Decimal currency day
- When
- 10 July 1967
- Reach
- Nationwide
Pounds, shillings and pence became dollars and cents, promoted by a cartoon character called Mr Dollar and a jingle everyone remembers.
The changeover was managed in a single day with unusual smoothness — banks closed for three days beforehand, and 165 million new coins and 27 million banknotes were distributed. Later the same year, six o’clock closing of pubs ended after a referendum, ending the daily ‘six o’clock swill’. Both changes are markers of a country beginning to loosen its inherited British habits.
Regions affected
Sources
Written for this project from these references rather than copied from them. Follow a link to check the account against the original.
Related
The 1951 waterfront dispute
Lockout and strike ran for 151 days. Emergency regulations made it a crime even to give food to a watersider’s children.
Wellington waterfrontDepression riots
Relief workers and the unemployed smashed shopfronts down Queen Street. Similar riots hit Dunedin and Wellington within days.
Queen Street, AucklandVogel’s public works and immigration scheme
Julius Vogel borrowed £10 million in London to build railways, roads and telegraph lines, and to bring 100,000 assisted migrants.
Rogernomics — the economy is deregulated
A Labour government floated the dollar, removed farm subsidies and tariffs, and sold state assets — the fastest liberalisation in the developed world.