Senate Order reporting requirements

Depending on an entity’s recent procurement activity, an entity may be required to provide information to Finance in 1 reporting period, but not for future reporting periods. Finance will notify relevant entities, via their Central Procurement Teams (CPTs), that relevant contracts for their entity have been captured in a reporting period and seek relevant information. Each entity must have a process in place to provide information on notifications against the Code for the Senate Order. 

An entity can check whether they are likely to be captured in a reporting period by running the AusTender ‘Contracts awarded as Consultancy‘ report (available at AusTender) using the following criteria:

• Select ‘Select an Agency’ and choose your agency in the drop-down menu
• Enter the applicable reporting period in the date range
• Select the ‘Active During Period’ date type
• Set the 'Value Range (AUD)' from ‘2000000’.

Each entity will need to confirm the accuracy of their information and provide information to Finance on Code notifications in a timely manner to enable the report to be tabled by the required timeframe. 

As the Minister for Finance is required to table the consolidated statement within 21 calendar days of the reporting period, Finance will:

1. 1 month prior to the end of the period, provide entities with a draft report to enable entities to address contracts identified within that period, and
2. within 5 business days following the end of a period provide entities a complete draft report.

Affected entities will be requested to return the completed report (report ii above) to Finance within 5 business days.

There are 2 reporting periods each year:

• 1 July to 31 December, inclusive (Reporting Period 1)
• 1 January to 30 June, inclusive (Reporting Period 2).

The statements are due to be tabled in the Senate no later than 21 January and 21 July for the preceding reporting period. 

Contracts to be reported are those that are:

• active at any time within the relevant reporting period
• identified as a consultancy in the Contract Notice on AusTender (refer to RMG-423 Procurement Publishing and Reporting Obligations for further clarification of consultancy contracts).
   

Each statement will include the total amount of all current consultancy contracts in each entity.