For the love of money
Fifty years ago,
Australia�s
currency went
decimal. But the long-awaited
transition wasn�t without its
problems
Brett Evans
For many years Gordon Andrews was the most popular artist in Australia. We coveted his work with a passion; we spent our days pursuing it, and our nights dreaming about it. We sacrificed and scrimped to get more of it. Some of us even stole it. We couldnt get enough of the stuff.
Though Andrews was hardly a household name, we all knew his most famous works: the Brown Bomber, the Sick Sheep, the Pink Snapper, the Blue Heeler, and the Red Lobster.
Gordon Andrews was, of course, the man who designed Australias banknotes when the nation shifted to decimal currency in February 1966. So appealing were they that the nation accepted them with alacrity, and soon bestowed upon them the greatest Australian compliment: nicknames. (And there were many of them. A Lobster as the $20 bill is sometimes called was also known as a Red Drinking Voucher on my teenaged Saturday nights.)
Banknotes are simply a portable means of exchange pieces of paper representing a monetary value; they dont have to be beautiful to do their job. The mighty US dollar, though exciting to possess in large quantities (Im told), is famously dull to look at. But Andrewss designs for our currency were positively pulchritudinous compared to the greenback. They were distinctive, modern and brightly coloured, and they told a more interesting narrative of our nation than we could reasonably have expected from a designer working in the early 1960s.
History is always an admixture of stories, and the tale of these designs, and how they came about, is blended with several others from postwar Australia. And though the story of Australias decimal banknotes is one of artistic accomplishment and acclaim, these other stories come from down the darker road of our past. Theyre about the theft of Indigenous art, a doomed criminal conspiracy, and a national business success story sadly drawn into corruption.
Should we be surprised? Isnt money the root of all evil?
Australia had been thinking about decimalisation for a long time before it finally took the plunge. A House of Representatives Select Committee on coinage had first recommended that Australia go decimal in 1901; the 1937 royal commission on money and banking strongly favoured making the shift; and during the election campaign of 1958 prime minister Robert Menzies promised to ditch Australias pounds, shillings and pence for a simpler decimal currency. In 1959 Menziess treasurer, Harold Holt, convened a Decimal Currency Committee, and it soon endorsed the conclusion reached by all of the earlier inquiries: Australia needed to go decimal. Money calculations would be simpler; time would be saved at the cash register; school children would cease to be tortured by the complexities of the imperial system; and international trade would be made more efficient.
But what to call the new notes? Federal Labor MP Allan Fraser helpfully conducted his own competition, and some of the suggested names bear remembering: the Victa after the lawnmower; the Billie after the Little Digger; and the Eureka after the tax revolt. Someone obsequiously proposed the Ming, in honour of the prime minister, who had acquired that nickname. In response, another citizen put forward the prosaic appellation Arthur after Labors Arthur
Calwell but only if the new one cent coin was called the Ming, because it takes one hundred Mings to equal one Arthur.
Eventually a thousand possible names were submitted to Treasury. This voluminous list was whittled down to just seven for the Menzies cabinet to consider: Dollar, Royal, Crown, Austral, Pound, Regal and Tasman.
As if suddenly unnerved by the change it was contemplating, cabinet reached for the comforts of Empire. The new currency would be named the Royal, in honour of Australias unbreakable love for the monarchy. But strangely it was 1963, after all this caused an uproar.
Though Prince Philip had been in the country to open the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth a mere year before, the vast majority of Australians thought naming our currency in honour of his family a risible notion. As the president of that well-known left-wing organisation, the Chamber of Commerce told the Canberra Times, the use of the name Royal over-emphasises, to the point of acute embarrassment, links and traditions which Australians appreciate and value but which they dont like to advertise.
Acutely embarrassed itself, cabinet backed down, and the idea was crumpled up and lobbed into the wastepaper basket of history.
Sense eventually prevailed and the new notes were christened Australian dollars. But what would they look like? Changing a currency is an economic reform, but its also a momentous cultural change. Would Australia get it right?
Now, committees have a bad reputation. Conventional wisdom asserts that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and committees are traditionally where good ideas go to die.
Luckily, this isnt always the case. The majestic King James version of the Bible, for example, was created by committee. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil Yes, a committee signed off on that.
insidestory.org
