Legal Provisions And Common Laws Essay On Tendering And Contracts In Australia. (70 Characters)

Tendering Process in Australia

Discuss About The Provision Australia Governing Legal Matters?

In the provision of Australia, there are certain common laws available that are governing the legal matters. There are certain laws deals with contract related matters. In the present case, there is a provision based on tender work (Alexander and Merkert 2017). In a business country like Australia, tender is a common process. Tendering process is observed in private as well as public sector. It is used to procure the goods and services within the continent of Australia (Bailey, 2014). It is a fact that in the tendering process, certain provisions of the contract law is being followed up. However, through the tendering process, no legal relationship is being created within the principle and the tender holder. In the process of tendering, there is a lack of interest shown in between the parties because of the absence of legal relationship (Cartwright 2016).

In the present case, the university has demanded for certain specified seeds. The company has conducted a tendering process regarding the same. In case of tender, there are certain proceedings should be maintained (Goodall 2015). In case of tender, closing dates are important. Here, it has been observed that the University has mentioned a closing date for the tender and there are three companies, who are applied for the same. The closing date of the tender was 1 June and there was a rule that the tender application must be gone in the tender box. Among the three companies, two company’s letter was put in the tender box. However, the application of another company named Enviro was submitted on early basis (Keyes 2017).

As per the provision of law, when there is an offer is made for a certain subject and the same be accepted by the other party, there will be a contract in between two rose. The contracting parties must be competent to make the agreement and the eligibility of the parties should not be restricted by any of the provision of the Contract Act (Lam and Lee 2014). The parties should have certain intention to participate in the bid. However, the most important thing regarding the bid or tender is it should be treated as an invitation and not creates any contract thereby. In Pratt Contractor Limited v. Palmerston North City Council, it was held by the court that bids are only an uncomplicated request and not binding the parties in any manner.

Contractual Positions of Parties

The main issue is about the contractual positions of all the parties. An offer has been made by the University and it has been observed that three companies had shown their interest in that (McKendrick 2014). There are certain essentials of contract take place, such as offer, acceptance, consideration, capability of the parties. However, an important point is to be taken place regarding the acceptance of the offer of those companies by the University. In this case, the conditions given by Plant Forever had been accepted by University but the same was failed to reach at the company. This act failed to bind the parties legally. Another element of contract is knowledge. But the acts of the parties had failed to meet this ingredient. There is a difference between tender and contract. Tender arose when there is an invitation made and it comprised of certain terms. In the other hand, contract means an agreement that is binding by law. However, in the case of Plant forever, there was no legal relationship had been made in between the them.

The tender conditions of Greenland were lowest in nature and the reputation of the company is also not good. Therefore, the University authorities had not revealed their interest towards the company. In case of the Enviro, it has been observed that the conditions of the company were attracted. There were certain problems cropped up regarding the company. First, the company had posted the tender in a wrong way and the letter of the tender was posted at an early stage. However, the University authority had somehow managed the situation but the administrative assistant had misplaced the letter and therefore, it was not possible for University to make any agreement with Enviro (Morse and Deutsch  2016).

Therefore, from the above paragraphs, it is cleared that there are certain differences present in between tender and contract. It can be observed that certain invitation had been made regarding the seeds but there were no agreement made among University and three companies and no legal relationship had been made. Therefore, it can be stated that there were no contract position has ever created in this case.

In Australia, there is a law enacted that are deals with the Electronic Transaction enacted in the year 1999 and the case of Footloose attracts the provision of the Act. There are certain provisions regarding the Australian Contract Act that are also applied in this particular case.

Provisions of the Australian Contract Act

In Australia, the nature of the laws is common law and the origin of the same derives from English law. In this case, there is a provision on offer and acceptance. According to the common law principle, offer is an invitation made by any competent person at any stage and there is a close distinction between offer and invitation to deal (Ready 2015).

In this case, an auction had been made by the Footloose Ltd. in a local paper with certain discounts on shoes. The offer made by the company is a type of offer and the same was posted on 1^st October. In the poster, there was a provision regarding the amount of the shoes and the offer made by the company attracted the terms of the tender conditions (Skeel 2014).

