‘Vomit-like’ banknote draws ire of Aussies and bird lovers

Colourful change: Stacks of the new banknote, which will replace its more bland predecessor from Sept 1. — AFP

SYDNEY: It may be the smallest denominated Australian dollar banknote, but a new design for the Australian $5 bill has attracted an outsized amount of criticism, with detractors calling it “hideous” and “like vomit”.

The note, which will replace its more bland predecessor from Sept 1, features a yellow Prickly Moses wattle flower and a colourful Eastern Spinebill native bird.

“Each banknote in the new series will depict a different species of Australian wattle and a native bird within a number of the elements,” Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens said in a statement yesterday.

“The designs are the culmination of extensive consultation with subject matter experts and the cash-handling industry, as well as qualitative research involving focus groups.”

But critics, from social media users to bird lovers, were quick to express their disdain.

“Our new fivers look like vomit,” one Twitter user wrote, while another quipped: “A thousand monkeys with a thousand versions of Photoshop could never come up with something as hideous as the new Australian $5 note.”

Some questioned why the same portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which was drawn from photographs commissioned by the central bank in 1984, was used rather than a recent image of Australia’s head of state.

The bill has even managed to raise the ire of bird lovers.

“It’s way off in terms of colouration,” Birdlife Australia’s migratory shorebird programme manager Dan Weller said, although the bird’s shape and markings were fairly accurate. — AFP