Liam Dann: Why the face on our money matters more than ever

The Queen's image will be on our $20 note for a while yet.

OPINION:

I suspect one of the many reasons we all felt such a strong sense of connection to Queen Elizabeth was that we grew up with her face on our money.

She was with us from the very first moment we held a coin in our hand.

For many New Zealanders, those first memories of money are tied to epic childhood events, like the first time we were allowed to venture to the dairy alone.

Money was measured in small paper bags of lollies - 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c mixtures.

That was our first experience with inflation too.

Money, of course, has no intrinsic value beyond our collective acceptance of its worth.

That's what makes inflation so much more damaging than just the diminished quantity of lollies that our 20c piece can purchase.

When inflation gets away on us and becomes endemic, it erodes trust in the economy and ultimately the State.

That's where the Crown plays a unique and valuable role.

It's an immutable institution, anchored in history and bigger than the petty party political struggles of government.

The monarch personifies a sense of order and structure to the world.

The Queen's face was - and will continue to be - synonymous with trust.

On a personal level, she lived up to that value flawlessly.

She understood all she represented and how much bigger that was than one individual.

She had a rare sense of service and duty, one that was forged in the darkness and hardship of war.

We carried her image with us, thankfully, we'll continue to for some time yet.

The change in currency will be gradual and coins in particular have a lengthy life span.

I'm old enough to recall the George VI florin - which survived decimalisation and the move from pounds and pence.

It stayed in circulation as an alternative to the 20c piece well into the 1970s.

I'm not sure if it was even official currency at that point but it was accepted on trust.

We may never see Charles III on a New Zealand bank note.

The Reserve Bank says the next redesign of new notes is still some years away.

That provides plenty of time to consider more parochial alternatives.

In the past few decades, New Zealand has grown in confidence as an independent nation in the world.

That's been reflected in the addition of own culturally important figures to bank notes - Sir Edmund Hillary, Kate Sheppard, Sir Āpirana Ngata and Ernest Rutherford.

There's no shortage of worthy local contenders for the $20 note - the last note that still bears the Queen's image.

But as long as we're a monarchy there'll be room for the King somewhere - even if just in metallic profile.

The notion of the Crown is still central to the political and social structure of this country.

It looks set to stay that way for a while yet.

The concept of the Crown in New Zealand in the 21st century can seem odd. We're no longer tethered to the hopeless politics of that quirky island off the coast of Europe - or the soapy dramas of some in its royal family.

But the Crown as a concept still has specific legal and political meaning here, especially with regard to our founding document - The Treaty of Waitangi.

Interpreting the Treaty as a living document is contentious enough without trying to reinvent the notion of what the Crown is.

One day perhaps.

I'm not an avowed monarchist. But I do think finding an alternative system is fraught with complexity and difficulties this country doesn't need to be rushing to confront.

We may never see King Charles III on a New Zealand bank note.

The Crown is an institution that we understand intuitively and collectively and which provides solidity at a time when trust in government seems weak.

The pandemic has forced the world through the wringer of rapid change.

The economy has been turned on its head. We went into it battling deflation and talking about negative interest rates.

We've come out with inflation eroding our spending power at the fastest rate since the early 1980s and interest rates also rising more rapidly than we've seen in a generation.

While we were distracted with concerns about Covid-19 and the measures to contain it, climate change was marching on and technological change has continued to accelerate.

We are waking up to a world of heightened geopolitical tension and conflict.

The passing of Queen Elizabeth sadly rules another historic line in the sand.

It is a reminder that there is no reset button, no returning to some imagined idea of pre-pandemic normal.

But we shouldn't let it be a pessimistic reminder.

The post-war era, in which the Queen came of age and was crowned, offered no shortage of social, political and economic worries.

We should be confident that a new normal will emerge soon enough.

Younger generations will no doubt be comfortable with it all sooner than those of us who've lived the majority of our lives in the previous century.

But we'll cope.

And if we need inspiration to help us adjust, then we should look to Queen Elizabeth and the sense of calm and stability she was able to project through 70 tumultuous years.

Her face will be with us, in our wallets and purses, for a while yet.