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.

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?