10 Cents - Elizabeth II 3rd Portrait, Treaty of Waitangi

Issued for the sesquicentennial of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, this was part of a broader commemorative circulation series released as New Zealand simultaneously debated — with considerable public acidity — what the Treaty's principles actually obligated the Crown to do. The Waitangi Tribunal had been hearing claims since 1975, and by 1990 several landmark findings had already forced the government into uncomfortable negotiations over land and fisheries.

Arnold Machin's effigy, used here, was already being phased out across Commonwealth coinage by this point.