Reserve Bank Reticent

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31112, 15 July 1966, Page 1

Reserve Bank Reticent

(Btl a staff reporter) There is an air of tension in the halls of the Reserve Bank in Wellington. Decimal Currency Day is less than a year away and the bank’s officers are as tight-lipped as James Bond.

Innocent questions about the millions of dollar notes the Reserve Bank must produce and distribute for D.C. Day are squashed like banknote weevils and sheaves of desk files and memos are swept nervously into drawers. Remember the Great Train Robbery? So does the Reserve Bank. It is faced wtih the biggest security problem it has ever known in the withdrawal and disposal of £BO million in old currency and the distribu-

tion of the same value In dollars.

Some of the planners of the i Great Train Robbery have not been caught yet. Where are they now? Somewhere in New i Zealand, studying train timetables? The Reserve Bank ; would tremble at the very [thought. I “We are very conscious of the Great Train Robbery,” said Mr G. L. Arcus, the bank’s assistant chief cashier. By some means of transport —whether by train or not, he would not say—the old currency will have to be collected and taken to Welling- [ ton, and the new currency carried from Wellington to banks throughout the country [for distribution. Fear of robberies is one of the reasons why the Reserve Bank is giving almost no details about its arrangements for producing and circulating the new dollars.

Another reason is the bank’s fear that someone may start ; printing his own. “The time to forge notes is when new currency is issued,” said Mr Arcus. “We will not announce the designs until a short time before Decimal Currency Day. If we announce the designs earlier, people could start printing duds and we don’t want people to start putting it across others.” So there appears to be no possibility of public opinion affecting the choice of designs for dollar notes. By the time the designs are made public, the notes will have been printed in England.

All that the Reserve Bank will say about the new notes is that they will be in denominations of 1,2, 5, 10, 20 and 100 dollars; they will be smaller than the present notes (about the same size as the new Australian notes); they

will be of similar colour to the present notes, except for the 5 dollar notes which will be a new value; and that the designs will have a bird theme.

Mr Arcus would not say whether the new notes would be multicoloured like the Australian ones. The number of new notes has been decided but not divulged. The day of their arrival from Britain, the time for distribution to banks or the arrangements for disposal of the old currency will not be announced. No doubt the old notes will be burned when they are withdrawn but Mr Arcus would not say if that was right or where it would be done. He said the old notes would still be legal tender for a long time, possibly for 40 years, as was the case with the old trading bank notes which were withdrawn in 1934.