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Resources / Compliance

Blog, daylight saving, 2026

One border,
two clocks

On Sunday 4 October New South Wales moved its clocks forward and Queensland didn't. For the next 6 months every crew that works across the border has 2 times to choose from, and the timesheet has to pick one of them.

Published 6 October 202613 minute readSan Rangeon, Director, PocketModeSources: Fair Work Ombudsman, NSW and Queensland governments, SafeWork NSW, SIRA
2am
on Sunday 4 October, when NSW clocks jumped straight to 3am and Queensland's stayed where they were
1 hour
between the 2 sides of the border, until 3am on Sunday 4 April 2027
6am
the earliest start the NSW fatigue code recommends, which is 5am for anyone who lives on the Queensland side
7 years
how long time and wages records have to be kept
67.6%
more work days lost to injuries on the Monday after the spring change, in 24 years of US mining data

The short version

  • From 2am on Sunday 4 October, NSW runs 1 hour ahead of Queensland. Queensland ruled out another referendum and a south-east trial on 24 September, so this will keep happening every spring.
  • A shift that ran through 2am that night was an hour shorter than the roster said. Unless the award or agreement says otherwise, it is paid by the clock, so the worker still gets the full shift. In April it runs the other way.
  • For a crew that crosses the border, “start at 7” means 2 different times, and a roster that doesn't say which state it's in is the cheapest mistake to fix in this whole piece.
  • A 6am start on a NSW site is 5am for someone who lives in Queensland, and at Tweed Heads it starts before sunrise on 104 of the 182 days of daylight saving.
  • Pay, public holidays, work health and safety (WHS) law and workers compensation each follow a different rule about where the work happened, and every one of them is settled by the record.

Where this piece comes from #

We're based in the Northern Rivers and our office address is on the Gold Coast, so the 2 clocks are part of our own week from October to April. When we went looking for something written for outdoor employers on the NSW and Queensland border, we couldn't find it. The payroll vendors cover the overnight shift in a paragraph, the lifestyle sites cover whether you lose an hour of sleep, and nobody puts the 2 together for a crew that lives in Tweed and works in Coolangatta, or lives in Goondiwindi and works across the river at Boggabilla.

This isn't legal advice. It draws on the Fair Work Ombudsman, the NSW fatigue code, the workers compensation cross-border rules and one well-known study on injuries after the clock change, all listed at the bottom.

Part 1

The weekend the clocks split #

At 2am on Sunday 4 October, NSW moved from Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) to Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT), and the clock on the wall went straight to 3am. Queensland stays on AEST all year, so from that moment the 2 states are an hour apart. They line up again at 3am on Sunday 4 April 2027, 26 weeks later, when NSW winds back to 2am.

Nor is it likely to go away, because Queensland last voted on daylight saving in 1992, after a 3-year trial, and 54.5% said no. A new e-petition this year gathered more than 2,500 signatures, and on 24 September the Attorney-General, Deb Frecklington, said neither a referendum nor a south-east Queensland trial was under consideration. Whatever you think of that, it means planning for 2 clocks every spring rather than waiting for it to be fixed.

This year the change landed on a long weekend. Monday 5 October was a public holiday on both sides of the border, but for different reasons: Labour Day in NSW and the King's Birthday in Queensland. For most crews, the first real working day on 2 clocks was Tuesday 6 October.

SAT 3 OCT Both sides on AEST SUN 4 OCT 2am becomes 3am in NSW. Queensland stays put MON 5 OCT Public holiday on both sides: Labour Day NSW, King's Birthday Qld TUE 6 OCT First working day on 2 clocks OCT TO APR NSW 1 hour ahead for 26 weeks SUN 4 APR 2027 3am becomes 2am in NSW. The clocks line up again 2 CLOCKS ON THE BORDER, 4 OCTOBER 2026 TO 4 APRIL 2027 Every roster, text message and timesheet with a time in it needs a state next to it

Scroll sideways to see the whole figure

Figure 2. The changeover weekend, and the 26 weeks that follow it. Dates from the NSW Government and the NSW and Queensland public holiday lists.

