How to Request and Use a Tender Debrief

A civil SME that bids ten government tenders a year and wins three has spent somewhere between one hundred and three hundred hours on submissions that lost. The only structured, free, first-hand information available about why those seven bids failed is a tender debrief — and in most jurisdictions you have an enforceable entitlement to one.

Most contractors never ask. Of those who do ask, most ask badly: an email a fortnight after the award notice saying “any feedback on why we missed out”, which produces a two-line reply about being competitive on price but not on capability, which tells them nothing they can act on.

This guide covers what you are actually entitled to jurisdiction by jurisdiction, how to ask so that you get something usable, what the agency is not permitted to tell you, and — importantly — where the debrief sits relative to the complaint and judicial review mechanisms, because the sequencing catches contractors out badly. We reference debriefs repeatedly in our guides to pricing strategy and building a tender content library; this is the dedicated treatment.

Why almost nobody asks

The reasons contractors give are consistent, and all four are wrong.

The belief	The reality
“It will annoy them and hurt my chances next time”	Agencies are directed to offer debriefs as good practice and, in several jurisdictions, are required to provide them. Requesting one is normal professional behaviour, not a complaint
“They won’t tell me anything useful”	Sometimes true, and largely a function of how you ask. A structured request with specific questions produces a structured answer
“It’s too late to matter”	Correct about that tender, wrong about the next one. Evaluation criteria and evaluator expectations are highly repetitive within an agency
“I already know why we lost — price”	The most expensive assumption in tendering. Non-price criteria commonly account for the majority of the weighting, and contractors who assume price systematically under-invest in the sections that actually cost them the work

The last row is worth dwelling on. Our guide to how government tenders are scored sets out why the lowest price does not win. A debrief is the mechanism that tests whether your own theory of why you lost is correct — and in our experience it frequently is not.

Commonwealth: the entitlement is explicit

The Commonwealth Procurement Rules are the clearest of the frameworks. Following the rejection of a submission or the award of a contract, officials must promptly inform affected tenderers of the decision, and debriefings must be made available, on request, to unsuccessful tenderers outlining the reasons the submission was unsuccessful. Debriefings must also be made available, on request, to the successful supplier.^[1]

Three details in that framework are worth extracting because they are directly actionable.

• Notification must be in writing if you request it. The rules provide that notification should be in writing, and must be provided in writing if requested by the tenderer.^[1] Ask for it in writing as a matter of course.
• A full debrief should be offered whether or not you ask. Department of Finance guidance states that, as a matter of good practice, entities should offer a full debrief to unsuccessful tenderers irrespective of whether a tenderer has requested one.^[2] If none is offered, that is a departure from good practice, and referring to it politely tends to produce one.
• Successful tenderers are entitled too. You may request a debriefing after the completion of every approach to market you respond to, whether or not you won.^[3] Debriefing a win is the single most under-used tactic in this whole area — it tells you what an agency values, from a position of strength rather than disappointment.

On what the debrief is for, the guidance is candid: the primary purpose is to help you understand how your tender was evaluated, the strengths of your submission, areas for improvement and why it was unsuccessful, and to help you build competitive capability. It is not to justify the selection of the successful tenderer.^[4] Going into a debrief expecting the agency to defend its choice guarantees a frustrating meeting. Going in to understand your own scoring produces something you can use.

New South Wales: the SME and regional trigger

This is the most valuable single fact in this guide for a civil SME, and almost nobody in the sector seems to know it.

New South Wales buyer guidance provides that in some circumstances an agency must carry out a post-tender debrief. Those circumstances include tenderers who were unsuccessful for a covered procurement tender process, and where an Aboriginal business, small to medium enterprise or regional supplier reasonably requests a debrief.^[5]

Read that again in the context of your own business. If you are an SME — which describes essentially every contractor in the $50,000 to $2 million civil band — or a regional supplier, or an Aboriginal business, a reasonable request for a debrief on New South Wales government work creates a mandatory obligation on the buyer. It is not a courtesy that depends on the officer’s goodwill or workload.

Two practical consequences. First, say so in the request. A request that identifies you as an SME or regional supplier and asks for a debrief on that basis is materially harder to deflect than one that does not. Second, “reasonably requests” is the qualifier that does the work: a request made promptly, in writing, with specific questions and a willingness to accommodate the agency’s timing is a reasonable request. A demand made three months later for a line-by-line comparison against the winner is not.

