MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 99 of 100

Correct — option (1), Australia. On 2 February 2023 the Reserve Bank of Australia announced that the new five-dollar banknote would not carry a portrait of King Charles III. The five-dollar note was the only Australian note bearing the monarch's portrait, that of Queen Elizabeth II, and rather than replace her image with her successor's the central bank decided, after consulting the Australian Government, that the space would carry a design honouring the culture and history of the First Australians; the other side of the note continues to show Australia's Parliament House. The decision followed the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 and the accession of King Charles III, which obliged every country whose currency bore her image to decide what to do next, and Australia's answer was to change the subject rather than the sovereign. Two points are worth keeping straight. The first is that the announcement concerned banknotes only: Australian coins continue to carry the monarch's effigy, so it is not the case that the monarchy disappeared from Australian money. The second is that the decision is not the same thing as becoming a republic — Australia remains a Commonwealth realm with the King as head of state, and the change of design was a decision of the central bank rather than a constitutional step. The other realms handled the succession differently, and that difference is what the wrong options are built on. Option (1) is the answer.

• (2)New Zealand — New Zealand is a Commonwealth realm and its twenty-dollar note carries the monarch's portrait, so the country faced exactly the same question as Australia after the accession of King Charles III — and answered it differently, continuing with the existing note design rather than removing the monarch from its currency. That is precisely what makes this the most dangerous option in the set: everything general about it fits, and only the specific decision separates it from the answer. A candidate who remembers that a Pacific realm changed its currency policy in 2023, without remembering which, has a genuine chance of choosing wrongly here. The way to fix the fact is to attach it to the denomination: it was the Australian five-dollar note, the only Australian note carrying the monarch, that was redesigned in favour of a First Nations theme.
• (3)Switzerland — Switzerland can be eliminated without knowing anything about the news at all, because it has never had the British monarch on its currency and has no constitutional connection to the British crown. It is a federal republic, not a monarchy, and is not a member of the Commonwealth; its franc notes carry Swiss themes and figures. The option is in the set as the free elimination that most current affairs questions of this shape provide, and finding it should be the candidate's first move. The general principle is worth stating: before trying to recall which country did a thing, ask which of the countries offered could have done it. Where a question concerns the British monarch on currency, only the Commonwealth realms — the countries that share the monarch as head of state — are even eligible, and Switzerland is not among them.
• (4)Canada — Canada is a Commonwealth realm and the monarch appears on its currency, so like New Zealand it is a genuinely eligible answer that did not in fact take this step in 2023. Canada's twenty-dollar note carries the monarch's portrait and its coins carry the monarch's effigy, and the country continued with that arrangement. This is the second of the two realm options offered alongside the correct one, and their presence is the reason the question discriminates: a candidate who knows what a Commonwealth realm is can narrow the field from four to three but no further, and only the specific fact of February 2023 finishes the job. The useful mental note is that the Australian decision was reported as a departure precisely because the other realms did not follow it, which is what made it news in the first place.

A Commonwealth realm is a sovereign state that shares the same person as its head of state — since September 2022 King Charles III — while remaining fully independent of the others; there were fifteen such realms in 2023, among them Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica and Papua New Guinea, the number having fallen as states such as Barbados became republics. The monarch's image on currency is a visible expression of that link, and the accession of a new sovereign therefore poses each realm's central bank a practical question. The answers have differed. Australia decided in February 2023 that its five-dollar note, the only one carrying the monarch, would instead carry a design honouring the First Australians, while keeping the monarch's effigy on coins. Other realms have continued with existing designs, replacing the portrait only as notes are reissued. The United Kingdom itself introduced notes bearing King Charles III in due course. None of this is a constitutional change: whether a realm becomes a republic is a separate question decided by its own procedures, and Australia's last referendum on the subject, in 1999, did not carry. Currency design is thus a good example of a symbolic decision that reflects a political debate without settling it.

Current affairs questions that name several countries are usually built so that at least one option is ineligible on structural grounds, and finding that option is the highest-value first move a candidate can make. Here Switzerland has no connection to the British monarchy at all, which reduces the question to three Commonwealth realms and improves the odds substantially before any recall is attempted. What remains cannot be reasoned out, because Australia, New Zealand and Canada were all in the same constitutional position and any of them could in principle have made this decision; only the fact settles it. That is the ordinary structure of a well-set current affairs question, and recognising it tells the candidate when to stop reasoning and either answer or move on. Given that a quarter of the marks for a question is deducted for a wrong answer in this paper, knowing which questions are decidable and which are guesses is itself worth marks. On the substance, MPSC's international affairs questions favour changes that are easy to date — an accession, a redesign, a country joining or leaving a grouping — and the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 generated a cluster of such items for the papers of the following year.

• On 2 February 2023 the Reserve Bank of Australia announced that the new five-dollar banknote would not carry a portrait of King Charles III, and that the space would instead carry a design honouring the culture and history of the First Australians.
• The five-dollar note was the only Australian banknote bearing the monarch's portrait, that of Queen Elizabeth II; the other side of the note continues to show Australia's Parliament House.
• Australian coins continue to carry the monarch's effigy, so the decision concerned banknotes alone and was not a removal of the monarchy from Australian money as a whole.
• Australia remains a Commonwealth realm with the King as head of state; the currency decision was taken by the central bank in consultation with the government and is not a constitutional change.
• A Commonwealth realm is an independent state sharing the same person as head of state; there were fifteen such realms in 2023, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and the accession of King Charles III in September 2022 obliged each of them to decide how to treat the monarch's image on its currency.

• Confusing a change in banknote design with a country becoming a republic, when Australia remains a Commonwealth realm and its coins still carry the monarch
• Failing to remove the ineligible option first, when one of the four countries has no connection to the British monarchy at all
• Choosing another Commonwealth realm on the reasoning that it faced the same question, when the other realms did not take the same decision
• Forgetting that the change applied to a single denomination, the five-dollar note, which is the detail that fixes the fact in memory

International current affairs in MPSC papers favour dated, checkable events, and a change of national symbol is among the easiest to set: it happens on a day, it is reported everywhere, and it has a single correct answer. Option sets in this family are usually built from countries that share the relevant characteristic plus one that does not, so the first task is elimination by eligibility rather than recall. Expect follow-on questions from the same event in later papers — which denomination, which central bank, what replaced the portrait, whether coins were affected — because one well-reported decision can supply several years of questions. The topic also connects to the polity section through the comparison of constitutional monarchies with republics, and a candidate who understands what a Commonwealth realm is will answer both the current affairs question and the comparative one.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Reserve Bank of Australia's decision of February 2023 concerned which banknote ?

  • (a)The five-dollar note
  • (b)The ten-dollar note
  • (c)The twenty-dollar note
  • (d)The fifty-dollar note

  Answer(a) The five-dollar note — it was the only Australian banknote carrying the monarch's portrait, and the central bank decided that in place of a portrait of King Charles III the note would carry a design honouring the culture and history of the First Australians, with Parliament House remaining on the other side. Australian coins were unaffected and continue to bear the monarch's effigy.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is NOT a Commonwealth realm sharing the British monarch as its head of state ?

  • (a)Australia
  • (b)Canada
  • (c)Switzerland
  • (d)New Zealand

  Answer(c) Switzerland — it is a federal republic, is not a member of the Commonwealth and has never had the British monarch as head of state or on its currency. Australia, Canada and New Zealand are all Commonwealth realms, independent states that share the same person as head of state, which is why all three faced the same question about their currency after the accession of King Charles III in September 2022.