Four kinds of notice on AusTender
AusTender describes itself as “the Australian Government’s procurement information system”, giving “centralised publication of Business Opportunities, Annual Procurement Plans and Contracts awarded”. Its notices fall into four kinds.
- Open now
Approaches to market
Notices inviting suppliers to take part in a procurement: “requests for tender, requests for quote, expressions of interest, or proposals”. AusTender says all open approaches to market by Australian Government agencies are published there.
- Coming
Planned procurements
Advance notice of expected significant procurements, alongside agencies’ annual procurement plans. They “are subject to revision, withdrawal or cancellation”, and are published for planning only.
- Awarded
Contract notices
For most agencies, the Australian Government publishes a notice for each contract or standing offer awarded at a value of $10,000 or more. For prescribed corporate Commonwealth entities the reporting threshold is $400,000, or $7.5 million for construction services. Amendments that raise or lower a contract’s value by $10,000 or more are reported too; decreases have been included since 1 July 2024.
- Panels
Standing offers
An arrangement setting the terms on which a supplier agrees to provide goods or services for a set period; with several suppliers it is “commonly called a ‘panel’”. Buyers can then ask the panel’s suppliers for quotes.
Registering, and the filters that narrow it
AusTender’s notifications of new opportunities are free to registered users. A registered user receives emails about new opportunities, can download tender documents, hears about changes to an opportunity, can keep a watch-list of future opportunities, and lodges responses.
One behaviour of the notifications is easy to miss. AusTender sends an email only when an opportunity matches all of your chosen filters, so keywords, categories and locations narrow each other, and it cautions that settings “which are too prescriptive could lead to missed opportunities”. Choosing no filters at all brings every opportunity.
Lodging a response
- Each approach to market sets its own lodgement requirements, and the lodgement page switches off at the closing time.
- Under the Australian Government’s late submissions policy, late submissions “must not be accepted” unless the relevant agency’s mishandling made them late.
- Only five files can be lodged in one session (compressed files are allowed), and file names should be under 100 characters with no special characters.
- A demonstration approach to market, the DemoATM, lets you practise lodging before it counts.
Awarded contracts as a list of businesses
AusTender says it is “commonly used to undertake market research”, including seeing what is being supplied through contracts already awarded. The Department of Finance adds that a small business may also find “a profitable market” in selling to other businesses that supply the Australian Government. As this guide reads it, the contract notices are where those businesses are named.
If you reuse what you find, note the licence: AusTender’s material is licensed CC BY 3.0 AU, except the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, approach to market material and material noted otherwise.
The states and territories
Each state and territory government has its own agency for tenders and contracts. AusTender keeps the same list of state and territory portals on its help site. Digital and ICT sellers have one more: BuyICT, run by the Digital Transformation Agency, which business.gov.au describes as bringing government buyers and digital sellers together.
| State or territory | Tender site | What it says of itself |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Capital Territory | Tenders ACT | Procurement ACT calls it “the central point for managing ACT Government tenders”, where a business profile brings automatic notice of matching opportunities. |
| New South Wales | NSW eTendering | Linked as business.gov.au lists it; when checked, the address opened buy.nsw. |
| Northern Territory | Quotations and Tenders Online | Current, closed and awarded tenders and future opportunities, with a list that can be viewed without an account. |
| Queensland | QTenders | Linked as business.gov.au lists it. |
| South Australia | Tenders SA | Linked as business.gov.au lists it. |
| Tasmania | Tasmanian Government Tenders | Future opportunities, open and closed tenders, and contracts awarded, browsable by agency, category, date and region. |
| Victoria | Buying for Victoria | Its information site offers tenders, supplier panels and registers, and current and future opportunities. |
| Western Australia | Tenders WA | Linked as business.gov.au lists it. |
A caution the public record creates
Open tender data cuts both ways. In an alert last updated on 23 June 2026, Victoria’s Department of Government Services warned that “cybercriminals are using publicly available procurement information to impersonate Victorian Government officials and send personalised phishing emails”, aimed at business email compromise and invoice fraud. Its advice includes checking a request with your government contact through trusted channels, and being particularly alert to unexpected requests to change bank account details and to urgent payment requests.
For the rules that come with selling to the Australian Government, see selling to government as a small business.