Here is what the same day looks like from either side, at Tweed Heads.

SUNRISE 5:21am Qld · 6:21am NSW SUN AT ITS HIGHEST 11:34am Qld · 12:34pm NSW SUNSET 5:48pm Qld · 6:48pm NSW QUEENSLAND CLOCK AEST, all year 4am 6am 8am 10am 12pm 2pm 4pm 6pm 8pm NSW CLOCK AEDT from 4 October 5am 7am 9am 11am 1pm 3pm 5pm 7pm 9pm Start 6amsun already up Knock off 3:30pm Start 6amstill dark Knock off 3:30pm2:30pm in Queensland

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Figure 1. Monday 5 October at Tweed Heads, the same sun on both clocks. The two rulers are lined up in real time, so every NSW label sits 1 hour ahead of the Queensland label directly above it. Sunrise, solar noon and sunset calculated for Tweed Heads with the NOAA method and cross-checked against sunrise-sunset.org.
The same day in a table, Monday 5 October 2026 at Tweed Heads
Queensland clock (AEST)NSW clock (AEDT)
Sunriseabout 5:21amabout 6:21am
Sun at its highest11:34am12:34pm
Sunsetabout 5:48pmabout 6:48pm
A roster that says “start 6am”6am, sun already up6am, still dark
A roster that says “knock off 3:30pm”3:30pm3:30pm, which is 2:30pm on the Queensland side

Tweed is where most people notice it, but it's the whole length of the border. Goondiwindi and Boggabilla, Texas, and Mungindi, which straddles the state line, all live with it. In Mungindi the hospital runs on NSW daylight saving time even though it sits on the Queensland side.

Part 2

The overnight shift that comes up an hour short #

Anyone working through 2am on the night of 3 to 4 October on the NSW side did an hour less than their roster said. Traffic control on night roadworks, haulage, security on a construction site, maintenance crews on plant that can only be touched when it's stopped: all of them clocked off at the usual time on the wall, having worked an hour less. In the Northern Rivers the cane crush runs from June to November at Condong, Broadwater and Harwood, so harvest and mill work sat right across the change.

Under the Fair Work Ombudsman's default rule, employees who work an overnight shift when daylight saving starts “will work one hour less but are still paid for the full shift according to the clock.” When it ends in April, the reverse happens, and someone on the overnight shift works an extra hour that isn't paid. That default only applies if the award or enterprise agreement says nothing. Some agreements pay the actual hours worked instead, so look at yours before the pay run that covers that night.

10PM SAT 3 OCT TO 6AM SUN 4 OCT 2026 When daylight saving starts Paid 1 hour that wasn't worked On the clock On the clock: 8 hours 8 hours Actually worked Actually worked: 7 hours 7 hours Paid, by default Paid, by default: 8 hours 8 hours 10PM SAT 3 APR TO 6AM SUN 4 APR 2027 When daylight saving ends Worked 1 hour that isn't paid On the clock On the clock: 8 hours 8 hours Actually worked Actually worked: 9 hours 9 hours Paid, by default Paid, by default: 8 hours 8 hours 0h 2h 4h 6h 8h 10h

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Figure 3. The same rostered shift on both change nights, ignoring breaks. “Paid, by default” is the Fair Work Ombudsman's rule where the award or agreement says nothing: pay by the clock. An agreement that pays actual hours worked changes the third bar in both groups.
Part 3

Start at 7. Whose 7? #

This is where most of the real trouble comes from, and it has nothing to do with 2am. From Tuesday 6 October, any instruction with a time in it means one thing to a person standing in Tweed Heads and another to a person standing in Coolangatta, and outdoor crews move between the 2 all day.

