The demise of cash brings a stark new reality for Australians
Cash is king, so the saying goes.
These days it's more like Prince Harry – exiled and mostly forgotten about except for the odd bit of novelty entertainment.
I was recently packing for a week away at the Warrnambool races and shoved my hand in a suit pocket before putting it in the bag – only to find a wad of $50 notes that I'd clean forgotten.
As best I could deduce, I must have won it on the punt previously and never retrieved it from the jacket.
So I proceeded to hand it all back to the bookies, never to be seen again – which, in one way or another, is what has happened to most people's cash.
Not necessarily on the punt. But it's nowhere to be seen.
Even as a young man, there was a time when I only punted with cash.
I'd do the form on Friday evening and Saturday morning I'd go down to the pub or TAB to put my bets on for the day.
There were always a few coins on hand to have a quick bet if I popped into the pub for a quiet pint in the afternoon.
I was on first-name terms with the lady who ran the TAB near the newsroom in Adelaide.
The kitty was in my bedside drawer and I could see exactly how much cash was coming in and out.
Then Covid came along and the sneeze police said you couldn't go to the pub or you'd be put in the city watch house so I was forced to punt online instead – and I've been doing it ever since.
It's a bit sad, really, because I enjoyed the ritual of going to the TAB to have a chat and put a bet on but new habits formed and they stuck.
Now, on a Friday afternoon, I sometimes take myself to the pub with some cash for the novelty of having a bet the old fashioned way.
All of this is to say that you don't realise just how quickly habits form – and how fast that has driven cash into obscurity.
You may say you don't care because it's easier to use your credit or debit card.
And that's fine so long as you still have the freedom to use cash – but just you wait till that doesn't exist anymore.
This masthead's Ella McIlveen recently wrote of how supermarkets are slowly squeezing out cash by reducing the number of self-service terminals that will take it.
Many of the Coles and Woolworths outlets she visited had just two terminals accepting cash.
One – a Coles shop – had none at all.
The only way you could use cash was to go to a manned checkout. Except none of them were manned.
This is not for the convenience of the consumer. It is a deliberate ploy by corporate Australia and the federal government to reduce the use of cash so they can eventually scrap it altogether.
It's a bit like banks keep justifying the closure of ATMs and branches by saying that fewer people are using cash without acknowledging that one of the main reasons fewer people are using cash is because they've taken away all the places from which you can get it.
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that ultimately leads to the abolition of the one form of money over which you have complete control – which is exactly what they want.
The most valuable resource on the planet today is not dug out of the ground, it's dug out of your life.
Data is worth more than gold or any diamond and digital transactions paint a picture of who you are and what you do.
Your bank probably knows you better than you know yourself.
And once you get rid of cash, the government can introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
CBDCs would be issued by the federal government of Reserve Bank but because it exists digitally and not physically, it can potentially give the issuer control at all times.
The controller of a CBDC could, theoretically, add or deduct money from your account at any time for any reason.
It could give the controller – the government – the power to dictate how that money can or cannot be spent.
And it could give the government complete oversight of how and where you spend your money, thus creating a surveillance state on a mass scale.
You may figure that's unlikely to be a problem – but imagine that power in the wrong hands.
Governments don't always act in your best interest.
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