On 14 December 2025, Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel opened to traffic: a 17-kilometre corridor of twin tunnels, a new Maribyrnong River crossing, and a freeway widened from eight lanes to twelve. It was the biggest piece of road infrastructure finished in Melbourne since CityLink in 1998. It also cost roughly A$10.2 billion against an original A$5.5 billion estimate, and opened three years behind schedule.
Here is the part most commuters don’t know: nobody in government asked for it. Transurban pitched the concept, unsolicited, to a Labor opposition in 2014. There was no tender, no RFP, no shortlist. A private company saw a gap, drew a line on a map, and knocked on the door.
That is the promise and the peril of market led proposals in one project. In this guide, you’ll find the unsolicited proposals framework explained end to end: what an MLP actually is, the three tests every jurisdiction applies, how the assessment stages work, what the real success rates look like, and what it costs when your pitch dies at Stage 1. As of mid-2026, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the United States all run formal channels for privately initiated public projects — and the base rates are sobering.
What Is a Market-Led Proposal?
A market-led proposal (MLP) is a project or service proposition that a private party takes to government without being asked. Government hasn’t published a tender. There’s no competitive field. The proponent identifies a public need, develops the solution at its own cost, and approaches the state seeking an exclusive commercial arrangement to deliver it.
Different jurisdictions use different labels for the same animal. New South Wales and the US federal government call them unsolicited proposals. Victoria, Western Australia and New Zealand call them market-led proposals. Queensland now routes most of them through a process it calls exclusive transactions. India and parts of Asia refer to the Swiss Challenge. The vocabulary shifts; the structure doesn’t.
Crucially, an MLP always asks government for something. That might be capital, but more often it’s access — to land, to an asset, to a regulatory approval, to a long-term service contract, or to a revenue stream like tolling rights. Transurban didn’t want a cheque for the West Gate Tunnel; it wanted a toll concession running to 2045 and a ten-year extension on its existing CityLink tolls. Understanding what you’re really asking for is the first step in choosing the right financing structures for a deal of this shape.
Market-Led Proposals vs Traditional Procurement
The distinction is about who starts the conversation, and what gets given up in exchange.
| Feature | Traditional procurement | Market-led proposal |
| Who initiates | Government publishes a tender | Private proponent approaches government |
| Scope | Defined by the agency | Defined by the proponent |
| Competition | Multiple bidders by default | Exclusive negotiation, if justified |
| Development cost | Borne at bid stage, against a known brief | Borne up front, against no brief and no guarantee |
| Price discovery | Competitive tension sets the price | Benchmarking against a public sector comparator |
| Default answer | Yes, someone wins | No — most proposals are declined |
Governments are candid about which they prefer. NSW states plainly that its default position on procurement is competition through tendering, and that unsolicited proposals are used only in rare circumstances where direct dealing can be justified. Queensland’s Project Assessment Framework, updated in November 2025, says exclusive mandates are considered only in exceptional circumstances and are not standard government policy. New Zealand’s Treasury makes the same point: competitive tension remains the primary route to value for money, which is why the exclusivity threshold sits at the centre of its guidance.
Read that as a warning label, not a welcome mat. The MLP pathway exists because competition can’t price what the market hasn’t seen. It is a narrow exception, and it is policed as one.
The Three Tests Every Framework Applies
Strip away the local drafting and almost every unsolicited proposals framework tests the same three things. New Zealand’s November 2024 guidelines state them explicitly.
Public interest. Does the proposal align with government objectives, policies and priorities, and does it deliver genuine community benefit? Timing matters more than proponents expect: a brilliant idea that doesn’t match the government of the day’s stated agenda is a rejected idea. Western Australia goes further and publishes a Government Priorities and Exclusions list, plus occasional Problem and Opportunity Statements inviting solutions to defined challenges.
Value for money. Does this represent a responsible use of public money, measured against what the state could otherwise achieve? Assessors build a public sector comparator — an estimate of what government would pay to deliver the same outcome another way — and test the proposal against it. Affordability is assessed separately, in the context of budget priorities.
Exclusivity. This is the test that kills most proposals. It asks: why should government negotiate with you alone rather than run a competitive process? Victoria’s 2021 guideline rewrote its old “uniqueness” criterion precisely because proponents kept misreading it, replacing it with a requirement to justify exclusive negotiation. NSW is blunter — you must be the only party able to deliver it. Proposals whose claim to uniqueness is trivial get filtered immediately.
Some jurisdictions add more. NSW evaluates against seven criteria, folding in whole-of-government impact, return on investment, capability and capacity, affordability, and risk allocation. WA tests public interest, value for money, deliverability and risk. The core three, though, are near-universal.
How the Unsolicited Proposals Framework Works, Stage by Stage
Most frameworks compress into three or four gated stages, each requiring a decision — often a Cabinet decision — before the proponent spends more money.
