The fuss about our 5 dollar note finding favour overseas wasn't quite what it seemed in the media his week.
New Zealand's $5 note Photo: SCREENSHOT/ INTERNATIONAL BANK NOTE SOCIETY
There’s been plenty said, read, written and spoken in the media recently about the referendum on our flag – much of it by people who don’t think either of the two options is really fit for purpose. Last Wednesday, another national emblem was reported to be getting the thumbs-up in another kind of contest.
“The new $5 note has been in the tills for only a few months and already it's among the world's best," said RNZ last Wednesday.
"It has been named as a finalist for banknote of the year by the International Bank Note Society,” alongside 19 others, RNZ reported. The son of the man who graces our fiver – Sir Ed’s boy Peter Hillary - told Morning Report:
I think it is a wonderful new version of the $5 bill. I think it definitely deserves to be recognised, so I hope it does well.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
“Nowhere is the excitement felt more strongly than in New Zealand”, said the Sydney Morning Herald, picking the story up from its Fairfax Media stablemate here, stuff.co.nz. But when stuff sent a camera out into the streets to gauge public opinion here, it wasn’t quite at fever pitch.
How did this previously obscure contest make news here in the first place?
The likely source was the BBC in the UK, which mentioned New Zealand's note when it reported that Scotland’s first-ever plastic polymer fiver issued last year had also been nominated. British Plastics and Rubber also had the story, but that is not as widely-read here . . .
Going over the top
Under the online headline: "Our five dollar note punches above its weight" TVNZ said:
It may be the lowest of New Zealand's banknotes, but that doesn't mean the humble fiver isn't among the world's best.
But it doesn’t mean that it is either. The Reserve Bank said all this was news to them because they hadn’t nominated our new $5 note. Stuff.co.nz said it was "a chap named Sean Pemberton, who appears to be an employee of the Canadian company which designed and produced the notes for us."
Indeed it did, and indeed he is.
Sean Pemberton - an executive director at the Canadian Bank Note Company and International Bank Note Society member 10979 – nominated our $5 note. And he's quite entitled to do so. The Society’s website asks its members:
Do you know of a banknote issued to the public in 2015 that should be nominated for the Banknote of 2015?
If you do, please send your nominations to the Banknote of the Year co-ordinator.
But only new notes issued in the past year are eligible. So when Trinidad and Tobago took out the 2014 award with its 50 dollar note, it was one of 12 notes nominated from just 35 new notes issued around the world that year which were eligible under the Society’s rules.
So rather than punching above our weight to claim a place among the world’s best banknotes, the media here actually got excited about an enthusiast at the overseas company which makes our $5 note entering it for an award run by his own club.
