A representative of Australia’s central bank said that the $5 bill featured a portrait of the late queen not as a genuflexion to her royal status, but in recognition of her ‘personality’, an attribute that, by implication, Australia does not associate with Charles. Indeed, there is a proposal to erase the imprint of monarchy from its currency and replace it with a new design ‘to reflect and honour the history of its indigenous culture,’ though it remains unclear as to what ‘indigenous’ means in this context – whether it’s the fauna of the continent as represented by the duck-billed platypus and the laughing kookaburra, or the Aborigines, who were almost exterminated by early British settlers, mainly deported convicts.
While Australia is one of the 12 countries within the Commonwealth, in a 1999 referendum the country chose to retain the British monarch as its token head of state only by a very narrow margin. Following Elizabeth’s death last September, a fresh debate has arisen as to Australia’s continuance as a constitutional monarchy, and Charles being given the heave-ho from the $5 note might presage the curtain coming down on the British crown ruling the ‘roo in the land of Waltzing Matilda.
However, Buckingham Palace may choose to construe the eviction as a blessing in disguise, as being featured on what is commonly referred to as ‘filthy lucre’ can be a mark not of distinction but its reverse, not a status symbol, but a stigma. In his widely acclaimed denouncement of dosh, The Curse of Cash, economist Kenneth Rogoff puts all currencies in the dock for being instruments of nefarious negotiation, such as tax evasion, money laundering, and fiscal imprudence caused by governmental mismanagement.
Clandestine dealings that cash facilitates have earned currency the coinage of ‘dirty money’. But money can be dirty in more ways than the metaphoric. Championing Rogoff’s crusade for a cashless society, Scientific American has made out a case for money-laundering of the benefic sort: currency notes, particularly those of small denominations that are likely to undergo more usage by way of hand-to-hand exchanges, should be washed regularly to decontaminate them from all manner of pathogens.
A study conducted by the New York University’s Centre for Genomics and Systems Biology analysed genetic matter on 80 one-dollar bills and found over 3,000 types of organisms, including bacteria that can cause pneumonia, food poisoning, and other infections. Among the many microscopic baddies lurking on boodle are antibiotic-resistant strains such as staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which can cause life-threatening blood diseases.
Other identified currency-carried villains are escherichia coli, which can cause diarrhoea and, in severe cases, kidney failure and death, and pseudomonas aeruginosa, which causes urinary tract and respiratory system infections. The Wall Street Journal cited an instance in which traces of DNA from an African white rhinoceros were found on a dollar bill, suggesting that one of the many British slang terms for money being ‘rhino’ may be more than a mere verbal whimsy. US currency is composed of cotton fibre and is reportedly more hospitable to bacterial horrors than are polymer-made Canadian and Australian notes. However, all currency must be deemed to belong to the hazmat category. As Scientific American has noted, ‘Faecal bacteria and other pathogens may have hitched a ride from someone’s hands, nose, or apron onto our cash [which] spends all the time wandering from, say, a cocaine-sniffer’s nose to a waiter’s hands, to someone’s back pocket.’
So, bully for Charles that he’s not going to be represented on Australian currency, and thereby run the risk of earning the snide title bestowed on him by a British tabloid: Prince Harming.