The policy intent behind this is long-standing. The New South Wales SME procurement policy framework identifies debriefing unsuccessful tenderers to improve their competitiveness as a component of SME support, and describes the provision of information to unsuccessful tenderers as very important for supplier development.^[6] The debrief is not a concession extracted from a reluctant agency; it is an instrument of the state’s own SME policy.

Queensland: all tenderers must be offered one

Queensland’s position is stated in the buyer guidance in four words: all tenderers must be offered a debrief. For other procurement processes, suppliers may request a debrief, which agencies are expected to provide.^[7] The guidance is currently being reviewed to align with the Queensland Procurement Policy 2026 — the reform we covered in our guide to what QPP 2026 means for civil construction SMEs — so confirm the current position, but the direction of travel is toward more supplier development rather than less.^[7]

Queensland’s buyer guidance is unusually detailed, and reading it as a supplier tells you exactly how to get more out of the meeting. Buyers are directed to work with evaluation panel members to prepare, to identify training opportunities or support where the panel found gaps in a supplier’s offer, to tailor the debriefing to the complexity of the procurement including whether in-person or written debriefs are appropriate, and — the useful one — to consider asking the supplier to email questions for discussion a week before the debriefing.^[7]

That last instruction is a gift. If the buyer’s own guidance anticipates receiving your questions in advance, then sending your questions in advance without being asked is not presumptuous — it is helping them follow their own process. It also means the officer arrives having actually checked the evaluation record against your specific questions, rather than recalling it from memory. This single change does more to improve debrief quality than anything else in this guide.

Queensland also publishes supporting materials including a supplier debriefing quick guide, a debriefing template and an unsuccessful letter template.^[7][8] Knowing the template your debrief will be built from is a legitimate advantage.

Victoria: on request, plus the complaint procedure

Victorian guidance provides that all participants should be offered a debrief as part of communicating the procurement outcome, and that agencies must provide a debrief to any unsuccessful suppliers that request one. Discussion points and outcomes must be promptly recorded and stored in accordance with government policy.^[9]

Two features of the Victorian framework are worth knowing.

The first is the recording obligation. Because the agency must record and store the debrief discussion, there is a file note of what you were told. That matters if the feedback you receive is inconsistent with the evaluation record, and it is a reason to keep your own contemporaneous note as well.

The second is more directly useful: the agency must promptly provide a copy of its complaint procedure on request.^[9] Each Victorian agency is responsible for developing its own complaints management procedure.^[9] If a debrief leaves you with a genuine process concern rather than a scoring disappointment, asking for the complaint procedure is a specific, low-conflict, entitled next step — and it signals seriousness without making an allegation.

Councils: no general entitlement

Here is the gap that matters most for civil SMEs, because councils award the majority of work in the $50,000 to $2 million band.

The frameworks described above are state and Commonwealth procurement policies. They bind state agencies and Commonwealth entities. They do not, of themselves, create a general entitlement to a debrief on local government procurement, which is governed by each council’s own procurement policy made under its state’s local government legislation.

In practice this means:

• Check the council’s procurement policy. Many address supplier feedback and debriefing explicitly. It is a public document, and if it commits the council to offering feedback, you can reference that commitment.
• Check the conditions of tendering. Many council RFTs state whether debriefs will be offered and how to request one. This is often overlooked at the point it matters most — before you submit.
• Ask anyway. The absence of a mandatory obligation is not a refusal. Council works and procurement officers frequently give more candid feedback than state agencies, because the relationship is ongoing, local and personal.
• On panel and quote-based work, expect less. A quote request off a standing offer is a lighter process than a tender, and there is generally no debrief obligation attached to it at all. Our guide to winning work off panels and standing offers explains why the discretionary invitation decision that precedes a panel quote is invisible and undocumented — which makes the relationship with the officer the only available feedback channel.

The strategic conclusion is uncomfortable but useful: on council work, the debrief is a relationship, not an entitlement. Which is a reason to treat every interaction with a works or procurement officer as part of the same continuous conversation.

What a debrief will and will not tell you

Calibrating expectations correctly is most of what separates a useful debrief from a frustrating one.

