‘No One Died’: Australia Central Bank Officials Relaxed About New Banknote Typo

(Bloomberg) -- Australian central bank chief Philip Lowe was “relatively relaxed” about an error on the nation’s new A$50 note that was repeated four hundred million times, according to internal correspondence released under a Freedom of Information request.

“I spoke to Phil about this,” Chris Aylmer, head of risk and compliance at the Reserve Bank of Australia, said in a Dec. 21 email, referring to Lowe. “He was relatively relaxed -- the functionality of the note has not changed and it is still legal tender,” he said, adding that the printer of the currency, Note Printing Australia, nonetheless needs to review the text approval process.

Aylmer, whose email was copied to RBA No. 2 Guy Debelle, described employees at NPA as “mortified that the error occurred.”

The banknote released last October misspells the word “responsibility” in very fine print which is only identifiable with a microscope.

The note features a portrait of the country’s first female parliamentarian, Edith Cowan, and the mistake appears in excerpts of her first speech to the Western Australian Parliament located near her shoulder on the note. The error was picked up by a member of the public, who wondered whether it was a “new security feature.”

Among the documents released in the FOI was a Note Printing Australia report into the error. The company’s employees were clearly hurting, with an email reporting that “NPA were devastated and had really been beating themselves up about it.”

The RBA, on the other hand, appeared somewhat more chilled.

“No one died,” Luke Porter, the RBA’s manager of banknote production, said in the correspondence. “I’m just happy my initial email to NPA had the correct spelling.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Heath in Sydney at mheath1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Chris Bourke, Peter Vercoe

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