Cardinal British Dates - A Kiwi Original?

I had never heard the use of cardinal numbers in dates when speaking until I moved to New Zealand. It seems particularly prevalent in TV and radio advertising, but doesn't seem to follow either British or American "standards". As a Commonwealth country, dates are usually written in the British order, but I often hear them spoken thus:

24 October 2010 as twenty-four October two-thousand and ten

or without a year:

1 November as one November

Not using ordinals in dates seems "American" to me, but I guess Americans would prefer:

October 24 2010 as October twenty-four, two-thousand-ten

Is the first way unique to New Zealand or is it used in America too?

The Australian style is thus: 29 January, 2013. Day-month-year when filling out forms. It's probably a British style carried over to NZ and OZ (Australia). Different style manuals can vary on how to write dates, though. Some might prefer 29th of January, 2013.