REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Monday, October 31, 2005

THE votes were in and the message from Gold Coasters was to wake up to daylight saving or watch the sun set on Premier Peter Beattie’s political career.

The Gold Coast voted overwhelmingly in favour of daylight saving and they were not worried about the curtains fading, a well-worn myth during the 1991 referendum.

They called on the Premier to bring it in or get out.

In the biggest response to a Gold Coast Bulletin SMS campaign, thousands of text messages were received during the first two days.

Almost 85 per cent of those were in favour of daylight saving.

An e-petition on the Queensland Parliament website for the adoption of daylight saving had attracted 43,343 signatures in just two weeks.

Locals were so keen to have their say that the first text messages started rolling in at 12.45am on Saturday – just minutes after the first Bulletin bundles came off the press.

The number of responses to the daylight saving campaign was more than double those protesting against Gold Coast singer Ricki-Lee Coulter’s shock eviction from 2004’s Australian Idol.

It even rated higher than former health commissioner Tony Morris’s call for complaints about the state’s health system.

But the Premier refused to budge, even in the face of such strong public opinion.

“He’s made an election commitment and he doesn’t go back on election commitments,” said a spokesman.

He would not consider an official vote on trial dual time zones within Queensland.

Daylight Saving remains off the agenda 13 years later.