The chequebook is dead. The real victims are Top Gun and breakfast TV

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My first thought upon hearing of the death of the chequebook was the same one that occurs every time an elderly celebrity carks it: "Huh? I thought he was already dead!"

Didn't the chequebook kick the bucket years ago? Pretty sure the last time I laid eyes on one was when Mum was tossing up whether to buy my BP servo Smurfs by cheque or bankcard.

Apparently, cheques are on their last legs – and they’ll be dead and gone in seven years. Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he’ll phase them out by 2030. No more chequebooks. Making this article the first of the last pieces of chequebook journalism.

Finland, of course, got rid of them in 1993. Probably didn't like the design. Still, it's astonishing cheques lasted even that long. What flimsy things. Imagine the meeting when cheques were invented.

"We need to ensure people pay the correct sums of money in a secure, foolproof manner."

"Scrawl numbers on a scrap of paper?"

"Perfect!"

I suspect those people now run the Reserve Bank.

In 2015, my wife and I tried to buy a home but kept getting outbid by wealthy, older men in baggy trousers and golf caps. Bizarrely for the 21st century, there was only one acceptable payment method for the winning bidder at auction: cheque. That meant everyone competing had to show up brandishing a blank cheque, just in case they accidentally won.

Forget the stresses of the house hunt, the loan applications, the auction itself. The truly traumatic business was finding a damn cheque. Blathering in desperation, I asked everyone I knew.

"Where do I get one?"

"No idea," they said.

I asked older people who already had cheques.

"Where do I get one of those?"

"No idea," they said. "I just rip ’em out of my chequebook."

I think this finally explains why older people own all the world's property – they have cheques! No one under 60 has one. They can't buy a house.

The death of cheques spells a game-changer for the property market. At last, young people can get on the ladder because the Boomers’ cheques are now useless!

Prepare to see lots of older men in baggy trousers and golf caps moaning, "We’re locked out of the market. And people our age don't even like avocados!"

Illustration by Matt Golding.Credit:

I didn't know cheques still existed yet, now that they’re going, I’m beset with anxiety. How can we go on without cheques? How will rich people show off their wealth if they can't declare they’re "writing a blank cheque"? What might they do instead – hand over their phone and say, "Here's a blank field in the transaction page of my Westpac app"? Doesn't have the same flair, does it?

How will generous donations be made to charity when they can no longer be handed a giant-size novelty cheque on breakfast television? A giant-size novelty eftpos machine hardly cuts it. And such a cumbersome prop would surely risk crushing the new host of Sunrise to death.

Plus, spare a thought for the director and writers of the 1994 family movie Blank Cheque (released in the US under the confounding title Blank Check). The entire premise of their creative brainchild – that a kid finds a blank cheque and cashes it for a million dollars – has been cruelly smashed. Just as Blank Cheque was by critics upon its release.

Indeed, a host of cinematic classics will be wiped out along with the chequebook. Whenever Tom Cruise receives a dressing down in Top Gun from a stern, bald man telling him, "Your ego is writing cheques your body can't cash", viewers will be just as baffled about the meaning of that phrase as they were when the film first came out.

Then there's the global financial system itself. What about choosing between Cheque or Savings on the ATM? Gone! Banks will have to seal off all those Cheque buttons with gaffer tape, an expensive business. Not that anyone knew what that Cheque button was for to begin with. Did it make the machine spit out a cheque? Did it cause the 1994 movie Blank Cheque to play on the ATM screen to the customer's horror? Now we’ll never know.

Worst of all, we’ll never be able to answer the biggest question: Is it spelt "cheque" or "check"?

Andrew Hansen's new comedy show is touring nationally, with dates at MrAndrewHansen.com

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