Australian Notes Act 1910

Last updated

Australian Notes Act 1910
The City Bank Of Sydney 20 pound note.jpg
Private currency issued by the City Bank of Sydney c. 1900
Parliament of Australia
Assented to16 September 1910
Repealed14 December 1920
Status: Repealed

The Australian Notes Act 1910 was an Act of the Parliament of Australia which allowed for the creation of Australia's first national banknotes. In conjunction with the Coinage Act 1909 it created the Australian pound as a separate national currency from the pound sterling.

Contents

The act was enacted on 16 September 1910 by the Fisher Labour Government under Section 51 (xii) of the Constitution of Australia, which gives the Commonwealth Parliament the power to legislate with respect to “currency, coinage, and legal tender.”

The act gave control over the issue of Australian notes to the Commonwealth Treasury and prohibited the circulation of state notes and withdrew their status as legal tender. [1] [2] The Bank Notes Tax Act 1910 , enacted in October of that year imposed a prohibitive tax on banknotes issued by banks in Australia [3] by imposing an annual tax of 10% on "all bank notes issued or re-issued by any bank in the Commonwealth after the commencement of this Act and not redeemed," [1] which effectively ended the use of private currency in Australia.

Transitional measures

As transitional measures, blank note forms of 16 banks were supplied to the Australian Government in 1911 to be overprinted as redeemable in gold and issued as the first Commonwealth notes. For the next three years, some of the earlier private banknotes were overprinted by the Treasury and circulated as Australian banknotes until new designs were ready for Australia's first federal government-issued banknotes, which commenced in 1913. [2]

Subsequent events

The Australian Notes Act 1910 was repealed on 14 December 1920 by the Commonwealth Bank Act 1920, which gave note issuing authority to the Commonwealth Bank. In 1960, responsibility for note printing passed to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). [2]

S.44(1) of the Reserve Bank Act 1959 [4] now prohibits private and State currencies. The section prohibits any person or a State from issuing "a bill or note for the payment of money payable to bearer on demand and intended for circulation."

In 1976, Wickrema Weerasooria published an article which suggested that the issuing of bank cheques violated s.44(1), [5] to which banks responded that bank cheques were printed with the words "not negotiable" on them, which marked them as not intended for circulation and thus did not violate the statute.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Bank Act</span> Primary federal legislation authorizing the creation of national banks in the US

The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 were two United States federal banking acts that established a system of national banks, and created the United States National Banking System. They encouraged development of a national currency backed by bank holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and established the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as part of the United States Department of the Treasury and a system of nationally chartered banks. The Act shaped today's national banking system and its support of a uniform U.S. banking policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian dollar</span> Currency of Australia

The Australian dollar is the official currency and legal tender of Australia, including all of its external territories, and three independent sovereign Pacific Island states: Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu. As of 2022, it is the sixth most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market and also the seventh most-held reserve currency in global reserves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Note</span> Type of paper money that was issued from 1862 to 1971 in the United States

A United States Note, also known as a Legal Tender Note, is a type of paper money that was issued from 1862 to 1971 in the United States. Having been current for 109 years, they were issued for longer than any other form of U.S. paper money. They were known popularly as "greenbacks", a name inherited from the earlier greenbacks, the Demand Notes, that they replaced in 1862. Often termed Legal Tender Notes, they were named United States Notes by the First Legal Tender Act, which authorized them as a form of fiat currency. During the early 1860s the so-called second obligation on the reverse of the notes stated:

This Note is a Legal Tender for all debts public and private except Duties on Imports and Interest on the Public Debt; and is receivable in payment of all loans made to the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legal tender</span> Medium of payment recognized by law

Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered ("tendered") in payment of a debt extinguishes the debt. There is no obligation on the creditor to accept the tendered payment, but the act of tendering the payment in legal tender discharges the debt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banknotes of the pound sterling</span> Promissory notes denominated in pounds sterling

The pound sterling is the official currency of the United Kingdom, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, British Antarctic Territory, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and Tristan da Cunha.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silver certificate (United States)</span> Paper currency used between 1878 and 1964

Silver certificates are a type of representative money issued between 1878 and 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, which had effectively placed the United States on a gold standard. The certificates were initially redeemable for their face value of silver dollar coins and later in raw silver bullion. Since 1968 they have been redeemable only in Federal Reserve Notes and are thus obsolete, but still valid legal tender at their face value and thus are still an accepted form of currency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian pound</span> Former currency of Australia

The pound was the currency of Australia from 1910 until 14 February 1966, when it was replaced by the Australian dollar. Like other £sd currencies, it was subdivided into 20 shillings, each of 12 pence.

