Australian Dollar As A Safe Haven?

Preservation of capital is becoming more difficult in the face of the global financial instability experienced in recent years.  The swiss franc was once deemed to be a safe haven currency until the SNB enforced a cap on the EURCHF rate.  The dollar and yen now see the majority of safe haven flows but what about the Australian dollar?  

Australia currently enjoys a prized AAA rating and its currency has been fairly robust when compared with its European counterparts, even though slowing Chinese growth is a concern.  A recent post from CNBC  looks at how the Russian central bank is the latest CB considering diversification and moving into the AUD.   The article says that Russia will allocate $5.025 billion of foreign reserve currency to Aussie dollar based assets including bonds. Could the Australian dollar – which has historically been considered a risk currency – be  changing into a safe haven during these troubled times?

There is a limit to how effective this could be as the underlying AUD liquidity is much less than greenback, yen and euro, it should also be noted that the central bank of Australia is in a cycle of  cutting interest rates.  Nonetheless with additional reports of Germany’s Bundesbank looking into adding assets denominated in Aussie dollars there could potentially be more money flowing across the pacific ocean going forward.