Generally available	Generally not available
How your submission performed against each evaluation criterion	The other tenderers’ scores
The strengths the panel identified in your submission	Any aspect of another business’s tender response[3]
Where your response was weak, thin or non-responsive	The winning price, unless separately published
Whether you failed a mandatory or conformance requirement, and which one	The evaluation panel’s internal deliberations
How the process was conducted and how the criteria were applied	A justification of why the winner was better than you[4]
Guidance on what would improve future submissions	Commercially confidential information of any other party

The prohibition on discussing other tenderers is explicit in Commonwealth guidance and is a genuine constraint rather than an evasion.^[3] Note also that whether the identity of the successful supplier is disclosed at all can be a matter for consideration rather than automatic — Queensland’s buyer guidance treats the decision to disclose the successful supplier’s identity as one requiring consideration.^[8] On Commonwealth work you generally will not need to ask, because contract awards are published; see the section on AusTender below.

The left-hand column is the valuable one, and it is more than enough. Criterion-by-criterion performance on your own submission, plus the specific weaknesses identified, is exactly the input required to improve. It is also information you cannot obtain any other way.

Why the debrief is the wrong place for a process complaint

This section is the one most likely to save a contractor from a serious and irreversible mistake, and it turns on sequencing.

The Commonwealth’s judicial review regime for procurement is the Government Procurement (Judicial Review) Act 2018. It gives suppliers and potential suppliers a right to judicial review where they believe an entity or official has contravened the relevant Commonwealth Procurement Rules in relation to a covered procurement. A supplier makes a written complaint to the entity; the accountable authority must formally investigate it; and the procurement is suspended during the investigation unless a public interest certificate is in place.^[10]

That suspension power is the real remedy, and it has an expiry date. Complaints must be made in writing to the relevant entity immediately after becoming aware of the alleged breach.^[10] And critically, the Act provides that a contravention of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules does not affect the validity of a contract — the court has no power to overturn a contract once it has been awarded.^[11]

Now put the two facts together. A debrief happens after the award decision. By the time you are sitting in a debrief and hearing something that sounds like a process irregularity, the contract is generally already executed, the suspension remedy is gone, and the most a court can now do is award compensation.^[12]

The practical rule that follows:

• If you have a process concern during the tender period, raise it during the tender period. In writing, promptly, to the nominated contact. That is when the mechanisms have teeth.
• Do not save a concern for the debrief. Contractors do this constantly, reasoning that they do not want to jeopardise their bid by complaining while it is live. The effect is to forfeit the remedy.
• Use the debrief for learning, and the complaint process for process. They are different instruments with different timings, and conflating them produces the worst of both.

State frameworks differ in detail, and local government differs again, but the underlying logic is consistent: a live procurement can be paused and corrected; an executed contract generally cannot be unwound.

How to request one

The request itself determines the quality of what you get back. Six elements, and it should fit on one page.

1. Send it promptly. Within a week or two of the award notification, while the evaluation record is fresh and the panel members are still assembled.
2. Send it in writing, to the nominated contact officer named in the tender documents, referencing the tender number and title exactly.
3. Say what you are. On New South Wales work in particular, identify yourself as a small to medium enterprise, a regional supplier or an Aboriginal business if applicable, because that is what converts the request into a mandatory obligation.^[5]
4. Ask for it in writing, or for a meeting, or both. On Commonwealth work, notification must be provided in writing if you request it.^[1] A written debrief is more useful for your records; a meeting is more useful for candour. Asking for a meeting followed by a written summary gets both.
5. Attach your questions. Queensland buyer guidance anticipates suppliers emailing questions for discussion a week before the debriefing.^[7] Do it everywhere. Four to six specific questions, tied to the published evaluation criteria.
6. Frame it as improvement, not challenge. State plainly that the purpose is to improve future submissions. This is both true and the framing the guidance itself uses, and it produces markedly more open answers than a request that reads like a prelude to a complaint.

One additional note for the successful bidder. If you won, request the debrief anyway — you are entitled to it, the conversation is relaxed, and what an agency tells a winner about why they won is the most direct statement of that agency’s preferences you will ever obtain.^[1]

The questions worth asking

Generic questions produce generic answers. These are structured to produce specifics, and they are ordered so that the most useful come first in case the meeting is short.

