NEW AUSTRALIAN BANKNOTE DRAWS CRITICISM

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 16, April 17, 2016, Article 24

Meanwhile, the new design of an Australian banknote is causing a stir for removing a woman's portrait. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times Women in the World feature. -Editor

The design of the new Australian $5 note is causing a major upset Down Under, and not just because it is considered by many to be “the most hideous banknote in history,” but also because it has replaced the image of a celebrated women’s rights campaigner and all-round high achiever.

The portrait of Catherine Helen Spence — “the first Australian woman novelist to write about Australian issues, the mother of the Australian foster care system, the leading campaigner for proportional representation in government, a hero of the women’s suffrage movement, and Australia’s first female political candidate, according to author David Hunt — was replaced by an image of the nation’s Parliament House; “a lump of neo-brutalist architecture.”

Here's an excerpt of an editorial about the note from The Sydney Morning Herald. -Editor

In 1988, Australia celebrated its bicentenary by revolutionising banknote design, issuing the world's first polymer note, the brainchild of Australia's CSIRO. The organisation was so good at the science of making money that this is now the only science the Australian government will let it do.

And now, with the new $5 note, Australia is again leading the world in banknote design. The Reserve Bank is proud to announce it has designed, possibly, the most hideous banknote in history.

This is the start of a campaign to make our currency so nauseatingly unappealing that people will switch to electronic payments (saving the Australian government printing costs). The new wattle motif, designed to look like anthrax spores, will stop old people sending money by mail (saving the Australian government postage costs). The government must have retained the designer of Australia's 1984 Olympic uniforms to come up with a startling combination of off-pink and bilious yellow, before giving the Reserve Bank's gibbon the keys to the inkjet. Blind people will love the new banknote for its revolutionary tactile features, but mainly because they won't be able to see it.

The worst thing about the new $5 note, however, is that it dispenses with one of the greatest Australians ever, Catherine Helen Spence – who was commemorated in 2001 for the note issued to celebrate the centenary of federation.

Spence was the first Australian woman novelist to write about Australian issues, the mother of the Australian foster care system, the leading campaigner for proportional representation in government, a hero of the women's suffrage movement, and Australia's first female political candidate. And those are but a few of her achievements.

Spence has been forced to make way for a lump of neo-brutalist architecture – our Parliament House –topped by a giant Australian flag. A non-Australian, the Queen retains pride of place on the new note.

It's as if the Reserve Bank's new work experience kid, hired because he knows how to use Photoshop, has touched Liz up a bit, but not nearly as badly as Paul Keating did. She's got the same pearl necklace, but there's some grey in the roots and she looks a little more lived in. Of course, she looks nothing like the 89-year-old woman she is, as reality would present the wrong image of Australia to the world.

Here are some more brickbats for the new note. -Editor

It may be the smallest denominated Australian dollar banknote, but a new design for the Australian $5 bill has attracted an outsized amount of criticism, with detractors calling it “hideous” and “like vomit”.

The note, which will replace its more bland predecessor from Sept 1, features a yellow Prickly Moses wattle flower and a colourful Eastern Spinebill native bird.

But critics, from social media users to bird lovers, were quick to express their disdain.

“Our new fivers look like vomit,” one Twitter user wrote, while another quipped: “A thousand monkeys with a thousand versions of Photoshop could never come up with something as hideous as the new Australian $5 note.”

“It’s way off in terms of colouration,” Birdlife Australia’s migratory shorebird programme manager Dan Weller said, although the bird’s shape and markings were fairly accurate.