Stage 0: Pre-submission engagement
Nearly every jurisdiction offers, and strongly recommends, an informal meeting before you lodge anything. Victoria runs pre-submission meetings through its MLP Secretariat at the Department of Treasury and Finance. NSW encourages a pre-lodgement review with Investment NSW and publishes a checklist. New Zealand routes everything through the National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Company (NIFFCo), established as the single “front door” in December 2024. Skipping this step is the most expensive free mistake available.
Stage 1: Initial assessment and strategic filter
You submit a concept — not a full business case. Government checks scope, then tests strategic fit and, critically, whether exclusivity is justified. WA aims to advise proponents of the Stage 1 outcome within 90 business days. This stage is confidential, and it’s where the overwhelming majority of proposals end.
Stage 2: Detailed proposal and business case
Survivors are invited to build a full business case, usually against the jurisdiction’s standard investment methodology — New Zealand applies its Better Business Case requirements; Victoria draws on its Investment Lifecycle and High Value High Risk guidelines. Both sides run due diligence, negotiate key terms, and work toward an offer capable of acceptance. WA targets 100 business days for this stage. Expect longer.
Stage 3: Final binding offer and contract
Legal and commercial terms are negotiated and a binding offer is submitted for government approval. Contract award follows — and, in the better-designed frameworks, so does a benefit-realisation obligation, though Queensland’s Audit Office has criticised the absence of a stage that measures whether promised benefits actually landed.
What the Numbers Actually Say
This is where marketing copy about market led proposals usually goes quiet. The public registers don’t.
Western Australia publishes a running scoreboard. From the policy’s start on 11 April 2019 through 15 October 2025, the state received 91 unsolicited market led proposals. The outcome, as at the March 2026 update:
- 5 completed or contracted
- 9 still under assessment
- 58 declined
- 12 referred out to another agency or process
- 7 withdrawn by the proponent
That’s roughly a 5% contract rate. And of the 77 that didn’t progress, 35 fell over at Initial Assessment — before anyone seriously evaluated the merits — while 26 failed on the evaluation criteria themselves. Property (23) and infrastructure (22) dominated submissions, with health (14) and community services (11) next.
Victoria’s record is similar. The state’s Auditor-General found that since the framework began in early 2015, 14 proposals progressed beyond the second assessment stage and only four made it all the way to contract award.
The takeaway for anyone weighing this route: the modal outcome is a polite no, delivered after you’ve spent real money. Price it accordingly, and make sure your corporate funding strategy can absorb a total write-off of the development spend.
How Different Jurisdictions Handle It
| Jurisdiction | Framework | Front door | Current status |
| Victoria | Market-led Proposals Guideline (Feb 2015; updated Dec 2024) | MLP Secretariat, DTF | Three stages; Dec 2024 added a strategic development pathway for major housing |
| NSW | Unsolicited Proposals Guide (May 2022) | Investment NSW | Four stages, seven criteria, uniqueness-led |
| Western Australia | MLP Policy (Dec 2024) | DPLH MLP Secretariat | Two stages plus initial assessment; public register; First Mover Advantage |
| Queensland | Project Assessment Framework (Nov 2025) | State Development | “Exclusive transactions”; exceptional circumstances only |
| New Zealand | MLP Guidelines (Nov 2024) | NIFFCo | Cabinet-endorsed; ownership moved from MBIE to Treasury |
| United Kingdom | Rail MLP guidance + RNEP | DfT | Five stages: Determine, Develop, Design, Deliver, Deploy |
| United States | FAR Subpart 15.6 | Agency contact points | R&D-oriented; favourable evaluation ≠ sole-source award |
Two frameworks deserve a closer look.
The UK’s rail MLP process, launched in 2018, splits proposals into Category 1 (financially credible without government support) and Category 2 (needs it). Category 2 schemes enter the Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline at whatever stage matches their maturity and must clear five gates. DfT’s 2018 call for ideas drew 30 submissions. The structural catch is unusual and worth understanding: DfT procures the design and the delivery competitively against an outcome-level specification, meaning the promoter who conceived the scheme and helped shape the spec can lose the tender to build it.
The US federal position is the strictest. Under FAR 15.603(c), a valid unsolicited proposal must be innovative and unique, independently originated and developed by the offeror, prepared without government involvement, sufficiently detailed, and must not be an advance proposal for a known requirement that could be competed or address a previously published requirement. Even then, a favourable evaluation doesn’t justify a sole-source award — the Competition in Contracting Act still applies. Agencies including the IRS and DOT warn openly that most submissions get binned as advertising material.
First-Mover Advantage, Swiss Challenge and Bonus Systems
If a proposal has merit but can’t justify exclusivity, good frameworks don’t just kill it. They compete it — and compensate the originator for the head start they gave everyone else.
