Examining Australia's Weird Anger at the New $5 Note

The Reserve Bank has announced that come September 1 Australia will have a new $5 note. They released some photos of the design this morning, revealing it's not really new, just a bit more purplish and featuring some wattle things down the middle. In the accompanying media release the Reserve Bank also talked up the note's "innovative new security features" that will prevent "counterfeiting into the future."

You'd think counterfeiters would have bigger dreams than fake fivers, but apparently not. Counterfeiters do make fives, albeit in small numbers. Check out this report to be baffled.

But that's not really the issue. The issue is how agitated Australia is getting over something that's one notch off being exactly the same as it was before.

So there's two things here. The first is to ask is the note is actually, objectively shit? The second is to examine why—even if it is shit—people care so much.

John McDonald is the former head of Australian art at the National Gallery of Australia and has been writing about, lecturing about, and generally critiquing art for 30 years. When I asked for his thoughts he agreed the banknote is "slightly lurid," but admitted he'd get used to it.

"It would be nice to no longer look at the Queen on our money," he said, echoing some of the anti-monarchist sentiment around Twitter. "I'd sooner see a writer, an artist, or some other local figure of note—if you'll pardon the pun."

Aside from this, John shrugged off concerns the note is somehow bringing down the nation. "I expect I'll get used to it pretty quickly," he said. "The online reactions simply confirm the rather conservative nature of public opinion. We're used to a certain kind of note and change is automatically resented."

Which is probably the point. Because while a note with some new flourishes may initially seem frightening and unfamiliar, it's also—in the scheme of things—really fucking trivial. The Reserve Bank of Australia could have introduced some sort of special edition featuring pizza and dinosaurs, but Twitter would have responded just the same. Because people aren't actually disgusted by the note, they're just acting out a pretty standard Kübler-Ross response to change.

This is more popularly known as the five stages of grief. That is, people facing death all go through the same emotions—denial, anger, bargaining, depression—before finally arriving at acceptance. Yes we're talking about the introduction of some new money and not death, but the theory has been adapted by psychologists and business gurus to explain how humans everywhere respond to change.

So this is anger, and we'll eventually shift gears to acceptance, before one day becoming angry when it happens all over again. If you don't believe me check out this letter to the Sydney Morning Herald from some reader about a currency update back in September 1954.

The highlight, obviously, is the poor Burwood resident asking "why was the change of colour necessary?" Then saying the notes possess "no artistic merit, and certainly do not do justice to the country."

Now compare the above rant to this rant on Change.org, which was penned Tuesday afternoon by a guy petitioning the government to ditch the new fiver. "As of today our national note identity is all at risk," he wrote. "We must stop The Governor of the Reserve Bank Glenn Stevens from releasing this design abomination upon our society."

Hey people, it's going to be ok.

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