• “How did our submission rate against each of the published evaluation criteria?” The single most important question. Criterion by criterion, not overall.
• “Which criterion was our weakest, and what specifically was missing or unconvincing?” Forces a concrete answer rather than a summary judgement.
• “Was our submission fully conforming, or did any part of it fail a mandatory requirement or returnable?” A yes here changes everything, because conformance failures are cheap to fix and expensive to repeat.
• “Was our price within a competitive range for this work?” Note the phrasing. You are not asking for the winning price; you are asking whether your price was in the field. Most officers can answer that.
• “Which parts of our response did the panel regard as strengths?” Tells you what to keep and reuse, which is as valuable as knowing what to fix.
• “Was our methodology assessed as project-specific, or as generic?” A direct probe at the most common failure in civil submissions — see our guide to writing a methodology statement.
• “Were our management plans — WHS, environmental, quality — assessed as adequate for this contract?” These are frequently where marks quietly disappear.
• “What would you want to see from us on the next tender of this type?” The forward-looking question, and often the most candidly answered of all.
• “Are there upcoming procurements of this type, and is there anything we should do to be better positioned?” A business development question, appropriately placed at the end.

What not to ask: anything about another tenderer’s submission, score or price. It cannot be answered, asking wastes your limited time, and it shifts the tone of the meeting from development to grievance.^[3]

If you were excluded before evaluation

A separate and more urgent case. If your submission was set aside before evaluation — for lateness, for failing minimum content and format requirements, or for not satisfying the conditions for participation — the feedback available is different, and so is what you should do with it.

Two points from the Commonwealth guidance frame this correctly. First, exclusion for non-compliance with mandatory criteria and conditions for participation is not discretionary — the procurement officer must set aside a non-compliant response.^[3] There is no relationship, explanation or subsequent argument that recovers it. Second, where a tender is rejected before evaluation, feedback should be provided about how the submission failed, but there should be no discussion of the continuing procurement process.^[2]

So the question to ask is narrow and specific: which requirement, exactly, did we fail? Commonwealth guidance to suppliers says precisely this — if your response has been set aside because it did not meet a minimum requirement or condition for participation, be sure to clarify which specific requirements, because addressing them positions you to tender competitively for similar work in future.^[3]

Then fix it systemically rather than individually. A conformance failure is almost never a one-off; it is a defect in your submission process. An expired insurance certificate, a missing signature, an unaddressed returnable or a breached page limit will recur unless the process changes. Our guides to common tender mistakes and insurance requirements for government civil tenders deal with the two most frequent causes.

Finding out who won without asking

On Commonwealth work you often do not need the debrief to establish who won and for how much, because it is published.

Relevant entities must report a contract or amendment on AusTender within 42 days of entering into or amending it where it is valued at or above the reporting threshold, and all standing offers must be reported within 42 days of the agency entering into or amending such arrangements, regardless of value.^[13] That gives you the successful supplier, the value and the procurement method — without asking anyone.

The equivalents at other levels are worth knowing because they are the same kind of free intelligence:

• State tender platforms publish contract award notices. Our platform guides — for AusTender, Buy.NSW, QTenders and Buying for Victoria — cover where to look on each.
• Council contract registers are the most under-used source in local government. They typically record the contract, the supplier, the value, the term and the procurement method used. A register showing repeated awards off a panel tells you appointment matters more than tendering at that council.

Used together over a year, award notices and contract registers let you build your own picture of who wins what, at what value, through which channel — which is a form of competitive intelligence no debrief will give you.

When a debrief is not enough

Where a debrief leaves a genuine information gap, freedom of information legislation is the next instrument: the Freedom of Information Act at Commonwealth level, the Government Information (Public Access) regime in New South Wales, and Right to Information in Queensland, with equivalents in each other jurisdiction.

Be realistic about it. Requests of this kind can in principle reach evaluation documents, internal notes and marking schemes, but the extent of what is actually released varies considerably because agencies rely on exemptions — commercial-in-confidence material, other parties’ business information, and internal deliberative content among them.^[14] An access request also carries fees, statutory timeframes measured in weeks, and third-party consultation requirements, and it changes the relationship with the agency in a way a debrief does not.

Our assessment for an SME: an access request is rarely worth it for ordinary competitive disappointment, and is worth considering where you have a specific, evidenced concern about process — and, in that case, the complaint route below is usually faster and cheaper.

Escalation: complaints and judicial review

The escalation ladder is deliberately ordered, and skipping steps generally forecloses the later ones.

