Time in New Zealand

On 2 November 1868, New Zealand officially adopted a standard time to be observed nationally, and was the first country to do so, about fifteen years before any other. Chatham Island was 45 minutes ahead of mainland New Zealand [twelve hours and fifteen minutes ahead of Coordinated Universal Time]. It was based on longitude 172° 30′ East of Greenwich, hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time (NZMT). In 1941, during the Second World War, clocks were advanced half an hour, to reduce electric power use making New Zealand 12 hours ahead of GMT. This change was made permanent from 1946 by the Standard Time Act 1945, at which the time at the 180°E meridian was made the basis for New Zealand Time. NZST remained half an hour ahead of NZMT, and the Chatham Islands 45 minutes ahead of NZST. In the late 1940s the atomic clock was developed and several laboratories began atomic time scales. A new time scale known as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) was adopted internationally in 1972. This was based on the readings of atomic clocks, updated periodically in accordance with time variations in the Earth's rotation by the addition or deletion of seconds (called leap seconds). The Time Act 1974 defines New Zealand Standard Time as 12 hours in advance of UTC. In 2011, the New Zealand dependency of Tokelau moved its time zone forward by 24 hours, by skipping 30 December to be in the UTC+13:00 time zone, the same zone as New Zealand daylight saving. == Daylight saving time (DST) ==

Starting in 1909, a member of Parliament, Sir Thomas Kay Sidey annually put forward a bill to advance the clocks an hour from September to the following March and the Summer Time Act 1927 succeeded. In 1927, clocks were advanced by an hour from first Sunday in November to the first Sunday in March. This proved unpopular, so the Summer Time Act 1928 revised this to a half-hour shift from 14 October 1928 (second Sunday) to 17 March 1929 (third Sunday), then the Summer Time Act 1929 permanently fixed this half-hour shift to run from the second Sunday in October to the third Sunday in March every year. In 1933, the period was extended from the last Sunday in September to the last Sunday in April. This continued until the Second World War, when emergency regulations in 1941 extended daylight saving to cover the whole year with annual re-applications until the Standard Time Act 1945 made the abandonment of NZMT permanent in 1946, so that 180° becomes the base longitude and what was called NZ Summer Time (NZST) became NZ Standard Time. The Time Act 1974 empowered the governor-general to declare by Order in Council a period when daylight saving time is to be observed. bases that are supplied from New Zealand. This results in the oddity that the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station sets its clocks an hour further ahead during the southern summer, when the sun is constantly above the horizon, than in the southern winter, when the sun is constantly below the horizon. The extreme geographic position of the base means that no possible adjustment of the daily activity cycle can have any effect on the amount of sunlight received during those activities. However, the arrangement presumably makes real time communications with New Zealand more practical, particularly in dealing with offices. The other countries in the Realm of New Zealand – Cook Islands, Niue, and Tokelau – do not maintain DST. Two of them are on the other side of the International Date Line and have 22–24 hours time difference to New Zealand. The following table lists recent and near future starting and ending dates of daylight saving time in the main islands of New Zealand: == Standards ==

New Zealand standard time is maintained by the Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL), part of New Zealand Government. New Zealand standard time is based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). UTC is kept within 200 nanoseconds of the international atomic time scale maintained by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris. speaking clock and Network Time Protocol. ==Dependencies and associated states==

There are two associated states of New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean, both on the other side of the International Date Line: • The Cook Islands are in the UTC−10:00 time zone or Military W (Whiskey) or Military M' (Mike Prime) == IANA time zone database ==

The zones for New Zealand, its dependencies, and its associated states as given by zone.tab of the IANA time zone database. == References ==