Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Measurement Amendment Bill 2008 and I would like to commend the two previous speakers, the member for Lowe and the member for Oxley, for their contributions. The importance of this national measurement system is due to the fact that it concerns industry, small business and, generally, our total economy, which is very dependent on having a surety of certain standards. In discussing this bill, I would like to give an understanding of some of the history that has brought us to this point. People often take it for granted that our measurements are just there. We quote capacity and length and we have a whole range of different understandings by measurement. But there have been thousands of years of history in the development of measurements to get to the point where we can say that standards can be put in place and confirmed—certainly in this country of Australia, a federation of states. On this side of the House we have spoken many times about the notion of cooperative federalism, and, certainly, red tape reduction is a major part of ensuring that we can provide to industry some definitive measurements.

I will take you back to the era of the ancient Greeks and Romans. History shows they were great builders of cities. Because the Romans advanced through so many countries—and the wars and battles involved in taking on these great lands—there are significant remnants and remains of them. Their legacy is essentially in the built environment. You can see all the ruins if you travel to some of those countries. Rome is a very good example of the input that the Romans have had in that area in the built environment. It comes back to an understanding of measurement and the standards that were established many thousands of years ago.

Today the symmetry of this chamber is very much based on an understanding of those early measurements. If you pick up a piece of paper, for instance, and look at the symmetry of that piece of paper and consider the fact that most pieces of paper are rectangular in shape, you will see it is no accident. This comes back to some determination many thousands of years ago about what the perfect rectangle might be. If this decision had not been made some thousands of years ago, we might be writing on square pieces of paper and the symmetry might be quite different. Again, on the notion of construction, if you look at the building of a house or a large facade or at some of those ancient Roman buildings, you will see they were not just put together based on the available material or the masonry that they had available to them; the symmetry had some significance in the way that they were built. That was highly dependent on a standard of measurement.

If you look at the so-called perfect rectangle—otherwise known as the ‘golden rectangle’—or any rectangular shape or one that is most pleasing to the eye, you will see it is based on ratios. It is taking a square measure and then applying a ratio of one to one to two. Again, if you look at a humble sheet of paper, that is representative of that golden rectangle. If you look at the way they designed the ancient Greek and Roman buildings, you immediately see what I am suggesting. That comes down to the proscenium arches that we have in our theatres. Even the way that we have determined that we need to watch TV on the flat screens that have been developed has a bearing on some very basic measurements.

The reason I am raising this is to point to the significance of this bill and the need to standardise our measurements. The subtleties of this understanding have huge ramifications and, as I mentioned earlier, we could well be writing on square pieces of paper rather than rectangular pieces had decisions not been made about standardisation. I can probably give a better demonstration of that if we look at the introduction of the metric system into my state of Queensland back in 1974. The metric system goes back a long time. There have been variations of it and different languages explain the notion of the base of 10. Square roots and a whole range of tables that were developed probably 500 or 600 years ago all were based on the notion of the decimal or the point of 10. If you look as far back as 1586, the interesting thing is that the English—in consideration with the French and with the emerging Americas through the War of Independence—had a large role to play in the determination of weights, measures and those very things that I am talking about. The irony is that today the US still has major confusion over the way that they deal with their weights and measures. In Australia there is not so much confusion anymore because the introduction of the metric system into this country helped a lot of that; but, if anyone has ever been confronted with the notion of using foolscap or quarto paper against an A4 or, dare I say, an A3 sheet, they all have relevance in the need for standardisation.

Only a few years ago you could quite easily accidentally purchase a writing pad that might not actually fit a certain folder or fit into a particular printer simply because the standards of measurement were not determined very well. The US, as an early industrial nation, played a major part in developing the whole notion of print, and these ratios and measurements were somewhat ad hoc. The irony is that decimal currency entered the US just after the time of the American War of Independence simply because there was a need to have a standardisation of their currency and the introduction of paper currency. Yet even at that stage it was probably too difficult for the Americans to introduce the notion of a metric system or a standardisation of a system of measurement.

Back in 1974 in the state of Queensland it was certainly a mandate and a dictate. I was, at that stage, in grade 9. I had spent all my earlier years learning the notion of feet, inches, yards, fathoms—what we call imperial measurements. I will not say it was belted into us, because that is not what happened, but we felt under a lot of pressure to be able to roll off those tables of measurement.

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