Let legal tender stay legal - The Centre for Independent Studies
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Let legal tender stay legal

When does the end justify the means? One answer to that question comes in legislation currently snaking its way through the federal parliament that will, if enacted, ban the use of cash to pay bills of $10,000 or more.

As is so often the case, this is a draconian measure that sacrifices our economic freedom on the altar of some high-minded regulatory goal. This time it’s to make the black economy, money laundering and tax evasion more difficult.

The details of the plan are not quite as lurid as some ‘fake news’ reports suggest. You will still be able to withdraw any amount from a bank account (or deposit it), and the ban will only apply to transactions with businesses – it will not apply, for example, to a cash gift from one person to another.

But wherever the ban applies, it will unquestionably encroach on economic freedom. Many people still prefer to use cash even when online bank transfers, direct debits, BPay, eftpos, PayPal and so on have made non-cash means of payment much more convenient and efficient (and sometimes unavoidable). An innocent preference for cash should not be put in the same bucket of illegality as money laundering and tax evasion.

It takes a certain absolutist way of thinking to conclude that cash’s potential to facilitate unacceptable practices justifies government in banning it regardless of the collateral damage to economic freedom. The same kind of thinking has led to plastic bag bans, cumbersome bottle deposit/refund schemes, minimum prices for alcoholic drinks and a recent suggestion that the blood alcohol limit for drivers be lowered to zero.

It is not even clear that the cash ban will contribute much to its stated objective.

At least the cap — at $10,000 — is being set high enough that it will not be an inconvenience for many bona fide transactions. However, is this just the beginning of a slippery slope to lower and lower caps and ultimately a cashless economy… a ‘big brother’ world in which the anonymity and privacy of cash are lost forever?

It would be best not to even start down that path. The authorities have enough tools to tackle money laundering and tax evasion without doing so.

Every note in your pocket carries the declaration “legal tender throughout Australia.” Let that continue to mean exactly what it says, without a caveat that says “unless too many of them are bundled together.”