Mr Ed Harbuz, managing director of the South African Mint and President of the 21st Mint Directors Conference
Gonzalo Ferre Molto, Chairman and Chief Executive of the Spanish Mint and Secretary General of the Mint Directors' Conference
Members of the organising committee for the 21st Mint Directors Conference
I am delighted this morning to welcome you to Canberra on behalf of the Federal Government of Australia
As the Federal Minister for Financial Services & Regulation, I have responsibility for matters relating to coinage and currency, and I have the privilege of being the Minister in charge of the Royal Australian Mint, your host at this conference.
I would like to take this opportunity of congratulating the Royal Australian Mint, and its joint venture partner The Perth Mint, for the fine job they did in minting the gold, silver and bronze Olympic medals free of charge.
This is especially pleasing as the Australian Olympic team has produced the nation's best sporting performance at any Olympics, and therefore a record number of those medals will stay in the country!
And while on the subject of the Olympics, I should also congratulate the two Mints on the success of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Coin Program unquestionably the best Olympic Coin Program in the history of such programs, and a major contributor of royalty income to the Olympic movement in Australia and internationally. You will hear more about this program later this morning, I think.
This is an important biennial conference, in providing the world's national mints and their industry supporters with an opportunity to come together and discuss the challenges facing mints and the ways in which these challenges can be met.
These challenges facing mints around the world are well illustrated by the ambitious program of this conference.
On the one hand, we have the raison d'etre of the national mint, namely producing circulating coins.
In this respect there are major challenges for all mints in using available technologies to reduce production costs while maintaining quality.
And there are major challenges in responding to moves by national governments to rationalise currencies or in some cases not to rationalise currencies, and in predicting and adapting to the growth of smartcard technologies.
On the other hand, there is 'reverse' side of the minting business numismatics where mints required to operate commercially tend to make their real profits.
The challenges here are, if anything, more fierce, with concerns about about competition, product proliferation, quality standards, market growth, and the role of mints in the secondary market,
At this end mints have to grapple with their broader social obligations and how that relates to the profit objective, and the relationship between legal tender coinage and the collectables industry.
In short, the issues facing mints today go to the role of coinage, not merely in the economic life of a nation, but in its cultural life, as well.
To that end, I think that coinage is crucial in reflecting the mood of a nation and reminding it, each and every day, of who it is and where it has been.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that your deliberations in the next few days prove valuable in exposing and allowing discussion of issues of real consequence.
It is clear from the program that you have a huge amount of ground to cover. I wish you well in covering it, and suggest you try and have a good time too.
It now gives me great pleasure in declaring the 21st Mint Directors Conference officially open let the discussion begin!