1. Raise it with the procuring entity, as early as possible. Commonwealth guidance is explicit that all procurement complaints should be raised with the procuring entity in the first instance, and that raising concerns early can reduce the chance of more serious problems later. If you have been unsuccessful and have a concern, request a debrief first.^[15]
2. If unresolved, complain formally to the entity. Say clearly that you do not regard the matter as resolved. Complaints should relate to the process followed and its consistency with the applicable procurement rules — not to the merits of the decision.^[16] Under the Commonwealth rules, entities must apply timely, equitable and non-discriminatory complaint-handling procedures, including acknowledging the complaint soon after receipt.^[17]
3. Escalate to the entity’s central complaints point. Australian Government organisations publish details of how to complain to a central registration point, such as a central procurement team.^[16] In Victoria, request the agency’s complaint procedure, which it must promptly provide.^[9]
4. Judicial review, for covered Commonwealth procurements. A written complaint under the Act triggers a formal investigation and suspends the procurement unless a public interest certificate issues. If the complaint cannot be resolved, you may seek an injunction in the Federal Court or Federal Circuit Court — but the court must not grant one unless you have made a reasonable attempt to resolve the complaint where it would be reasonable to do so. The Act also permits compensation claims where a supplier’s interests are affected by a contravention.^[10][12]

A written complaint under the Commonwealth Act typically needs your business details and ABN, the procurement details including the estimated contract value, relevant dates and the AusTender identifier, a factual and concise outline of the complaint identifying which rules you believe were breached, and any supporting evidence. At the conclusion you receive a report on the outcome of the investigation.^[18]

Two cautions. The public interest certificate mechanism allows an accountable authority to certify that suspension is not in the public interest, and guidance provides that a certificate should only issue where the adverse public interest impact of suspending exceeds the aggrieved supplier’s right to have the procurement suspended.^[19] And the commercial reality: a formal complaint against an agency you intend to keep bidding to is a significant decision with consequences beyond the individual tender. It is sometimes the right decision. It is rarely the right decision over a scoring disagreement.

Bid cost contributions

A short section on something almost no SME knows exists, and which belongs in any discussion of what an unsuccessful bidder can obtain.

New South Wales buyer guidance contemplates that an agency may decide to offer bid costs to unsuccessful suppliers on construction or infrastructure contracts. The conditions are that the supplier’s bid showed it was genuinely attempting to fully satisfy the request for tender’s intent, and that the supplier agrees to give the agency any intellectual property rights it reasonably requests. The agency may pay up to 50 per cent of the estimated bid costs included in the final business case, with the need and rationale identified in that business case and the proposed contribution included in the total project funding envelope.^[5]

This is not a general entitlement and it is not available on ordinary small tenders — it is a mechanism for larger, complex procurements where the state wants serious bids and recognises that bid costs deter them. But it is worth knowing for two reasons. On a large, document-heavy infrastructure tender, it is legitimate to ask during the tender period whether a bid cost contribution is available. And the existence of the mechanism confirms something worth internalising: the cost of bidding is understood by government to be a real barrier, which is an argument you can make in conversations about how procurements are structured.

Capturing debriefs so they compound

A debrief that improves the next tender is worth a few hundred dollars of your time. A debrief system that improves every tender for the next five years is worth considerably more, and the difference is entirely in the recording.

The minimum discipline:

• Request a debrief on every submission, won or lost, as a standing process step rather than a decision.
• Record it in a single register — agency, tender, work type, outcome, criterion-by-criterion feedback, price position where disclosed, and the specific improvement identified.
• Hold an internal debrief as well, within a week, with whoever wrote the submission and whoever priced it. Three questions: what worked, what did not, what changes next time.
• Feed the findings back into the library. If the panel said your methodology read as generic, the fix belongs in the methodology library, not in a memory. Our guide to building a tender content library sets out the structure, including a dedicated place for debrief records.
• Review the register annually and look for patterns by agency and by work type. This is where the real value emerges — a specific agency consistently marking you down on the same criterion is a solvable problem you cannot see from any single debrief.

The compounding effect is the point. Ten debriefs tell you something about your submissions. Fifty tell you something about each agency’s preferences, which is the basis of a genuinely informed go/no-go decision and of pricing from evidence rather than intuition.

