50 Dollars

Australia's polymer banknote program, developed jointly by the Reserve Bank and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation through the 1970s and 80s, gave Note Printing Australia a significant export business — the substrate and printing technology were eventually licensed to dozens of central banks worldwide. The $50 was part of the second polymer series introduced in 1995, and this issue continues that run essentially unchanged through to the NexGen redesign of 2018.

The transparent window on this series was a deliberate manufacturing integration, not an add-on — the clear register is part of the biaxially oriented polypropylene substrate itself, which made early counterfeiting attempts visibly crude.