Which country has removed the mention of the British Monarchy from its currency notes in 2023 ?

Question

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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.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) 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.  (c) 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.  (d) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2023 Q99 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q99 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer