This paper uses data obtained from numerous sources in Australia to assess the extent to which negotiated performance-based contracts with actionable benchmarking can achieve as good as, or better, improvement in cost efficiency compared to competitive tendering when incumbents are not public operators. Stakeholders who promote the position that the government should choose to test the market for value for money through tendering, especially where incumbent operators demonstrate benchmarked cost efficiency, given the primary responsibility to the taxpayer, appear on the evidence in this paper to be inappropriately claiming noticeable benefits to society.