Australian Experience With Decimal Currency

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 9

Australian Experience With Decimal Currency

fSpecial Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) SYDNEY, May 9. While New Zealand’s D.C. day is only two months away, dollars and cents are still making headlines in Australia 15 months after the change from £ s. d. Latest developments in a smooth, but incident-packed period of infancy for the new currency are:

A further spate of fake 10dollar notes, and charges that Australia’s new paper money is the easiest in the world to forge An announcement that a new five-dollar note will be issued on May 29. News that the Decimal Currency Board spent $2O million, 30 million less

than the original estimate, on converting machines for the changeover. Further calls for the withdrawal of the chunky 50cent piece, which is disliked by business people and the general public alike. More than 40 dud 10 dollar notes have been passed in Brisbane in the last week, and police have indentifled them as being similar to those found in Melbourne just before Christmas.

More fake notes turned up in Sydney at the weekend, and police believe “pushers”, or members of the public who innocently received the notes in December but failed to produce them because they did not want to lose their 10 dol-

lars are trying to get rid of them now the initial fuss has died down. Mr F. Crean, a Labour member, told the House of Representatives that Australia’s new notes were the easiest in the world to forge. He said Australian printers had said they could produce very good copies of any of them within 48 hours on any of six extremely common duplicating machines. Mr Crean said he hoped the new five-dollar note, which will be issued on May 29, would not be as easily forged as the printers claimed. The Decimal Currency Board announced that it spent $2O million on converting machines to decimals during the year 1965-66, which was $3O million less than its original estimate of the cost The board said benefits of the switch already were that the time taken in calculations, with and without machines, had noticeably decreased: handling of cash had been made easier and faster, with fewer errors: migrants and visitors could understand the currency much quicker: and school teachers needed much less time to teach money calculations, and could use the time on other work. Another Labour Parliamentarian, Mr C. K. Jones, revived calls for the withdrawal of the 50 cent piece, which he said had become a “museum piece.” The coin, which is claimed to be easily confused with the 20 cent piece, is greatly disliked and is rarely seen. Most shops, stores and hotels do not give the coins in change, but set them aside as they are received and send them back to the bank.