The crewWhat tends to go wrong
Lives in Tweed or the Northern Rivers, works on the Gold CoastThe supervisor texts “7 tomorrow” and means Queensland time. The crew leaves home on their own clock and turns up an hour early, or an hour late if it was the other way round.
Lives in Queensland, works on a NSW siteA 6am NSW start is 5am at home. With a 45 minute drive, that's an alarm somewhere around 4am on their own clock, and a longer day than the roster shows.
Works on both sides in the same dayThe drive between sites looks an hour longer or an hour shorter than it was, depending on which clock each end of it was written in. Travel time gets paid wrong, or questioned.
Figure 4. Three crews, 3 different problems.

Paper timesheets make it worse, because a sheet filled in on Friday from memory records whatever clock the worker happened to be thinking in on Tuesday, and almost nobody writes the state next to the time. Some people who live on the NSW side and work on the Queensland side simply run their lives on Queensland time for the whole summer, which works well for them but leaves the roster and the timesheet guessing.

Smartphones aren't a guarantee either, since a phone set to pick its time zone automatically takes it from the network, and in October 2017 Queensland users on several networks reported their phones jumping to daylight saving time overnight. It doesn't happen often, but a phone is worth checking the week of the change.

Part 4

Fatigue, first light and the 6am line #

The NSW code of practice on managing the risk of fatigue at work has been in force since 20 February 2026, and since 1 July an approved code in NSW is a standard you have to meet or beat as well as a piece of evidence (we covered that change in The codes stopped being advice). Section 5.2 of the code says that “where it is reasonably practicable, work should not commence before 6 am and should end no later than 10 pm.”

The code talks in clock time, and the clock is the thing that moved on Sunday 4 October. From then on a 6am start on a NSW site is 5am for anyone who lives in Queensland, and at Tweed Heads the sun doesn't come up until around 6:20am NSW time in the first week of October. That means the drive in happens in the dark, and so does the first half hour on site. Section 5.4 adds that while the duty may not extend to the drive itself, a business “may need to manage the risk if extended commutes mean workers are fatigued while at work”, and a Queensland-based worker on an early NSW start has both an earlier alarm and the drive.

It isn't only October, either. Sunrise moves earlier through November and early December and then comes back, so a 6am NSW start is in the dark again from the middle of January through to the end of daylight saving. At Tweed Heads that's 104 of the 182 days NSW spends on daylight saving, and from mid-February even first light comes after 6am.

5:00am 5:30am 6:00am 6:30am 7:00am 4 Oct Nov Dec Jan 2027 Feb Mar Apr 3 Apr Sunrise First light (civil dawn) 6am, the fatigue code's earliest recommended start SUN UP AFTER 6AM 4 Oct to 25 Oct SUN UP AFTER 6AM 12 Jan to 3 Apr Earliest, 5:41am on 2 Dec 6:57am on 3 Apr 4 Oct 2026: sunrise 6:22am, first light 5:58am on the NSW clock (5:22am and 4:58am in Queensland) 11 Oct 2026: sunrise 6:14am, first light 5:50am on the NSW clock (5:14am and 4:50am in Queensland) 18 Oct 2026: sunrise 6:07am, first light 5:42am on the NSW clock (5:07am and 4:42am in Queensland) 25 Oct 2026: sunrise 6:00am, first light 5:35am on the NSW clock (5:00am and 4:35am in Queensland) 1 Nov 2026: sunrise 5:54am, first light 5:29am on the NSW clock (4:54am and 4:29am in Queensland) 8 Nov 2026: sunrise 5:49am, first light 5:24am on the NSW clock (4:49am and 4:24am in Queensland) 15 Nov 2026: sunrise 5:45am, first light 5:19am on the NSW clock (4:45am and 4:19am in Queensland) 22 Nov 2026: sunrise 5:43am, first light 5:16am on the NSW clock (4:43am and 4:16am in Queensland) 29 Nov 2026: sunrise 5:41am, first light 5:15am on the NSW clock (4:41am and 4:15am in Queensland) 6 Dec 2026: sunrise 5:41am, first light 5:14am on the NSW clock (4:41am and 4:14am in Queensland) 13 Dec 2026: sunrise 5:43am, first light 5:16am on the NSW clock (4:43am and 4:16am in Queensland) 20 Dec 2026: sunrise 5:45am, first light 5:18am on the NSW clock (4:45am and 4:18am in Queensland) 27 Dec 2026: sunrise 5:49am, first light 5:22am on the NSW clock (4:49am and 4:22am in Queensland) 3 Jan 2027: sunrise 5:54am, first light 5:26am on the NSW clock (4:54am and 4:26am in Queensland) 10 Jan 2027: sunrise 5:59am, first light 5:32am on the NSW clock (4:59am and 4:32am in Queensland) 17 Jan 2027: sunrise 6:05am, first light 5:38am on the NSW clock (5:05am and 4:38am in Queensland) 24 Jan 2027: sunrise 6:10am, first light 5:44am on the NSW clock (5:10am and 4:44am in Queensland) 31 Jan 2027: sunrise 6:16am, first light 5:50am on the NSW clock (5:16am and 4:50am in Queensland) 7 Feb 2027: sunrise 6:22am, first light 5:57am on the NSW clock (5:22am and 4:57am in Queensland) 14 Feb 2027: sunrise 6:27am, first light 6:02am on the NSW clock (5:27am and 5:02am in Queensland) 21 Feb 2027: sunrise 6:32am, first light 6:08am on the NSW clock (5:32am and 5:08am in Queensland) 28 Feb 2027: sunrise 6:37am, first light 6:13am on the NSW clock (5:37am and 5:13am in Queensland) 7 Mar 2027: sunrise 6:42am, first light 6:17am on the NSW clock (5:42am and 5:17am in Queensland) 14 Mar 2027: sunrise 6:46am, first light 6:22am on the NSW clock (5:46am and 5:22am in Queensland) 21 Mar 2027: sunrise 6:50am, first light 6:26am on the NSW clock (5:50am and 5:26am in Queensland) 28 Mar 2027: sunrise 6:53am, first light 6:30am on the NSW clock (5:53am and 5:30am in Queensland)

