Metrication in Australia

However, Imperial weights and measures were most commonly used until the Commonwealth government began the metric changeover in the 1970s.

Some of their considerations included the "inherent advantages of the metric system" that meant that weighing and measuring was facilitated, "often with substantial increases in efficiency".

"The change itself provided a unique opportunity to rationalise and modernise industrial practices and bring Australia's technical standard specifications into accord with those adopted internationally".

A timeline of major developments in this conversion process is as follows:[2] Opposition to metrication was not widespread.

[8] The Metric Conversion Board did not proceed with education programs as polling revealed that most people were learning units and their applications independently of each other, rendering efforts to teach the systematic nature of the metric system unnecessary and possibly increasing the amount of opposition.

This was facilitated because the furlong (one-eighth of a mile) is close to 200 m. Therefore, the Melbourne Cup was changed from 2 mi to 3,200 m, a reduction of 19 m or about 0.6%.

[9] When the Australian Bureau of Meteorology was enlisted to introduce the metric system for weather reporting and forecasts, its public relations officer, Godfrey Wiseman, coined a series of jingles to educate the public, using the terms frosty fives, tingling tens, temperate twenties, thirsty thirties and fiery forties to describe human sensation to temperatures in degrees Celsius.

At the culmination of this campaign, weather reports and forecasts in both Fahrenheit and Celsius were provided for one month only.

A Panel for Publicity on Road Travel made up of the various motoring organisations, regulatory authorities, and the media, planned a campaign to publicise the change.

The resulting publicity campaign cost $200,000 and the Australian Government Department of Transport paid for it.

This was achieved within two years by January 1976 for all new buildings other than those for which design had commenced well before metrication began.

[16][19][circular reference] This was formally stated as follows: "The metric units for linear measurement in building and construction will be the metre (m) and the millimetre (mm), with the kilometre (km) being used where required.

[20] The logic of using the millimetre in this context was that the metric system had been so designed that there would exist a multiple or submultiple for every use.