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

The member for Rankin understands where I am coming from. The reality is that those measurements did not work together, and I should give an understanding of why we adopted them under the British system. Even with those earlier influences of the British, with the French King Louis XV and as part of the War of Independence, there were a number of stand-offs. Measurement became very much a part of the deliberations about war and about a range of standards. I can probably suggest that, politically, there were reasons why the Americans, once they gained independence, took on decimal currency but decided the overall decimal system was not going to suit.

In talking about the imperial system, the terminology itself has some bearing on the whole notion of the system. The imperial system brings up the notion of royalty. This is probably well depicted in the Vitruvian Man that Leonardo da Vinci drew, and many people will know that figure with the symmetry of the human body. It has a major role to play in the notion of measurements. Imperial measurement was very much the introduction of a system usually by the principality, by the leader at the time or by the royal family if it was a monarchy. If we look at the Vitruvian Man, it explains the fact that a foot had a particular measure—it was the size of the ruler’s foot. That was fine if there was an average and it was a dynasty of leaders who may have had similar features, but you can immediately see that, if there were a child king, the whole system of measurement would be turned on its head. The Vitruvian Man is a way of looking at the standard of feet, but it was clear that having a system that would change every time a ruler changed would be a concern. I should mention the term ‘ruler’. We understood at school when we had 12 inches, which is a measurement that was related to the thumb, that 12 inches would make a foot, and that was on a ruler denoting the ruler at the time, or the king or the leader. So it was very much based on some sort of ad hoc approach to measurement.

So standards were established. The Romans had their own system of measurement but it was very much based on ratios.

The development of the decimal system was a major step forward for this country. We had decimal currency introduced in 1966, followed within eight years by the introduction of the metric system generally. I remember asking a group of young people many years ago whether they understood where the metre actually came from. It was an established measurement but over time there have been changes to the way it is determined. Essentially, it was decided in the mid-1700s that there should be a way of establishing a standard—something that will not change. We understand today that we keep the standard in a different way—usually in a beam of light or through some atomic measurement, certainly in the case of weight, length, volume et cetera—but back in the mid-1700s there was a major step forward in astronomy in terms of understanding the global theory rather than the flat-earth theories that existed before those early explorers. I wonder whether anyone in the House knows where the metre comes from?

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