Letter To Senator Bernardi

     Dear Senator Bernardi,
Thank you for your ‘weekly dose of common sense’.  I note your comments about Bitcoin and other ‘cryptocurrencies’, but what really took my attention was your comment that:

“Already around 83 per cent of all global transactions are digital in nature. Cash usage is in steady decline and it won’t be long before there are calls for cash to be withdrawn from circulation”…
“We have already had some government ministers say the $100 note should be withdrawn from circulation. That is just the beginning…
 “There are appealing incentives for government to abolish cash. Currency has associated printing and storage costs. It cannot be tracked and can be used for illegal activities.”

     I am not sure that I understand what you mean by “appealing incentives for government to abolish cash. Currency has associated printing and storage costs…” If you mean Australian notes are currency then what do you mean by digital transactions?  I would have thought Australian notes were ‘legal tender’.

     The Commonwealth Constitution Part V: Powers of the Parliament reads:

(xii) Currency, coinage, and legal tender:
(xiii) Banking, other than State banking; also State banking extending beyond the limits of the State concerned, the incorporation of banks, and the issue of paper money:
Although politicians have claimed, over many a year, that banks do not create the bulk of our nation’s money supply (i.e., bank ‘credit’ – read debt), with the advent of the internet that denial is being shown for the false claim that it is.

  The Bank of England’s Working Paper 529
  Working Paper No. 529     Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds — and why this matters
  Zoltan Jakab and Michael Kumhof
  Found here: https://alor.org/Library/Bank%20of%20England%20working%20paper%20529.pdf

     There are so many related matters that would come under such a suggestion as doing away with Australian note issues, and I presume coins, not least the suggestion that governments would hand over the constitutional right to private institutions to issue and control the nation’s money supply and thereby have effective control of the economy through the issue of private bank created ‘credit’. Judging by your weekly letter, the constitutional issues alone have not shown up on your radar.

Sincerely
  BL, Happy Valley, SA