Where to start

Concrete, in order:

1. Request a debrief on your most recent unsuccessful tender, even if it closed months ago. The worst outcome is a polite decline.
2. Write a one-page request template with the six elements above and your standard question set, and add “request debrief” as a mandatory step in your bid process.
3. Add the jurisdiction-specific line to your template. On New South Wales work, identify yourself as an SME, regional supplier or Aboriginal business, because that converts a request into an obligation.^[5]
4. Always attach your questions in advance. It is what the buyer’s own guidance anticipates, and it is the single highest-leverage change available.^[7]
5. Start the register. A spreadsheet is sufficient. What matters is that it exists before the next debrief rather than after the fifth.
6. Debrief your wins too. You are entitled, and it is the most informative conversation available.^[1]
7. Change one habit now: if you have a process concern during a live tender, raise it during the tender. Not at the debrief, by which point the remedies have largely expired.^[11]

The framing that makes this stick: a debrief is not an autopsy and it is not an appeal. It is the only occasion on which the people who scored your submission will explain their reasoning to you, at no cost, on the record. A contractor who treats that as a routine part of every bid rather than an awkward favour to request will, over a few years, know more about how their market evaluates work than most of their competitors.

All entitlements, obligations and examples in this guide are illustrative and drawn from published sources at the date of writing. Procurement policies, rules and guidance are revised regularly, and local government obligations differ council by council; confirm the current position against the applicable framework and the conditions of tendering for your particular procurement. This guide is general information and not legal advice.