After the offer had been made by the manufacturing company, two sales companies had accepted the offer. Under the Australian Contract Act, an acceptance can be made by three ways but there is no particular form of acceptance (Smith and Duke 2014). As per the law of England, the acceptance should be made without any coercion or undue influence. As per the statement of the case, on 2^nd October, a shoe company revealed its interest against the offer and they announce their willingness regarding the offer to the Sales Manager of Footloose.

The offer made by the Footloose Ltd. was public in nature. Therefore, there can be more than one acceptance regarding the same offer (Smith and Duke 2014). On 6^th October, another shoe company, James’ Shoe accepted the offer and followed the same principle as the previous company. The Sales manager of Footloose had responded him back only and a contract made between the two.

It is noteworthy that in case of any sale, there must be certain consideration and in this case, the elements of the point have been fulfilled. The consideration item and money, both are stated by the companies and both of them are agreed on it. The proposal made by James was in a written version. In the chapter of acceptance, it is clearly mentioned that an acceptance can be made in three ways among which there is a point on written version. Therefore, it can be stated that the acceptance process of James is acceptable by law. After getting the nod from the Footloose Ltd. James decided to fix a date for the final settlement with the manufacturing company and replied them back on 8^th October.

Offer and Acceptance under Common Law

In this case, a chain of dates are to be seen. Agreements are made of certain proposals and that are to be consigned by the parties. After the proposal made by James, both the parties had made certain propositions and decided a final date for the contract of those tendered shoes. On 10^th October they had came into the conclusion that they should meet somewhere else to finalise the matter and sign the agreement to facilitate the contractual relationship.

The case has enlightened the provision of the Electronic Transaction Act 1999 as all the dealings were made by way of Fax (Swain 2014). The provision of the Act applies only where there is an electronic contract is being used. Therefore, it can be stated that the case is attracting certain provisions of the said Act. The Australian Courts are also of the view that online transactions and electronic contract are the two main contents of the Act and the same was proved in a case decision of Australian Communication of Media Authority v. Mobiligated Ltd. (2009).

Therefore, from the above named paragraphs, it can be stated that the contract was made in between Footloose and James’ shoe. The reason behind the same is that the offer or conditions proposed by James was accepted by the shoe manufacturing company and both the parties were ready to made the contract final. A chain of dates are mentioned here in this case and that are of important in nature. Each date prescribe certain events that were attract the provision of the Contract law.

Reference:

Alexander, D.W. and Merkert, R., 2017. Challenges to domestic air freight in Australia: Evaluating air traffic markets with gravity modelling. Journal of Air Transport Management, 61, pp.41-52.

Bailey, J., 2014. Construction Law. Crc Press.

Cartwright, J., 2016. Contract law: An introduction to the English law of contract for the civil lawyer. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Goodall, H., 2015. Contract gangs: race, gender and vulnerability. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 7(3), pp.23-36.

Keyes, M., 2017. Australia: Foreign Law in Australian International Litigation: Developing the Common Law. In Treatment of Foreign Law-Dynamics towards Convergence? (pp. 503-528). Springer, Cham.

Lam, T.I.P. and Lee, P., 2014. A comparative study of standard contract conditions for energy performance contracting in Australia, Canada and the United States. Construction law journal.

McKendrick, E., 2014. Contract law: text, cases, and materials. Oxford University Press (UK).

Morse, S.C. and Deutsch, R., 2016. Tax Anti-Avoidance Law in Australia and the United States.

 Ready, K., 2015. Email contracts: Who, what, when and where the formation of binding agreements through email exchanges. Governance Directions, 67(10), p.620.

Skeel, D.A., 2014. Corporate Governance and Social Welfare in the Common Law World.

Smith, R.L. and Duke, A., 2014. Agreements and competition law in Australia. Competition and Consumer Law Journal, 22, pp.54-79.

Swain, W., 2014. Contract Codification in Australia: Is It Necessary, Desirable and Possible. Sydney L. Rev., 36, p.131.

Vettori, S., 2016. The employment contract and the changed world of work. CRC Press.

Westmore, P., 2015. What Australia post can learn from NZ's Kiwibank. News Weekly, (2943), p.24.