The pound is the currency of the Isle of Man, at parity with sterling. The Manx pound is divided into 100 pence. Notes and coins, denominated in pounds and pence, are issued by the Isle of Man Government.

The history of the United States dollar began with moves by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America to establish a national currency based on the Spanish silver dollar, which had been in use in the North American colonies of the Kingdom of Great Britain for over 100 years prior to the United States Declaration of Independence. The new Congress's Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States dollar as the country's standard unit of money, creating the United States Mint tasked with producing and circulating coinage. Initially defined under a bimetallic standard in terms of a fixed quantity of silver or gold, it formally adopted the gold standard in 1900, and finally eliminated all links to gold in 1971.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demand Note</span> Type of United States paper money

A Demand Note is a type of United States paper money that was issued from August 1861 to April 1862 during the American Civil War in denominations of 5, 10, and 20 US$. Demand Notes were the first issue of paper money by the United States that achieved wide circulation. The U.S. government placed Demand Notes into circulation by using them to pay expenses incurred during the Civil War including the salaries of its workers and military personnel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bank Notes Tax Act 1910</span>

The Bank Notes Tax Act 1910(Cth) was an Act of the Parliament of Australia which imposed a prohibitive tax on banknotes issued by banks in Australia. The Act was enacted in October 1910 by the Fisher Labour Government under Section 51 (xii) of the Constitution of Australia that gives the Commonwealth Parliament the power to legislate with respect to “currency, coinage, and legal tender” and the taxing power.

A private currency is a currency issued by a private entity, be it an individual, a commercial business, a nonprofit or decentralized common enterprise. It is often contrasted with fiat currency issued by governments or central banks. In many countries, the issuance of private paper currencies and/or the minting of metal coins intended to be used as currency may even be a criminal act such as in the United States. Digital cryptocurrency is sometimes treated as an asset instead of a currency. Cryptocurrency is illegal as a currency in a few countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shinplaster</span> Paper money of low denomination

Shinplaster was paper money of low denomination, typically less than one dollar, circulating widely in the economies of the 19th century where there was a shortage of circulating coinage. The shortage of circulating coins was primarily due to the intrinsic value of metal rising above the value of the coin itself. People became incentivized to take coins out of circulation and melt them for the true intrinsic value. This left no medium of exchange for the purchase of basic consumer goods such as milk and newspapers. To fill this gap, banks issued low-denomination paper currency.

Section 51 (xii) is a subsection of section 51 of the Constitution of Australia, that gives the Commonwealth Parliament the right to legislate with respect to "currency, coinage, and legal tender".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treasury (Australia)</span> Federal treasury department of the Australian Government

The Department of the Treasury, also known as The Treasury, is the national treasury and financial department of the federal government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The treasury is responsible for executing economic and fiscal policy, market regulation and the delivery of the federal budget with the department overseeing 16 agencies. The Treasury is one of only two departments that have existed continuously since Federation in 1901, the other being the Department of the Attorney-General.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States dollar</span> Official currency of the United States of America

The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it into 100 cents, and authorized the minting of coins denominated in dollars and cents. U.S. banknotes are issued in the form of Federal Reserve Notes, popularly called greenbacks due to their predominantly green color.

Bills of credit are documents similar to banknotes issued by a government that represent a government's indebtedness to the holder. They are typically designed to circulate as currency or currency substitutes. Bills of credit are mentioned in Article One, Section 10, Clause One of the United States Constitution, where their issuance by state governments is prohibited.

Banknotes of the United States dollar are currently issued as Federal Reserve Notes (1914–).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banknotes of the Australian pound</span>

Banknotes of the Australian pound were first issued by numerous private banks in Australia, starting with the Bank of New South Wales in 1817. Acceptance of private bank notes was not made compulsory by legal tender laws but they were widely used and accepted. The Queensland government issued treasury notes (1866–1869) and banknotes (1893–1910), which were legal tender in Queensland. The New South Wales government issued a limited series of Treasury Notes in 1893.

Prior to European colonization, early Aboriginal Australian communities traded using items such as tools, food, ochres, shells, raw materials and stories, although there is no evidence of the use of currencies.

References

  1. 1 2 "THE AUSTRALIAN NOTE ISSUE". Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 Reserve Bank of Australia, History of Banknotes
  3. "Bank Notes Tax Act 1910". Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  4. Reserve Bank Act 1959 (Cth), s.44
  5. Weerasooria, Wickrema. "The Australian Bank Cheque - Some Legal Aspects" (PDF). (1976) 2(2) Monash University Law Review 180. ISSN   0311-3140