NEW BANK NOTES

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1933, Page 5

NEW BANK NOTES

IN commonwealth PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FORGERY Australian Pr?ss Association.) MELBOURNE, Jan. 16. A It will be many months be.ore the new design of the Commonwealth Bank note will be printed and on issue to the public. An authority at the Note Issue Branch said to-day that consideration would be given to a proposal that cancelled copies of the new note should be issued to the managers of all branches of all banks, so that any would be in a position to detect any forgery that might be attempted concurrently with the new design issue.

In the meantime more notes of the exisiting design are being printed and put into circulation to replace notes that have been cancelled because they were worn or dirty. In 1932, more than £61,000,000 worth of notes were cancelled lor those reasons.

About fifty girls, enclosed at a table, surrounded by a wire grille, were employed in a room at the Commonwealth 'Bank to-day, counting hundreds of. thousands of cancelled notes and new ones to replace them. The old notes are cancelled by stamp and perforation.

The girls who were engrossed in the counting regarded the process as very prosaic. They got little thrill or interest out of handling even the new notes in hundreds and thousands. They were not at liberty to spend it, and therefore did not regard it as real money.