N.Z. SILVER COINAGE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 231, 12 September 1934, Page 11

N.Z. SILVER COINAGE

“Auditor-General Up a Tree”

MR. COATES’S INTERJECTION

(Own Parliamentary Representative) WELLINGTON, September 11.

‘ ‘ The Auditor-General is up a tree. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.” This statement by way of interjection was made in the House of Representatives to-day by the Minister of Finance, the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, during a speech by the Independent member for Egmont, Mr C. A. Wilkinson. who took tho Government to task for not making a better bargain when it decided that New Zealand should have its own silver coins.

‘‘l can’t say how terribly sorry 1 am that the Government has made such a hash of this business,” said. Mr Wilkinson. ‘‘According to the statement of the Controller and Auditor-General (Col. G. F. C. Campbell) the Government has thrown away at least £1,0911,000 ” Mr Coates; Tho Auditor-General is up a tree. Ho doesn’t know what he is talking about. Mr Wilkinson: I will be glad to confess that I am wrong if that is so. In the meantime I have no other facts be-

fore mo than his statement. Tho Audi-tor-General tells us how silver coins can be made for 4/- for £1 worth; we have paid 20/-. What wo have done is this: We have collected Australian coius, which were never legal tender in New Zealand 1 , and we have melted them down into New Zealand money. How foolish! The Australian Government gets the whole of the profit cf mintage and New Zealand gets nothing. If the Minister of Finance goes to Australia and tries to put a New Zealand half-crown into circulation he will be arrested and gaoled or fined, perhaps both.

1 Mr Coates: That will be a change. Mr Wilkinson: I wouldn’t wish the right honourable gentleman such a fate as that. We can’t afford-to lose him.

In the meantime, he added, he would like to see the correspondence which had taken place in regard to the minting of New Zealand coins.

Mr Coates: I will be glad to make it available to members. Mr Wilkinson: Thank you. I will be very interested to read it. The fact of the matter is that New Zealand has made a desperately bad bargain. I would” also like to know why the Government turned’ down the offer to make coin in New Zealand. 1 understand that such an arrangement would have produced a profit of nothing less than £750,000. Mr Coates: That is entirely contrary to the information I have.

Mr Wilkinson: I believe that there is nothing at all in the making of silver coins. It is just ns easy as making a jam tin. Surely New Zealand is not so destitute of men and mechanics that it can’t make a simple thing like coin. Mr W. ,T. Polson (Stratford, Independent): Every State im America makes its own coins.