1. Commonwealth Procurement Rules (17 November 2025) and accompanying explanatory notes — after the rejection of a submission or the award of a contract, relevant entities must promptly inform affected tenderers of that decision; notification should be provided in writing, and must be provided in writing if requested by the tenderer; debriefings must be made available, on request, to unsuccessful tenderers outlining the reasons the submission was unsuccessful; and debriefings must also be made available, on request, to the successful supplier or suppliers. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
2. Australian Government Department of Finance — Providing Feedback procurement guidance (the CPRs require entities to provide an unsuccessful tenderer with the reasons its submission was not successful, and on request to provide debriefings; effective feedback provides transparency and accountability and assists in educating the market, which may improve the standard of future submissions; as a matter of good practice, entities should offer a full debrief to unsuccessful tenderers irrespective of whether a tenderer has requested a debrief; feedback can be provided at various stages, and where a tender is rejected prior to evaluation because it was late, did not conform to the minimum content and format requirements, or did not satisfy the conditions for participation, feedback should be provided about how the submission failed but there should be no discussion about the continuing procurement process; after contract award the entity must promptly inform all tenderers of the decision). ↩ ↩
3. Australian Government Selling to Government — Debriefing and feedback and If you don’t win a contract (a supplier is entitled to request a debriefing from an Australian Government buyer after the completion of every approach to market it responds to, whether successful or unsuccessful; many organisations offer debriefing sessions to unsuccessful tenderers as a matter of course, and where not automatically offered, organisations must provide debriefings on request; the primary purpose is to enable potential suppliers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their tender response and help develop more competitive responses in future; aspects of another business’s tender response cannot be discussed; typical themes include comparison of the submission to the evaluation criteria and understanding of the procurement process; a procurement officer must set aside any tender response that does not comply with mandatory criteria and conditions for participation, and this is not discretionary; where a response has been set aside for failing a minimum requirement or condition for participation, the supplier should clarify which specific requirements were not met, since addressing them positions the supplier to tender competitively for similar work in future). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
4. Australian Government Department of Finance — Procurement complaints for business (the primary purpose of a debrief is to help tenderers understand how the tender was evaluated, the strengths of the submission, areas of improvement and why the submission was unsuccessful, and tenderer debriefing is an important process to assist in building competitive capabilities); and Selling to Government (the purpose of a debriefing is not to justify the selection of the successful tender, but to give feedback on the tender response). ↩ ↩
5. NSW Government buyer guidance — Contract award obligations: other requirements (in some circumstances a buyer must carry out a post-tender debrief, including for tenderers who were unsuccessful for a covered procurement tender process, and where an Aboriginal business, small to medium enterprise or regional supplier reasonably requests a debrief; an agency may decide to offer bid costs to unsuccessful suppliers for construction or infrastructure contracts where the supplier’s bid showed it was genuinely attempting to fully satisfy the request for tender’s intent and the supplier agrees to give the agency any intellectual property rights it reasonably requests, with payment of up to 50% of the estimated bid costs included in the final business case, the need and rationale identified in that business case, and the proposed contribution included in the total project funding envelope presented to the Expenditure Review Committee or Cabinet; after awarding a contract valued at $7.5 million or more the Aboriginal Procurement Policy 2021 requires the successful supplier to provide a final Aboriginal Participation Plan). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
6. NSW Government Procurement — Small and Medium Enterprises Policy Framework (the SME-focused communication and advice program includes giving adequate advance notice to industry of major purchases, providing briefings for potential providers for complex tender submissions, and debriefing unsuccessful tenderers to improve their competitiveness; the provision of information to unsuccessful tenderers is described as very important for service provider development, including information as to why they were unsuccessful and constructive suggestions on how their tender responses could be improved in future). ↩
7. Queensland Government — Debriefing a supplier procurement guidance for buyers (all tenderers must be offered a debrief, and for other procurement processes suppliers may request a debrief which agencies are expected to provide; supplier debriefing sessions promote transparency, build trust, support supplier development and improve the quality of future tenders; buyers should work with evaluation panel members to prepare for the debrief, and where the panel identified gaps in the supplier’s offer should identify any training opportunities or support to help build the supplier’s business capability; buyers should tailor the debriefing to the complexity of the procurement, considering whether in-person and/or written debriefings are appropriate; buyers should identify opportunities to make it easier for the supplier to do business with government, for example by considering asking the supplier to email questions for discussion a week before the debriefing; supporting resources include a Supplier debriefing quick guide and a Supplier debriefing template; the guidance content is being reviewed to align with the Queensland Procurement Policy 2026). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
8. Queensland Government — Supplier feedback template and Unsuccessful letter template procurement resources (templates for preparing to debrief a supplier following a procurement process and for advising a supplier that they have been unsuccessful; the supplier feedback template notes that a decision to disclose the identity of the successful supplier should be based on a consideration of relevant factors, and includes guidance that officers explain the ways in which an offer can fail before providing specific feedback on the supplier’s offer). ↩ ↩
9. Victorian Government — Supplier debriefs: Goods and services guide (all participants should be offered a debrief as part of communicating the procurement outcome; agencies must provide a debrief to any unsuccessful suppliers that request one; the discussion points and any outcomes of a debrief must be promptly recorded and stored in accordance with government policy; the Agency must promptly provide a copy of its complaint procedure on request, and should promptly consider any improvement opportunities; feedback may also be provided at other stages of the procurement process or during contract management; each Agency is responsible for developing a supplier engagement plan and a complaints management procedure). ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
