Contractual changes may have to be authorised or approved by a person other than the person who requested the change. Responsibility for authorising different types of change may rest with different people. In the case of project deed amendments, the amendment should be authorised by each party in accordance with relevant legislative and governance requirements (as detailed in Chapter 3). However, where a project deed has been given the effect of force of law through legislation (for example, the Melbourne City Link Act 1995), changes to the project deed may only be made by Parliamentary amendments of the relevant legislation unless the legislation provides some other change mechanisms. Managing change processes under such contracts requires special consideration. Wherever possible, the legislation should incorporate contractual change mechanisms (for example, provisions for regulatory change) to give effect to what can be classified as essentially 'housekeeping' or non-substantive events (for example, increasing prices in line with indexation provisions).
Material project deed changes that create budgetary or risk allocation issues need to be approved by the Treasurer (through DTF) before being implemented.