New note a challenge for crooks

GOOD this.

Australia’s new $50 banknote was revealed yesterday and it is as advanced and secure as any currency in the world.

It looks a lot like the existing $50 note and the faces remain the same, but a closer inspection reveals a host of fancy features that make it practically impossible to forge – and easier to identify for the blind and visually impaired.

Among innovative new features are a clear panel from “floor to ceiling”, a change in size and a black swan that appears to fly through the air when the note is tilted.

Inside the clear panel is a hologram of a church with the number 50 embossed on it. When you move the note from side to side, the 50 reverses itself.

There are also two patches – one on either side of the note – that change colour when the note is tilted up and down and tiny writing next to the face of indigenous inventor and author David Unaipon.

RBA assistant governor Lindsay Boulton said the new features would make it “very difficult for counterfeiters” to reproduce the $50 note. luck counterfeiting