It is subdivided into cents. Section 51 xii of the Constitution of Australia gives the Commonwealth federal Parliament the power to legislate with respect to "currency, coinage, and legal tender". Before Federation in , the six colonies that comprised Australia had separate currencies, all of which closely replicated the British currency system , and were usually exchangeable with each other on a one-to-one basis.
Hence Federation was not seen as urgently requiring a single, unified currency. For another 10 years, colonial banknotes and coins continued to be the main circulating currencies. In , a select committee of the House of Representatives , chaired by George Edwards , had recommended that Australia adopt a single, national decimal currency, with a pound divided into ten florins and each florin comprising cents. Like the UK pound, it was divided into pence, or 20 shillings each comprising 12 pence.
In , a banking royal commission , appointed by the Lyons government , recommended that Australia adopt "a system of decimal coinage Scott , to examine the merits of decimalisation. The Menzies government announced its support for decimalisation in July , but delayed the process in order to give further consideration to the implementation process. A public consultation process was held in which over 1, names were suggested for the new currency.
This was reduced to a shortlist of seven names: austral, crown, dollar, pound, regal, tasman and royal. This met with widespread public disapproval, and three months later it was announced that it would instead be named the "dollar".
It was legal tender in Papua New Guinea until 31 December when it was replaced by the kina , and in Solomon Islands until when it was replaced by the Solomon Islands dollar. In everyday Australian parlance, these coins collectively are referred to as "gold coins". Australia's coins are produced by the Royal Australian Mint , which is located in the nation's capital, Canberra. Since opening in , the Mint has produced more than 14 billion circulating coins, and has the capacity to produce more than two million coins per day, or more than million coins per year.