Scroll sideways to see the whole figure

Figure 5. Sunrise at Tweed Heads on the NSW clock, for every day NSW is on daylight saving. On 104 of the 182 days the sun comes up after a 6am start, and from mid-February even first light is later than 6am. Subtract 1 hour for the Queensland clock. Calculated with the NOAA method for Tweed Heads and cross-checked against sunrise-sunset.org; elsewhere on the border the curve shifts by a few minutes. Hover or tap a week for the times.

The code also asks you, in section 3.3, to look at “records of hours worked including any differences between rostered and actual hours worked”. On a border crew that difference can be exactly 1 hour, and only a record that knows where the work happened will show it.

Then there's the Monday after, or in this case the Tuesday. Christopher Barnes and David Wagner looked at 576,292 injuries in US mines between 1983 and 2006 and found 5.7% more injuries and 67.6% more work days lost on the Monday after the spring change than on other days. People slept about 40 minutes less on the night of the change. That's American data, and this year's long weekend may have softened it, but the lesson carries over well enough: the first working day on the new clock is a short-sleep day, and it isn't the day for the hardest early start of the month.

Heat gets its own piece closer to summer, but one point belongs here. On the NSW side the hottest part of the day now lands an hour later on the clock, because the sun is highest at about 12:34pm instead of 11:34am. The same section 5.2 says to “schedule outdoor tasks to suit the temperature”, and a crew that keeps its old knock-off time is now working further into the afternoon heat than it was a week earlier.

Queensland hasn't adopted the fatigue code, and WorkSafe Queensland deals with fatigue through its psychosocial hazards code and points employers to Safe Work Australia's fatigue guidance, so the NSW code is still the best written statement of what a regulator will expect you to know.

Part 5

Which state's rules? It depends on the question #

When a crew works across the border there isn't one answer to “which state's rules apply”. There are 5 questions, each with its own test.

