BEFORE 111
New Zealand after World War II was a nation desperately in need of investment and modernisation.
Fire, ambulance, police and post and telegraph services were all struggling to meet the demands of a society keen to progress after the hard times and under-investment of the war and the depression of the 1930s.
The post-war stories of the four agencies converge on the emergency phone system. 111 crowned a period of dramatic modernisation in all the services involved with it, and could not have been introduced without it.
At that time fire brigades were fragmented, locally organised and under-funded. Arthur Varley, a vigorous and intelligent fire officer, was recruited from Britain in 1951 to put the brigades on a common footing. He became a critical personality in fire service modernisation.
His appointment came after the Commission of Inquiry into the Ballantyne's fire of 1947. Familiar with Britain's 999 system, he championed a common emergency number.
Ambulance services were locally organised under their hospital boards and their successors. These underwent a process of modernisation beginning with the Ambulance Transport Advisory Board.
Police were in a parlous state after the war. Manpower and infrastructure problems abounded.
It wasn't until Sam Barnett was appointed civilian Controller-General in 1955 that things began to improve. He was given authority and budget to begin a crash programme of modernisation covering every aspect of police life.
Post and Telegraph (renamed the New Zealand Post Office in 1960) was running white-hot from the end of the war well into the 1960s, catching up with decades of under-investment in communications.
It was not only trying to modernise a woefully inadequate domestic system but to keep abreast of international standards.
It was adding tens of thousands of new subscribers a year, getting rid of party-lines and part-time exchanges, completing coverage especially in rural areas, and rebuilding and automating exchanges.
The 1957 Post and Telegraph Annual Report illustrates the struggle: "During the year over 40,000 new subscribers were given service, bringing the total telephone subscribers in New Zealand to 413,598.
"Despite the efforts made in the construction field to provide telephone service to applicants the number waiting as at 31 March totalled 35,330, an increase of 1,468 on last year's figures.
"Of the 35,330 waiting 23,664 are in the North Island and 11,666 are in the South Island; 19,154 or 54.2% of the total waiting applicants are at the four main centres."
The struggle to deal with the backward state of the telephone network continued well into the 1960s.
In 1965, 154,000 (23%) of subscribers were still connected to manual exchanges. 93 small rural exchanges didn't even have 24-hour service. In rural areas, 50,000 subscribers were still on party-lines with 6 to 12 others.
Says historian Susan Butterworth: "It all looks a bit quaint and dusty now but in its time the introduction of 111 and the changes that went with it were as big as the IT revolution of recent years."
Main sources used in compiling this information were historian Susan Butterworth and the Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives, F-1, Post and Telegraph.
