The Art of Political Messaging on Banknotes

One hundred and twenty-five years after Federation, we have finally decided we are no longer an outpost of the British Empire but an independent multi-cultural nation that doesn’t see it as necessary to exhibit a forelock-tugging gesture to our British forebears. 

It was a long time coming because his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to her dying days, graced our Dollar note and then our Five-Dollar Note when the Dollar note was abolished. 

Promoting the Monarch of Australia on the smallest denomination note has been a long-standing tradition because it circulated more widely amongst the minions.

Charles will still adorn the obverse of our coinage but I had to take a second look when I encountered my first “Charles” coin because it was almost an unrecognizable caricature when compared to a full-blown portrait of the King of Australia.

Australia dodged an embarrassing bullet back in the 1960s when our obsequious Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies tried to foist the ‘Royal’ on Australia as its new unit of currency.

In 1963, Menzies dressed in pompous regalia was made a Knight of the Order of the Thistle in the same year he grandly announced that a new Australian Decimal Currency known as the ‘Royal’ would be introduced in 1966, and prototypes of the new ‘Royal’ currency quickly were commissioned by the Reserve Bank of Australia.