The questionWhich state decidesThe test
What's the pay rate, and how is the 2am shift paid?Neither. Modern awards and most agreements are nationalYour award or agreement. With no daylight saving clause, pay by the clock
Which public holidays?Where the employee is based for work“Not where they are working on the day of the public holiday” (Fair Work Ombudsman)
Which WHS law and codes?Where the work is doneA NSW site is under NSW law, including the codes duty since 1 July 2026
Which workers compensation scheme?The state of connectionWhere the worker usually works, then where they are usually based, then the employer's principal place of business (section 9AA of the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW))
What records do you need?NationalTime and wages records kept for 7 years, including hours for casual and irregular part-time workers and overtime with start and finish times
Figure 6. One crew, 5 different tests.

The workers compensation test has a neat border example in the guidance from SIRA, the NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority. A grazier runs a property that straddles the NSW and Queensland border, with the homestead on the NSW side. The farmhands work on both sides but report to the homestead every morning for instructions and gear, so NSW is where they're usually based, and NSW is their state of connection.

TEST 1 Where does the worker usually work? ONE STATE That state's scheme applies NONE OR MORE THAN 1 TEST 2 Where is the worker usually based? ONE STATE That state's scheme applies NONE OR MORE THAN 1 TEST 3 Where is the employer's principal place of business in Australia? ONE STATE That state's scheme applies SIRA'S BORDER EXAMPLE Farmhands work paddocks on both sides of the border, so test 1 has no single answer. They report to the homestead on the NSW side every morning for instructions and gear, so test 2 gives NSW.

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Figure 7. The state of connection test for workers compensation, applied in order and stopping at the first clear answer. From section 9AA of the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW) and SIRA's cross-border guidance of 1 May 2026.

Look down the right-hand column of figure 6 and the pattern is plain enough. Three of those 5 answers turn on where the work actually happened or where the worker is based, and the fifth, the records, is how you prove the other 4. That matters most when something goes wrong, because if you can't produce the records the Fair Work Act asks for, section 557C shifts the burden in some claims, so it's up to you to show you didn't underpay, not up to the worker to show you did. A timesheet line that says “8 hours” with no site and no state answers none of these questions.

Five things to take away #

  1. Put the state on every roster line for any crew that crosses the border, and use the time of the state the site is in.
  2. Check your award or agreement for a daylight saving clause before you pay the night of 3 to 4 October. If there's nothing, pay by the clock.
  3. Treat the first working day after the change as a short-sleep day. Avoid the hardest early starts, and remember first light is an hour later on the NSW clock.
  4. Record where the work happened, not just how long it took. It decides public holidays, WHS law and workers compensation.
  5. Put 4 April 2027 in the diary now. The extra overnight hour in April is the one people forget.

Common questions #

Do we pay the extra hour in April? #

Not by default. The Fair Work Ombudsman's rule is pay by the clock, so a shift that runs an hour longer when daylight saving ends is paid as rostered, unless your award or agreement pays actual hours worked.

We're a Queensland business. Does any of this apply to us? #

Yes, if any of your crew works on a NSW site, lives in NSW, or you run jobs with NSW subcontractors. The clock you roster in, the WHS law on a NSW site and the workers compensation test all reach across the border.

My worker lives in Tweed and works in Coolangatta. Which public holidays do they get? #

The ones where they're based for work, not where they happen to be on the day. This year both states had a public holiday on Monday 5 October, but the lists don't always line up, so check which state your worker is based in.

Which time should the roster use? #

The law doesn't pick one for you, but the state the site is in is the sensible default, because the WHS law that applies to the site follows the site too. Whatever you choose, write it on the roster.

Can a phone really show the wrong time? #

Rarely, but yes. Phones on automatic time zone take the time from the network, and there have been years when Queensland phones jumped to daylight saving time. Check crew phones the week of the change.

Do we have to change our start times? #

No law makes you move them. The NSW fatigue code says to avoid starts before 6am where reasonably practicable, and at Tweed Heads a 6am NSW start is before sunrise for the first 3 weeks of daylight saving and again from mid-January to the end of it, 104 of the 182 days in all. It's worth a conversation with the crew about the first hour and the drive in.

What we took from it #

Strip it back and almost everything in this piece comes down to records rather than software. Every question in part 5 is answered by knowing when the work started, when it finished and where it happened, and a record made during the shift, at the site, is worth far more than a sheet filled in on Friday from memory. That's the record PocketMode was built to make for outdoor crews, and it's why the app records what it records.

