Conroy Unveils Defence Delivery Agency, Scraps Oversight Committee in Largest Reform Package in 50 Years
This piece is freely available to read. Become a paid subscriber today and help keep Mencari News financially afloat so that we can continue to pay our writers for their insight and expertise.
Today’s article is brought to you by Empower your podcasting vision with a suite of creative solutions at your fingertips.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy used a National Press Club address on July 2 to announce a major overhaul of Australia’s defence procurement and capability delivery systems, including the abolition of a key oversight committee and the establishment of a new Defence Delivery Agency aimed at ending the chronic cost blowouts and project delays that have plagued the portfolio for decades.
What Happened
Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra — with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Chief of the Defence Force Admiral Johnston in attendance — Conroy announced that the government had abolished the existing Investment Committee, which oversaw capability spending decisions, and replaced it with a four-member Capability Investment Board.
He also confirmed the official establishment on July 1 of the Defence Delivery Group, a precursor to the permanent Defence Delivery Agency due to be operational within 12 months. Interim National Armaments Director Nadine Williams leads the group while the government seeks a permanent appointment. Conroy simultaneously released the latest iteration of the defence industry development strategy — the government’s blueprint for growing Australia’s sovereign industrial base — and announced that the GoShark autonomous maritime vessel would be added as a new export priority under the Australian Defence Strategic Sales Office.
Why It Matters
The scale of the problem Conroy was fixing is not trivial. A government reform task force examining a sample of defence projects found average costs increased by 38 percent between initial conception and final government decision — before a single contract with industry was signed. In dollar terms across that sample alone, that represented a net cost increase of $29 billion.
The abolished Investment Committee was at the centre of that dysfunction. In 2025 alone, it met 13 times for roughly 60 hours, with an additional 14 out-of-session meetings. Those sessions consumed approximately 1,600 collective hours from 26 senior executives and star-ranked ADF members — and critically, 56 percent of the recommendations put before it required no decision at all. They were presented purely for noting. Multi-billion dollar capability projects integral to national defence were being processed through a committee where decision-making wasn’t even the primary function.
The new four-member Capability Investment Board is designed to fix that directly. Accountability has also been restructured: the Vice Chief of the Defence Force is now responsible for capability development choices, while the National Armaments Director is accountable for delivery — two distinct roles, two distinct people, no more dispersed responsibility across 70 signatures (a real example Conroy cited from a senior deputy secretary).
Zoom Out
Conroy’s speech was built around a concept he called “progressive patriotism” — the argument that Labour governments, not conservative ones, have historically delivered Australia’s major defence milestones. He cited the Royal Australian Navy under Fisher, the wartime leadership of Curtin, the Collins class submarines and Anzac frigates under Hawke and Keating, and the Marine Rotational Force Darwin established under Gillard. The current government, he said, was delivering the largest increase in defence investment during peacetime in Australian history.
That political framing mattered in context. With the ALP national conference approaching in three weeks, Conroy used the address to clarify his position on AUKUS ahead of expected pressure from within the party. He was direct: support at the last national conference was above 80 percent, and an anti-AUKUS candidate running in the “very progressive seat of Sydney” in recent delegate elections received around 25 percent of the vote. His message to internal critics was essentially that the debate is settled — even if figures like Paul Keating and Peter Garrett still oppose it. On Garrett specifically, Conroy noted that expecting a man who ran for the Senate in 1984 on an anti-nuclear platform to change his position 40 years later was “quite frankly ridiculous.”
The policy substance beyond the structural reforms was also substantial. The government’s guided weapons and explosive ordnance plan — backed by up to $36 billion over the decade — now has a missile factory open in South Australia, a second under construction near Newcastle due to open next year, and a third planned for 2030. The Ghost Bat, Australia’s first combat aircraft designed and built domestically in more than 50 years, has received its first production orders and enters service with the Air Force, supported by over 200 Australian companies in its supply chain. Landing craft contracts are expected to create over 3,000 jobs; the largest Bushmaster order since 1999 secures around 300 more.
On AUKUS specifically, Conroy pushed back against characterisations of the project as a distant aspiration. He described visiting a facility in Derby, UK, where the first systems destined for Australian AUKUS submarines were already under construction.
Defence culture came up in the Q&A. When pressed on whether procurement dysfunction was ultimately a cultural problem, not just a structural one, Conroy agreed — and went further, telling the audience he had explicitly told Defence’s senior leadership he would be “happy in question time to be asked about a project that hasn’t succeeded” if the reason was genuine innovation and learning rather than poor process. That kind of ministerial cover for managed risk-taking represents a meaningful shift in signalling, even if its practical effect depends on implementation.
On accountability for the new agency leadership, Conroy was direct when pushed but careful not to commit to specific consequences: “changing personnel at some stage” was the formulation he used when asked whether senior officials would be fired for underperformance. Pressed on whether he would personally take ownership of failures after four years in the role, he acknowledged his record rather than deflecting — citing significant procurement reforms since October 2022 — while being careful not to hand political ammunition by explicitly endorsing a narrative of failure under his watch.
Bottom Line
The structural reforms announced today are the most substantive attempt in a generation to fix a defence procurement system that has been systematically failing. A four-person board has replaced the 26-member committee that spent the majority of its time noting rather than deciding. The reforms simplify accountability lines. A new delivery agency is being stood up. Whether these changes actually alter outcomes — rather than just reorganise the chart — depends entirely on whether the culture of risk-aversion and requirement-gold-plating that Conroy identified changes alongside the systems. That part cannot be legislated; it has to be led.
Sustaining Mencari Requires Your Support
Independent journalism costs money. Help us continue delivering in-depth investigations and unfiltered commentary on the world's real stories. Your financial contribution enables thorough investigative work and thoughtful analysis, all supported by a dedicated community committed to accuracy and transparency.
Subscribe today to unlock our full archive of investigative reporting and fearless analysis. Subscribing to independent media outlets represents more than just information consumption—it embodies a commitment to factual reporting.
Not ready to be paid subscribe, but appreciate the newsletter ? Grab us a beer or snag the exclusive ad spot at the top of next week’s newsletter.