Transparency was assisted by the publication of a Contract Summary, as required by the Government's Guidelines for Privately Financed Projects. The Audit Office confirmed that the Summary satisfied the disclosure provisions of the Guidelines. Although the summary is short on detail in a number of areas - as it is intended only as a summary - it does include key information such as the service requirements, monthly payments to be made, evaluation criteria and weightings used to select the preferred bidder, and the results of the public sector comparator. These summaries are available to the public on the NSW Treasury website.
Some other jurisdictions require greater disclosure than NSW, which helps to remove the public's concern with the secrecy associated with private-public partnerships. For example in Victoria all Departmental contracts over $10 million are required to be disclosed in full on the Victorian Government Purchasing Board's website, together with the Request for Tender documents. If, based on freedom of information criteria, clauses have been excluded from the contracts, a note explaining the reason for the exclusion must be included.
In December 2005 a Review of Future Provision of Motorways in NSW (the 'Richmond report') by the State's Infrastructure Implementation Group recommended that all project deeds and other agreements signed on behalf of the Government should be released. If specific documents are not going to be disclosed, there should be a specific list of these documents, a reason why they are being withheld, and if/when they will be released in the future.