There are primarily three time zones that are followed in Australia:
• Australia Eastern Standard Times (AEST) : It runs 10 hours ahead of Universal Co-ordinated Time (UTC)
• Australian Western Standard Time (AWST) : It runs 8 hours ahead of Universal Co-ordinated Time(UTC)
• Australian Central Standard time (ACST): It runs 9:30 hours ahead of Universal Co-ordinated Time(UTC)
An unofficial time zone is also followed, and it is referred to as Australian Central Western Standard Time (ACWST), this time zone is 8:45 hours ahead of Universal Co-ordinated Time (UTC).
Daylight saving time is observed in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania.
In Western Australia during summer, when daylight saving is observed, Western standard time runs one hour ahead than the time set according to the Australian Western Standard Time (AWST ), which means during summer AWST runs 9 hours ahead of UTC.
In general the states which follows daylight saving,starts following it at 2am on October's last Sunday of a particular year and ends on the last Sunday of March at 3am in the next year. Tasmania starts observing daylight saving from the first Sunday of Octobe r,due to its location more towards the southern latitudes.
New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania has agreed to follow a general daylight saving time from October's first Sunday and will end on next year's first Sunday of March. Western Australia is not ready to change its daylight saving time and therefore will follow the last Sunday of the two months and South Australia has not yet decided on following the daylight saving time.
