WARNING: THIS WILL TAKE SOME MOMENTS OF YOUR
TIME...UNLESS YOU READ REALLY S-L-O-W-L-Y, THEN IT MAY TAKE THE BETTER PART OF
A DAY
Metrication of Australia
by Joseph B. Reid,
President Emeritus, Canadian Metric Association
In April 1967 the Australian Senate appointed
an all-party Select Committee "to inquire into ... the practicability of the
early adoption of the metric system". The Committee held meetings in all
capital cities, including 28 public meetings and 39 deliberative meetings.
Submissions to the Committee overwhelmingly supported an early change to the
sole use of the metric system.
In January 1970 the Prime Minister
announced the decision to change and the Metric Conversion Act was assented to
on 12 June 1970. In the same month the Metric Conversion Board was set up. The
Board assembled 160 committees, subcommittees, and panels to analyse the
problems likely to be encountered. At no stage was any industry or group asked
to implement a programme designed other than by fullest consultation and
voluntary cooperation with the Board. The Act contained no penal clauses.
Instead, the force of law would be achieved mainly by amendment of laws to
incorporate metric measures.
The membership of all committees was
nominated by the industry as experts with sufficient standing to make
decisions without seeking prior approval from any other body. This technique
ensured high competence, decisiveness, executive responsibility, and strong
leadership of the industry.
The Board decided that metrication would be
essentially a technical exercise and that people would best learn metric in
their places of work or by adaptation to the changing material environment.
Further, that the Board should limit public education to learning those metric
units they would need to know in their jobs and professions. It was thought
that the reasons for going metric would be difficult to explain to
non-technical people and that attempts to do so could lead to unnecessary
emotional argument and polarisation of attitudes. This was the basis on which
the Board decided to maintain a low key, and to concentrate on public
education by involvement in day-to-day transactions in metric units rather
than by more formal methods.
This decision to maintain a low profile now
seems a little naive because metrication was a very significant cultural
change in everyday life, and as a result opposition did develop.
It was
agreed that conversion should take place in all directions simultaneously,
rather than concentrate on a particular activity until completion. Thus
conversion in the retail area, industry, government, weather reporting and
sports commentaries were all commenced more or less together. The Board also
gave high priority to technical standards and codes of practice, and to
amendments in legislation.
The Prime Minister and the head of the trade
unions had been pals at Oxford University. That brought the unions on side.
The Board also wooed the journalists: they were important in the reporting of
events that have a broad public impact, without requiring action on the part
of the public. The Australians are a very sports-loving people. One of the
first activities to be metricated was horse racing, a very popular sport. That
was easy because one furlong (220 yards) is very nearly 200 m.
Early
all-pervasive changes helped greatly to expose the public to metric units.
Such changes included tariffs (July 1972), horse racing (August 1972), and air
temperature (September 1972). Metric description of athletics, soccer, golf,
cricket on television and radio, and in newspapers, served a useful
educational purpose. Even the most dramatic changes such as speed limits to
km/h only proved to be 'non-events'. It was agreed that dual-marked signs
would be potentially dangerous.
The conversion of retail food scales took
place in 1974 - 75. It was found necessary to impose fines on retailers who
did not convert.
A public opinion survey in December 1976 indicated that
many still knew little of the metric system, and often less of the Imperial
system. They managed well, as always without needing to involve themselves
with quantities, whether metric or Imperial. This led the Board to conclude
that any attempt to further 'educate' the public would probably be ineffective
and unnecessary.
A conference of Commonwealth and State Ministers in
October 1977 agreed to withdraw the legality of non-metric units used in
contractual agreements.
Adult education classes on the metric system
failed to attract interest, which confirmed the Board's belief that such
courses were unnecessary. It also confirmed the Board's belief that people do
not perceive metric in systematic form but learn each unit and its application
as an independent and unrelated piece of information. As a consequence the
highly logical nature of the metric system or the unsystematic nature of the
Imperial system had very little meaning for the ordinary citizen. Re-education
of ordinary people should therefore concentrate on providing a new set of
metric benchmarks and avoid irrelevant references to the elegance of the
metric system.
At the outset, widespread public resistance seemed
possible, but it did not occur, despite the efforts of a small band of
dedicated anti-metricationists. Even major changes, such as speed limits and
metric shopping, were not traumatic. Metrication was never a political issue,
and it was actively supported by the trade unions.
By May 1979 the following programmes were
completed:
Education at all levels
Gasoline sales
Weather forecasts
Building and construction
About 30 of the 50
sporting codes
Retail sales in most States
Some fields were static or slow moving,
including:
international aviation
precision engineering
real
estate advertising
advertising of goods described, but not sold, by
measurement e.g. furniture, kitchen utensils
The Metric Conversion Board spent a total of $5
955 000 (Australian) during its 11 years of operation, and the Commonwealth
Government distributed a total of $10 000 000 to the States to assist them in
the conversion process. No accounting has been made of the cost to the private
sector. The Prices Justification Tribunal reported that metrication was not
used to justify price increases.
Car speedometers are now in km only, as
are road signs. After over a quarter of a century the system has passed into
the culture. They did not make a big fuss about it and did not believe that
they were losing some vital part of their identity. Beer is sold as a 'large
one' - a half litre, or a 'small one' - a quarter litre.
