Calls For Note Designs ‘Naive’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31117, 21 July 1966, Page 9

Calls For Note Designs ‘Naive’

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, July 20. The pressure by the public and newspapers for a preview of the notes for decimal currency could only have happened in a naive society such as New Zealand, one of the country’s leading art authorities said today.

It indicated that too few people knew what was involved in releasing the notes, and the extent of the Reserve Bank’s responsibility to safeguard the security of the currency, he said. Citing those who carried out Britain's great train robbery. he said that to such people international fences were no barriers. With only a small amount of information such unscrupulous people could begin months before the changeover to decimal currency to print large quantities of forged notes.

The unique situation of a country changing its whole currency would attract such people, and their main diffi-culty-circulating the forgeries—would be overcome by the general unfamiliarity with the new notes. “This pressure on the governor of the Reserve Bank (Mr G. Wilson) is naive. It would only have happened in New Zealand,” he said. The security of the currency was vital, and the Reserve Bank had a duty to protect it, he said. “Newspaper editors also have a duty to help the Reserve Bank. I wish they would stop trying to force the bank into a comer,” he said. Asked if the Decimal Currency Board’s action in publishing not only the designs of the decimal coins, but also their sizes and weights, was an encouragement to forgers, he said: “No. The cost of producing a counterfeit coin is more than the face value of the coin. It is the notes we have to be careful of.”