Coin Designs Will Be Published Next Month

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31007, 12 March 1966, Page 16

Coin Designs Will Be Published Next Month

(A’cic Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON. March 11.

The public will see the proposed decimal coin designs in a few weeks when the designs are sent to the Royal Mint for the Mint’s advice.

The Under-Secretary of Finance and chairman of the Decimal Currency Board (Mr Muldoon) said tonight that the coins had still to be chosen.

This would take two or three weeks. Submission to the mint would not mean they were the designs finally selected.

“The idea simply is that they will be submitted to the Royal Mint for comment and at the same time displayed to the public in New Zealand. “The comments made by

the Mint on the technical feasibility of minting the coins will be matched with the reaction made by the public,” said Mr Muldoon. Mr Muldoon was asked if single coins or alternatives for each denomination would be submitted to the Mint.

! He said this would “depend i very largely” on the Design Advisory Committee, which I would make the selection, it j was also up to the committee to decide if it wanted to submit the full range of the original designs. Last month there was a controversy over six designs submitted to the Mint, which rejected all but two as unsatisfactory. On February 8 the Minister of Finance (Mr Lake), announced that the Government

was quite prepared to change the designs of the coins which had proved most controversial —the 50 cent showing a musterer, the 20 cent showing a footballer, the 10 cent showing a Maori mask and the five cent showing mountains and clouds.

The other two coins—the one cent depicting the Southern Cross and the two cent depicting a flax bush —were those the Royal Mint said would coin satisfactorily. On February 17 the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) said a poll his Caucus had conducted on the original designs showed it would not be practicable to get general agreement on a full set of coins from a representative group of New Zealanders.

In the caucus poll none of the controversial coins was favoured.

A total of 220 million coins will be minted for the change to decimal currency on July 10 next year.