Sydney View Of Bank-Note Ban

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31108, 11 July 1966, Page 7

Sydney View Of Bank-Note Ban

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.PA) SYDNEY, July 10.

The Reserve Bank’s refusal of New Zealand banknotes returned from overseas has had marked and varying effects in Sydney. On the one hand, the New Zealand High Commission’s consular office is getting an average of four calls a day on the matter compared with the usual average of one call every two months from a New Zealander with a currency problem. On the other hand a taxidriver told a traveller who had just flown into Sydney airport: “You come from New Zealand, eh? Funny country . . . their dough’s no good now.” With stores and banks throughout Australia now refusing to accept any New Zealand banknotes, the taxidriver’s view is not a rare one, and some sections of the travel industry think it might affect tourism to New Zealand in the future. One travel agent said: “The man in the street is not well informed about matters of economics, and he has the general impression at the moment that there is something the matter with New Zealand’s money. If he believes that, it could well

stop him going to New Zealand on holiday. It's a human reaction.”

Most of the inquiries to the New Zealand consular office are from travelling New Zealanders who complain that while they were allowed to bring a total of £5 out of the country in single notes, no bank in Australia will change them. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has advised all Australian banks through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, that New Zealanders returning home are being interrogated about their currency and all money over £5 is being confiscated.

The Australian banks have been warned that they cannot repatriate New Zealand banknotes in future, and all are refusing to negotiate them now.

The banks have a threemonth period in which to return their current holdings, and banks will only change New Zealand money if the customer can prove that he left New Zealand before the last Budget.

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