Following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (sorry if this is how you found out she died) Australia has been facing a lot of fundamental changes to our way of life. The Queen’s Birthday public holiday will now be called the King’s Birthday public holiday, Queen’s Counsels are now being called King’s Counsels, and God will no longer be asked to save the Queen, but the King instead.
But, perhaps the biggest change is still to come: what do we do with our money? If you’re still using actual money like a Neanderthal, you might have noticed that the Queen is featured on quite a lot of it. In particular, she’s on the $5 note, and if you’re a teenage boy, you’ll know that when you fold the back of the note in half, it kind of looks like… well you know.
Debate surrounding who should be represented on our money has been ongoing for years, but now there seems to be real momentum for change, particularly because there’s no legal reason requiring the $5 to feature the monarch.
“The decision to include the Queen’s face on the $5 note was about her personally rather than about her status as the monarch so that transition [to Charles on the note] isn’t automatic,” Assistant Treasury Minister Andrew Leigh told reporters. This means that not including Charles on the money would be quite a personal snub, but we reckon he’ll get over it.
Two patriots, Vincent Wu and Kirby Miles, have swooped on this potential opening and launched two distinct petitions that are listed on the Australian Parliament House website. Their goal is to try and get an iconic Australian onto our currency.
“The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the proclamation of King Charles III raises an important question about the future of Australian currency,” Miles’ petition states. “We propose keeping all existing $5 notes featuring Queen Elizabeth II in circulation and introducing a new $5 note honouring Australian zookeeper Steve Irwin.”
It would be a touching tribute to the crocodile hunter, but there are so many potential Australians who are deserving of this recognition, so there is quite a lot of competition. Other suggestions floated across social media in the past weeks include Shane Warne, Kylie Minogue and Olivia Newton-John.
Suggestions that have not been floated on social media but would also be great include other iconic Australians like the Bananas in Pyjamas, that bloke who got arrested for enjoying a succulent Chinese meal and the kid from that insurance ad who said “and then my head went that way and then my legs went that way”. All of these people have made huge contributions to Australian culture and deserve some form of recognition. Alternatively, we could just have a different coloured Wiggle on each note because they’re pretty much dressed to be on the money anyway.
Currently, the petitions for Steve Irwin to be featured on the new $5 note have amassed a grand total of… 42 signatures. So, if you are a true blue, dinky-di Aussie bloke with green and gold running in your veins, get onto the Australian Parliament’s website and sign the petition today.