" Metrication in Australia " (from the foreword
to an official report titled Metrication in Australia* which documents and
provides a valuable historical record of the metrication process):
" Metrication effectively began in Australia in
1966 with the successful conversion to decimal currency under the auspices of
the Decimal Currency Board. The conversion of measurements - metrication -
commenced subsequently in 1971 under the direction of the Metric Conversion
Board and actively proceeded until the Board was disbanded in 1981. The
process was a most significant event in Australia's integration with the
modernising world.
Metrication is still in its early stages in the USA
which looks to Australia as an example and a model of how the process can be
carried out. Because of the US's strong cultural influence upon us,
Australia's conversion can never be 100 per cent until that nation has also
converted.
One can't help being impressed by the magnitude of the task, by
how much thought, planning and effort went into bringing it about, and by how
many members of the general community participated in it. The change affected
all Australians in both their private and professional lives and has been
recognised as one of the great reforms of our time."
" The attitude of indifference became
perceptibly hostile after 1978, when regulations were introduced to limit the
importation of certain types of non-metric measuring devices, particularly
those required by ordinary people away from their places of employment.
Faced with a slow rate of conversion to the use of metric instruments in
situations in which they could be used just as easily as imperial, and with
the possibility that dual metric-imperial usage and dual stocking of goods and
instruments would continue almost indefinitely, the not-too-harsh prohibitions
against importation of tapes etc. in feet and inches seemed to be the lesser
of two evils.
These regulations were largely successful in ensuring that
industries which had not already changed, but which could just as easily work
in metric did so, while at the same time allowing companies for whom imperial
instruments were essential in the operation and maintenance of their business,
to get
them.
Unfortunately, in the absence of deliberate moves to
encourage people to make the change to metric in their private lives, or to
show them why they should, these regulations were seen by many ordinary people
as unnecessarily repressive and, with the support of some Members of
Parliament, the
regulations were withdrawn. "
* Wilks, KJ 1992: Metrication in Australia,
Department of Industry, Technology and Commerce (DITAC), Commonwealth of
Australia, ISBN 0-644-24860-2, 86-p. Further information on metrication in
Australia may be obtained at the following links:
Extract from the Final
Annual Report (1980-81) of the Metric Conversion Board : Conversion Rationale
and Lessons Learned
Metrication: Metrication in Australia [and]
Metrication Internationally
" Road Traffic Regulations - One of the most
important and publicly visible of the metric changes was the change in road
speed and distance signs and the accompanying change in road traffic
regulations. M-day for this change was 1 July 1974 and, by virtue of careful
planning, practically every road sign in Australia was converted within one
month. This involved installation of covered metric signs alongside the
imperial sign prior to the change and then removal of the imperial sign and
the cover from the metric during the month of conversion.
Except on bridge-clearance and flood-depth
signs, dual marking was avoided. Despite suggestions by people opposed to
metrication that ignorance of the meaning of metric speeds would lead to
slaughter on the roads, such slaughter did not occur.
A Panel for Publicity on Road Travel,
representing the various motoring organisations, regulatory authorities and
the media, planned a campaign to publicise the change, believing that public
education, not the confusion that would result from dual sign posts, would be
the most effective way of ensuring public safety. The resulting publicity
campaign cost $200 000 and was paid for by the Australian Government
Department of Transport.
In addition, the Board produced 2.5 million
copies of a pamphlet, "Motoring Goes Metric", which was distributed through
post offices, police stations and motor registry offices.
For about a year
before the change, motor car manufacturers fitted dual speedometers to their
vehicles and, after 1974 all new cars were fitted with metric-only
speedometers. Several kinds of speedometer conversion kits were available. As
a result of all these changes, conversion on the roads occurred without
incident."
See also The Laws of Metrology: Australia
From Wilks, KJ 1992: Metrication in Australia, Department of Industry,
Technology and Commerce (DITAC), Commonwealth of Australia, ISBN 0-644-24860-2
(The last bits are just there to prove that's
legit and not a creation from the depths of my own 'grey matter.')
A couple of things to take out of all that, of
which as an Australian I find a funny side to.
The government didn't invest time or money in
education of the general public, because the felt it owuld confuse them, and
most of them probably never understood Imperial anyway. So basically they
thought the Australian peoiple were stupid...And they may well have been right
there - How else can you explain John Howard as PM? :P (not a Liberal
supporter) However at the end of the day, the Australian people to this day
have a dim view of politicians as they did in 1972, so it didn't matter how
dumb the pollies thought the people were, the feeling was mutual in a big way.
The "OPPOSITION" was to be expected, naturally.
However let it be said that while possibly the whole population may have been
peeved at having to change, there were no violent riots in the streets, or
burning of the cities. People either accepted it and got on with life,
accepted it but hoped for a chang back, or didn't accept it, and people
ignored them. The funny thing, is that the "OPPOSITION" took the most
sensible, and noble option available to them, the option that enabled them to
"fight for the greater good of all Australians!" - They wrote letters to the
editor!!
And to this day, while purely metric tape
measures are readily available in Australia, those with Metric/Imperial
measurements are still the rule - Go figure!
FYI: The underlying message is as the change of
a system of measurement is for the large part a cultural thing, noone expects
that a 100% changeover will be required to happen overnight - that is
unrealistic, as we are after all, human. The idea though, is to have a serious
shot at converting.
