationally in 1972.

After many reviews in the intervening years, it seems that at last the Government has seen the sense to extend the daylight saving to once again and bring New Zealand in line with Australia who were enjoying longer days this summer whilst here in NZ our lights were already snuffed out.