The World Bank’s guidance identifies several mechanisms: automatic shortlisting into the final round; a bonus of evaluation points (Chile’s approach); best and final offer systems, used in Argentina and South Africa, that guarantee the originator a seat in the last bidding round; and the Swiss Challenge, or right-to-match, where the proponent can match the best competing bid. Some jurisdictions, including South Africa and Virginia, offer no incentive at all and instead reimburse development costs. The design problem is a genuine trade-off: too generous and rivals won’t bid; too stingy and nobody proposes anything.
Western Australia’s First Mover Advantage shows the mechanism working. Two live examples from the public register:
- Palliative Care Hub, Osborne Park. Bethesda Health Care and The Bethanie Group proposed a combined 120-bed aged and dementia care facility and 25-bed palliative care hub. The proposal had merit but didn’t justify exclusivity, so the Department of Health ran an open EOI. The consortium received a 20% bid premium on its overall score — and won.
- Swanbourne Village. Cedar Woods proposed developing state-owned land beside Swanbourne Station. Same finding: merit, no exclusivity. Cabinet sent it to an EOI with a 15% bid premium applied to Cedar Woods’ Value for Money score. Cedar Woods was named preferred respondent and moved to exclusive negotiation.
Note what both examples demonstrate: the originator’s advantage was real, transparent, and still had to survive a contested process.
The Risks Proponents Underprice
Sunk development cost with no recovery. You fund the concept, the business case, the modelling and the lawyers. The UK’s rail guidance is silent on bid cost recovery for promoters who lose. Most frameworks offer nothing.
Intellectual property leakage. You must hand over enough detail to be assessed. FAR 15.609 provides a limited-use legend and bars government from using your concept as the basis for a solicitation without notifying you — but only for data that isn’t otherwise available. Victoria will negotiate to purchase genuine IP case by case. Register what you can; assume the rest is exposed.
The political clock. Proposals are tested against the priorities of the government of the day. Electoral cycles are a project risk, not background noise.
Optimism bias meets weak price discovery. Without competitive tension, the public sector comparator does all the work. The West Gate Tunnel’s Auditor-General review found the departments’ advice to government could have been more transparent about the implications of their assessment approaches and the assurance behind key inputs. When benchmarking is the only discipline, benchmarking has to be right.
How to Build a Proposal That Survives Stage 1
Given that roughly a third of WA’s failures never cleared initial assessment, the highest-leverage work happens before you submit.
Lead with exclusivity, not the idea. Assessors already know congestion is bad. They need to know why you, and why not a tender. If you can’t answer that in a paragraph, you don’t have an MLP — you have a suggestion.
Read the exclusions list. WA, Victoria and NSW all publish what they won’t consider. Pilot programs, trivial uniqueness claims, standard commercial goods, and attempts to sidestep a live procurement are common auto-rejects.
Take the pre-submission meeting. It’s free, it’s confidential, and it’s the only place you’ll get an honest read before you’re on the record.
Bring a base case. Frameworks want a clearly defined counterfactual — what happens if government does nothing — and a value-for-money case measured against it.
Be honest about what you’re asking for. Land, approvals, a service commitment, tolling rights: name it early. Deals unravel at Stage 2 when the ask turns out to be bigger than the pitch implied.
Market led proposals are not a shortcut around procurement. They’re a narrow, heavily gated exception for ideas the market can see and the state can’t — and the register says most of them don’t make it. The ones that do tend to come from proponents who understood the tests before they wrote page one.
FAQs About Market-Led Proposals
What is a market-led proposal? A project or service proposition submitted to government by a private party without a tender or request. It seeks an exclusive commercial arrangement and always involves some role for government — funding, land, approvals, or a revenue right.
Are market-led proposals and unsolicited proposals the same thing? Yes, in substance. Victoria, WA and New Zealand say “market-led proposals”; NSW and the US federal government say “unsolicited proposals”; Queensland says “exclusive transactions.” The frameworks differ in detail, not in concept.
What are the odds of a market-led proposal being accepted? Low. Western Australia received 91 proposals between April 2019 and October 2025 and has contracted five. Victoria’s Auditor-General found four reached contract award in the framework’s first several years.
Why do most market-led proposals get rejected? Failure to justify exclusive negotiation is the single biggest cause. In WA, 35 of 77 unsuccessful proposals didn’t clear initial assessment at all, meaning they fell outside policy scope before merits were weighed.
Does government reimburse the cost of preparing a proposal? Usually not. Development costs sit with the proponent. Some jurisdictions offer incentives instead — WA’s First Mover Advantage has granted bid premiums of 15% and 20% when proposals were competed rather than negotiated exclusively.
Can I still win if government decides to run a tender? Yes. Under Swiss Challenge, bonus-point and first-mover systems, originators keep an advantage in the open process. In WA, both Bethesda/Bethanie and Cedar Woods went to competitive EOIs with premiums attached and came out ahead.
Is my intellectual property protected? Partially. US rules restrict government use of restrictively marked data, and Victoria will negotiate to buy genuine IP. But assessment requires disclosure, and protection doesn’t extend to information available elsewhere. Register patents, designs and trade marks where you can.