The Reserve Bank of Australia has unveiled the design of the new $5 banknote, which includes colourful wattles, an older Queen Elizabeth II and new security features to prevent counterfeiting
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The RBA said many aspects of the old $5 note had been retained - including some colour, size and an image of Queen Elizabeth II on the signature side and Parliament House on the back - to make it easy to identify.
Anyone who takes a quick glance at the new design will notice splodges of new colour have been added. There are new purples, pinks, oranges, blues and some bright yellow wattle right down the middle.
And, despite still wearing the same clothes, the Queen's face appears to be digitally altered to more accurately reflect her current appearance.
“Innovative new security features have been incorporated to help keep Australia’s banknotes secure from counterfeiting into the future,’’ RBA Governor Glenn Stevens said.
“As can be seen in the images, these include a distinctive top-to-bottom window. Each banknote in the new series will depict a different species of Australian wattle and a native bird within a number of the elements. On the $5 banknote, these are the Prickly Moses wattle and the Eastern Spinebill.”
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While everyone will have their own opinion about the layout, colour and general busy design of the new note, the people most disappointed in this outcome are those who pushed to have the national currency changed to the “dollarydoo” – the name made famous in a Simpsons episode.
The term dollarydoo was made famous in a 1995 Simpsons episode, Bart v Australia, in which Bart Simpson made a $900 reverse charge call to a family in Australia.
Last year, a petition gained steam to change Australia’s currency to dollarydoos. Before you laugh – there are more than 65,000 people that have signed the petition at Change.org. It seems many people would rather have a Simpsons reference as their currency than whatever the Reserve Bank has come up with.
The original petition said: “Due to global commodity prices plummeting, the Australian economy is struggling. That’s why we need something to stimulate the Australian economy and that something is changing the name of the Australian currency to ‘dollarydoos.’ This will make millions of people around the world want to get their hands on some Australian currency due to the real-life Simpsons reference, driving up the value of the Australian currency.”
The hopes of 65,000 petitioners would be dashed today as the government presses on with plans to revamp the current Australian currency, rather than making a drastic switch to a television-inspired alternative.