10. Government Procurement (Judicial Review) Act 2018 (Cth), and agency guidance on its operation (the Act gives suppliers and potential suppliers the right to judicial review of a procurement process where they believe an entity or an official has breached the Commonwealth Procurement Rules; it requires the accountable authorities of relevant Commonwealth entities to formally investigate complaints made in accordance with the Act, and to suspend procurements during the investigation of a complaint unless a public interest certificate is in place; complaints must be made in writing to the relevant entity immediately after becoming aware of the alleged breach of the relevant CPRs; a supplier is entitled to make a complaint under section 18 where it has reason to believe the entity or an official has engaged, is engaging or is proposing to engage in conduct in contravention of the relevant CPRs so far as those rules relate to a covered procurement; the Act’s structure comprises section 18 complaint made by supplier, section 19 investigation by accountable authority, section 20 suspension of procurement and section 22 public interest certificate; a covered procurement is one to which the rules in Divisions 1 and 2 of the CPRs apply and which is not excluded by Ministerial determination; the Act places obligations on suppliers to take reasonable steps to resolve a complaint with the entity before taking action in the Federal Circuit Court; if the supplier informs the accountable authority that the complaint is resolved or withdraws it, the suspension ends). Further guidance is at Department of Finance Resource Management Guide No. 422. ↩ ↩ ↩
11. Government Procurement (Judicial Review) Act 2018 (Cth) s 23 — contravention of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules does not affect the validity of a contract; and legal commentary confirming that the court does not have the power to overturn a contract once it has been awarded. ↩ ↩
12. Maddocks — analysis of the Government Procurement (Judicial Review) Act 2018 (Cth) (the supplier must first make a complaint to the relevant agency, which suspends the procurement until the complaint or any subsequent legal claim is resolved unless a public interest certificate is issued, and the agency is required to investigate the conduct that is the subject of the complaint; provided the supplier has made a complaint it may seek an injunction in the Federal Court or Federal Circuit Court, and the court must not grant an injunction unless the supplier has made a reasonable attempt to resolve the complaint if it would be reasonable for the supplier to do so; the Act provides for injunctions both to restrain conduct and to compel compliance, but the court does not have power to overturn a contract once awarded; if no public interest certificate has been issued the procurement remains suspended until the court makes its findings; the Act permits suppliers to make claims for compensation where their interests are affected by a contravention or proposed contravention of the CPRs). ↩ ↩
13. Australian Government Solicitor — fact sheet on the Commonwealth Procurement Rules (relevant entities must, within 42 days of entering into or amending a contract, report that contract or amendment on AusTender if it is valued at or above the reporting threshold; additionally, all standing offers, regardless of value, must be reported on AusTender within 42 days of the agency entering into or amending such arrangements; officials should report the original procurement method used to establish a standing offer when reporting procurements from it). ↩
14. Comparative legal commentary on the rights and entitlements of unsuccessful bidders under public procurement law, noting that unsuccessful tenderers may seek further information by requesting a debriefing meeting, that such meetings are held at the discretion of the contracting authority, that contracting authorities typically exercise caution to ensure feedback is consistent with the records of the procurement evaluation group and reflects the actual reasons for the award decision, that unsuccessful tenderers may make a freedom of information request seeking material such as competitor tender documents, internal notes and correspondence and detailed marking schemes, and that the extent of information actually obtained may vary because the authority may rely on exemptions. Cited for the general shape of access-request practice; Australian access regimes and exemptions differ by jurisdiction and must be assessed under the applicable Act. ↩
15. Australian Government Department of Finance — Procurement complaints for business (all procurement complaints or concerns should be raised with the procuring entity in the first instance; if there is a concern during the tender process it should be raised with the procuring entity as early as possible, and the entity may be able to resolve the concern by explaining the process followed or the reason for its decision; raising and resolving concerns early can reduce the chance of more serious problems arising later; if unsuccessful in a tender process and holding a concern, a supplier should first request a debrief from the procuring entity; if the concern is not resolved in the first instance the supplier may choose to raise a complaint with the procuring entity). ↩
16. Australian Government Selling to Government — If you don’t win a contract (if a supplier does not feel the matter is resolved it should indicate this clearly to the organisation that managed the procurement process before making a formal complaint; approaching the tender contact officer in writing will often prove sufficient, but if not satisfied, complaints can be forwarded to an independent central registration point such as a central procurement team; each organisation should publish details of how to make a complaint to this central registration point on its website; complaints should only relate to the process followed by the organisation and its consistency with the requirements of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules). ↩ ↩
17. Commonwealth Procurement Rules — explanatory notes on ethical conduct (if a complaint about procurement is received, relevant entities must apply timely, equitable and non-discriminatory complaint-handling procedures, including providing acknowledgement soon after the complaint has been received). ↩
18. Commonwealth entity procurement complaints guidance (a complaint should include the complainant’s name, supplier business name, ABN, address, phone and email; details of the procurement including the service, estimated contract value, relevant times and dates, the AusTender identifier and UNSPSC code if known; a factual and concise outline of the complaint and any Commonwealth Procurement Rules believed to have been breached; and any other information, documents or evidence supporting the complaint. At the end of the process the complainant receives a report on the outcome of the investigation, and public interest certificates issued under section 22 of the Act are published by the entity). ↩
19. Norton Rose Fulbright — analysis of the public interest certificate under the Government Procurement (Judicial Review) Act 2018 (Cth) (a certificate may only be issued where the accountable authority concludes that it is not in the public interest for a particular covered procurement process to be suspended while applications for injunctions are being considered or complaints investigated, under section 22; Department of Finance guidance clarifies that a certificate should only be issued where suspending the covered procurement would have an adverse impact on the public interest that exceeds the right of the aggrieved supplier to have the procurement suspended, weighing factors including the purpose of the goods and services being procured, the scope, scale and risk of the procurement, linkages and interdependencies with other processes, and the scale and scope of any alleged contravention and its potential materiality to the aggrieved supplier’s interests). ↩