Tuesday 9th of December 2025
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it is difficult to avoid the satirical notion.....

Australia’s new Defence Delivery Agency may finally expose an uncomfortable truth – that Australia already has formidable deterrent capabilities through the Royal Australian Air Force and emerging drone systems, making the AUKUS submarine commitment both risky and unnecessary.

 

Robert Macklin

Marles’ Defence overhaul raises an awkward question: why AUKUS at all?

 

A new Defence Delivery Agency (DDA) announced by Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles during Anthony Albanese’s honeymoon, might well provide the Cabinet with a nice surprise: AUKUS is surplus to requirements; Australia already possesses a stinging response should China use military means to return the Province of Taiwan to mainland governance. It is called the Royal Australian Air Force.

It is difficult to avoid the satirical notion that only a major re-organisation of Australia’s Defence procurement system would reveal the capability of the RAAF – and the ‘Ghost Shark’ underwater drone technology – to save Australia spending an additional $368 billion on the AUKUS submarine extravaganza.

Marles said the DDA, headed by a National Armaments Director, would come into force on 1 July, 2026 with the merging of the three existing procurement groups – the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG), the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise, and the Naval Shipbuilding and Sustainment Group.

However, since CASG’s first official priority is ‘aircraft’, the new arrangements don’t appear to advance its role in the coordination of Australia’s procurement needs. Marles said: ‘The same personnel will undertake their work in the DDA and on 1 July 2027, it will become an independent agency. It will work clearly in partnership with the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force, but it will be autonomous in the way in which it does its work and the way in which it reports to Government through the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Defence Industry."

This raises obvious questions about the modus operandi of a second voice to government separated from the Department in the same way that the Australian Strategic Policy Institute was developed by Prime Minister John Howard in 2001. If the current system ‘lost’ the RAAF, what chance our own ‘Cerberus’ could find it? Worth a try, I guess.

Marles said: “We have increased defence spending by $70 billion over the decade. What comes with that is an obligation to ensure that this money is spent well. The establishment of the Defence Delivery Agency will see a much bigger bang for buck for the defence spend. And that is at the heart of the decision that we have made.

‘That process will also now be consolidated under the Vice Chief of the Defence Force. And having then determined that a particular capability is required, that project will be given to the Defence Delivery Agency with a budget to make sure that that project is delivered on time and on budget.”

It follows the Kinnaird and Mortimer reviews in addition to Naval, Air Force and small arms Case Studies commissioned by ASPI to independent authors, such as Chris Masters and myself. It responds to the findings of the Defence Strategic Review, as well as the 2003 Kinnaird Review and the 2008 Mortimer Review.

It acknowledges the bare fact that Australia cannot – and should not – sign up to a commitment to join Trump’s America in any shooting war against our largest trading partner, not least when we subscribe to the One China Policy.

In a world where the other two signatories to AUKUS are approaching the political chaos endemic to climate change, and Europe under increasing pressure from Putin, we must surely put self-reliance above American adventurism. Marles’ own stark figures tell the tale: AUKUS or self-reliance?

What would the honeymooners say?

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/12/new-procurement-agency-might-open-defences-eyes/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

same again....

 

Marles’ new Defence agency – rearranging deck chairs on the HMAS Titanic

by Rex Patrick

 

Earlier this week Defence Minister Richard Marles announced a big reform in Defence Procurement. Except it wasn’t a big reform, rather a rearranging of deck chairs. Former senator Rex Patrick reports.

And the needle returns to the start of the song …

On 22 June 2000, then Minister for Defence John Moore approved the establishment of the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), a single organisation that was to be charged with the responsibility of acquisition and through life support of equipment and systems used by the Australian Defence Force.

But the DMO didn’t work.

On 01 April 2015, then Minister for Defence Kevin Andrews announced that he had accepted the recommendations of a Defence First Principles Review and that the DMO would be disbanded – it wasn’t working – and that its functions would be transferred to a new Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG).

But the CASG didn’t work.

On 01 December the Defence Minister, Richard Marles, announced he was merging CASG, Defence’s Guided Weapons and Explosives Ordinance Group and the Naval Shipbuilding & Sustainment Group into a single organisation to be called the Defence Delivery Agency (DDA).

DDA won’t work

Rearranging deck chairs

During the week Marles sought to assure that there would be no job losses as a result of his reforms and, in an absolute admission that all he was doing was rearranging the deck chairs, he advised that existing public servants who worked for Defence would simply be transferred over to the new agency.

The biggest problem that Defence has, and which Marles doesn’t have the ability to solve, is the fact that the very senior uniformed people who are running Defence acquisition, while undoubtedly being good war-fighters, don’t have the experience in project management to understand that it is risk that brings down projects.

You would not take an experienced project manager and assigned them command responsibility of a warship, and you should not take a warship captain and assign them responsibility for a large project. But the latter is exactly what happens inside Defence.

Political risk (political change), economic risk (pressure on budgets), management risk (inexperience) and technical risk (novelty, uncertainty and complexity) – that’s what causes projects to go off the rails.

Changing the label on the front door of the equipment procurement office won’t do a thing to get better value-for-money or reliable capable equipment for our defence force.

E.G. AUKUS 

AUKUS is classical Defence risk taking.

It’s not a hidden fact that the United States is not building enough Virginia class submarines to meet US Navy needs, let alone supply the Royal Australian Navy with some. The US Government’s AUKUS review report is now with the Australian Government. The Minister is talking up the contents, albeit in very general detail. 

If the US were honest, they’d tell us to do something different. 

But with $1.6 billion already paid to the US Department of War and another billion dollars set to be gifted to the US in the next couple of weeks, the temptation would be difficult.

Senate Estimates this week was instructive. When Senator David Shoebridge read from the evidence given by Lord Case, the Chair of ‘Team Barrow’ (the organisation entrusted with ensuring the town of Barrow is able to support the UK’s and AUKUS submarine build needs) telling the UK Parliament he was not happy with his team’s progress, Vice Admiral Jonathon Mead indicated he did not know about it.

Experienced project managers spend their time looking for bad news – looking for risk that is materialising. That doesn’t seem to be happening. ‘Talking’ AUKUS is the order of the day, not ‘walking’.

https://michaelwest.com.au/marles-new-defence-agency-rearranging-deck-chairs/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.