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22/10/2025

The Commonwealth Procurement Rules are changing

Date
Commonwealth procurement rules

On 22 October 2025, Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher, Minister for Finance, announced amendments to the Commonwealth Procurement Rules (CPRs).

The updates reflect the government’s commitment to improving the competitive capability of Australian businesses participating in Commonwealth procurement, including key changes to give effect to the government’s election commitment to prioritise Australian businesses in government procurements and contracts.

The new CPRs will take effect from 17 November 2025.

Some of the key changes to the CPRs include:

  • A procurement threshold increase from $80,000 to $125,000 for all non-corporate Commonwealth entity (NCEs) non-construction procurement.
  • New rules for NCEs to only invite Australian businesses to tender for government contracts for non-panel procurement below the relevant procurement threshold; and only SMEs to be invited for Management Advisory Services (MAS), People and DTA panel procurements under $125,000. The Indigenous Procurement Policy must still be applied where relevant.
  • A new section on ‘negotiations’ added in Division 2 of the CPRs.
  • Updates to clarify that submissions and confidential information provided as part of tendering may be shared within the Commonwealth for compliance monitoring and other legitimate, non-commercial purposes.
  • A clarification that secondments within and between Australian Government entities are not procurements.

New Supplier Portal

Alongside the CPR updates is the launch of the Supplier Portal – a publicly searchable database of potential suppliers to government.

The Supplier Portal will enable businesses to identify key characteristics such as whether they are registered as an Indigenous business, are an SME, an Australian business, and/or a women-owned business.  

  • The initial rollout will focus on suppliers on the MAS Panel and the People Panel and will be incrementally rolled out to other suppliers over the next 9 months.
  • The Supplier Portal will be available to all businesses, regardless of whether they are members of a panel, from July 2026. 

Further information

Further information can be found on the Commonwealth Procurement Rules page on our website.

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