Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I'm just trying to work out the mechanism, how this works, because there are many instances where someone becomes aware of a contract being awarded post facto—because it might not be the case that the tender is on AusTender. I'm wondering what the process is for a company that believes there's an action to be taken.

You've said clearly to me that tender documents are available on AusTender, except for the circumstances that you've mentioned, and I accept that. But there is a requirement now to document the actual decision to pick a particular type of procurement. You might say, 'I want to have a limited tender because I believe there are only three companies in the world that provide encryption and are trusted by our security agencies,' for example. How does someone who's outside of that—once again, it could be an international company—get access to the decision-making around that call for a limited tender that the department made? Can they do it via FOI, or is it simply made available as part of the tender package? Encryption might be a bad example, because that could be affected by security concerns. Maybe it's a company that has three specialised widgets. There are only three companies that can do that, and a limited tender goes out. But actually there's a fourth company, and they want to see how that decision-making was done.