Earlier a mint spokesman did not deny the plans to abolish the coin, saying: "We are not going to answer that question." But a reliable source said staff in the design and engraving section had been working for some months on a redesign that would include an updated portrait of the Queen on all Australian coins. Any change to the royal portrait requires the Queen's approval. "She has to OK it  she has to agree to the new dies that are to be made for her side of those coins," the source said. Only four images of the Queen have graced Australian coins since dollars and cents replaced pounds, shillings and pence in 1966 . Her picture was last updated in 1999, with the Queen choosing a design by British sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley from the three submitted. She did, however, approve a design by Australian Vladimir Gottwald in 2000 to be used once only to commemorate her visit to Australia that year.

The plan to ditch the five-cent piece follows the scrapping of one and two-cent coins in the early 1990s. Federal treasurer Paul Keating said then that the cost of minting the copper coins far exceeded their value, and they had lost their real purchasing power. "Many people regard them as a nuisance  millions of these coins drop out of circulation each year," Mr Keating said on the night of the 1990 federal budget. Prices began being rounded to the nearest five cents for cash transactions. Since then the five-cent coin has been "Australia's most shunned shrapnel", with shopkeepers and retailers calling for the echidna-clad currency to be abandoned, as the New Zealand equivalent was in 2006. In Melbourne city, parking meters do not accept five-cent coins, and shoppers would struggle to find an item on supermarket shelves for five cents.

Australian Retailers Association executive director Richard Evans said yesterday many retailers found the small coins a "menace" to handle and would support the move. But he said it would complicate pricing policies, and retailers would need some direction, perhaps from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, on whether they should round prices up or down. "As long as it doesn't provide any burden in terms of costs for retailers they'd probably support it," Mr Evans said. He said with many purchases now made electronically and not rounded up or down, the impact on consumers would be limited. "The only people it will probably affect is money boxes for children," he said.

Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said there was no doubt some people would welcome a decision to scrap the "inconvenient" coin, but the real question was what impact would it have on prices. "And if you tell people the prices would be rounded up by five cents I'm sure they would be far more reticent in terms of seeing an end to it," he said. "A lot of prices are already $2.99 rather than $2.95 so one could be forgiven for thinking that the temptation is far more to round up than round down.