SYDNEY, July 2 (Reuters) – Australia announced changes on Thursday to the way it manages the delivery of \u200cdefence projects, aiming to curb billions of dollars in \u200ccost overruns and lengthy delays.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The government said it would establish a \u200bspecial agency to oversee defence project delivery, overhaul the way project costs are assessed, and streamline decision-making by cutting bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The decision comes as the country undertakes a major build up \u200cof its military capacity, \u2060with projects including the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact, a continuous naval shipbuilding programme and investments \u2060to develop domestic missile and drone industries.<\/p>\n
\u2022 “For too long, Defence has struggled to deliver major capability projects on time and on \u200bbudget,” Pat \u200bConroy, minister for defence industry, \u200bsaid in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u200cIn a speech in Canberra unveiling the reforms, Conroy described the department’s systems as “broken”.<\/p>\n
\u2022 “The fact is these systems were designed for a very different world,” he said. “Through these reforms, we’re making sure that when Defence is developing capability projects that we’re setting them up for success.”<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u200cHe said an internal review found \u200bthe average cost of defence projects \u200bincreased by 38%, or \u200bA$29 billion ($19.97 billion), from project conception to \u200cgovernment decision.<\/p>\n
\u2022 “The way Defence was operating \u200bhad become \u200boutdated and compromised for at least the last decade,” Conroy said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The government in April announced it would raise \u200bdefence spending to \u200c3% of gross domestic product by 2033 from \u200babout 2%.($1 = 1.4520 Australian dollars)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Christine Chen in \u200bSydney; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, July 2 (Reuters) – Australia announced changes on Thursday to the way it manages the delivery of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[191,14,1146,47,1147,1148],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-australia","tag-defence-industry","tag-defence-projects","tag-defence-spending","tag-lengthy-delays","tag-the-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}