The problem in this pieceWhat PocketMode does
“Whose 7?” and the argument afterwardsRosters are built for the week, published and pushed to the crew's phones, and every version is kept, with who changed it and when
Where the work actually happenedClock on and off is geofenced to the site, and the geofence runs for the length of the shift rather than firing once at the gate. Starting away from site is allowed with a reason, and the reason travels with the record
Travel between sites, and rostered against actualTimesheets record worked time, breaks, travel and setup, approved by the manager
Blackspots in the border ranges and the cane paddocksWith no reception the shift keeps recording, so no signal never reads as off
Seeing the whole dayThe manager dashboard shows who is on site, where each crew is and how the shift actually ran

There are things it doesn't do, and it's better to say them plainly. PocketMode doesn't interpret your award or decide how the 2am shift is paid; that stays with you and whoever runs your pay. Payroll export isn't built yet, so the approved timesheet is something you hand to whoever does the pay run. No app makes a business compliant on its own. What a good record does is make the questions in this piece answerable when somebody asks them. And the record is about the work, not the person: nothing is collected before clock-on or after clock-off.

If your crews cross this border, we'd like to hear what the change does to your week, since we cross it often enough ourselves.

Request a pilotTell us about your crew

About this write-up #

Not legal advice. Pay rules are from the Fair Work Ombudsman's guidance, which applies to national system employers. Fatigue code quotes are from the NSW code itself. Dates and public holidays were checked with the NSW and Queensland governments on 28 September 2026. Sunrise, first light and solar noon times are for Tweed Heads, calculated with the NOAA method and cross-checked against sunrise-sunset.org, and will differ by a few minutes elsewhere on the border. If your award or enterprise agreement has its own daylight saving clause, that clause wins.

Sources #

Pay, records and public holidays #

  1. Fair Work Ombudsman, Daylight saving time. fairwork.gov.au
  2. Fair Work Ombudsman, Record-keeping. fairwork.gov.au
  3. Fair Work Ombudsman, Public holidays. fairwork.gov.au
  4. Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), section 557C, presumption where records not provided. austlii.edu.au

Dates #

  1. NSW Government, Daylight saving in NSW, 2026 and 2027 dates. nsw.gov.au
  2. NSW Department of Education, NSW public holidays. education.nsw.gov.au
  3. Queensland Government, Public holidays. qld.gov.au
  4. Electoral Commission of Queensland, 1992 daylight saving referendum results. ecq.qld.gov.au
  5. South Burnett Online, MP rules out daylight saving vote, 24 September 2026. southburnett.com.au
  6. sunrise-sunset.org, Tweed Heads, October 2026. sunrise-sunset.org

Safety and fatigue #

  1. SafeWork NSW, Managing the risk of fatigue at work, code of practice, commenced 20 February 2026. safework.nsw.gov.au
  2. WorkSafe Queensland, Fatigue. worksafe.qld.gov.au
  3. Barnes, C. M. and Wagner, D. T. (2009), Changing to daylight saving time cuts into sleep and increases workplace injuries, Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5), 1305 to 1317. Summary: ehstoday.com

Workers compensation #

  1. SIRA, Cross border arrangements for workers compensation, 1 May 2026. sira.nsw.gov.au
  2. Safe Work Australia, Cross-border provisions. safeworkaustralia.gov.au

Border life #

  1. ABC News, Cross-border complexity in Mungindi, the town straddling 2 states, 30 March 2025. abc.net.au
  2. Sunshine Sugar, The 2026 cane crush season begins across Northern NSW. sunshinesugar.com.au
  3. OzBargain forum, Queensland phones switching to daylight saving time, October 2017. ozbargain.com.au

Related reading: The codes stopped being advice, on the 1 July 2026 change that made codes of practice a duty · Officer due diligence in 2026: what can you actually prove about yesterday? · When the regulator arrives: 5 places incident response goes wrong