There’s a Typo on 46 Million of Australia’s Freshly-Minted Banknotes

We all make mistakes—some more consequential than others. Maybe you hit reply-all when sending an inappropriate email to a work colleague, or texted a dick pic to your dad. Maybe your finger slipped and you double-tapped while three years deep on an ex’s Instagram feed. Or maybe you made a spelling error that ended up being printed on 46 million freshly-minted banknotes and introduced into the money supply of an entire nation. Honestly, it happens to the best of us.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has confirmed that their “new and improved” $50 banknote, rolled out in October last year, contains a typo, The Guardian reports. Eagle-eyed observers may notice that the word “responsibility” is in fact spelled “responsibilty”—without the third “i”—on three different occasions. As in: “It is a great responsibilty [sic] to be the only woman here, and I want to emphasise the necessity which exists for other women being here”—printed in a passage of “micro-text” next to a picture of Edith Cowan, Australia’s first female member of parliament.

It’s a small error, most likely caused by the innocent slip of a typing finger. But the ironically misspelled word has since been printed on $2.3 billion worth of hard currency and distributed around Australia.

A spokesperson from the RBA yesterday announced that the bank was “aware of it and the spelling will be corrected at the next print run”. They’ve known about it since December, in fact—five months before it was brought to the public’s attention—according to Fairfax.

"This does not affect the legal tender status of the banknotes,” the RBA insisted. “The process of designing and printing a banknote is complex and iterative. We have strict quality assurance processes but, like any manufacturing process, errors can occur. We have reviewed our processes to remove the likelihood of such an error occurring in the future.”

Speaking to Fairfax, Australian banknote author Mick Vort-Ronald said that while printing errors were relatively common on banknotes, typos were not. In his 43 years of writing about banknotes, Mick claims he’s never seen a mistake quite like this before. "You have to ask whose responsibility it is to check the spelling," he said. Rare currency dealer Jim Noble meanwhile told News.com.au that this is the first time the RBA has ever pushed a typo through to circulation.

An RBA spokesperson has confirmed that the next print run will commence some time around the middle of the year.

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