My view...this means the Prime Ministers Office is now absolutely calling the shots on Defence.
Administratively, he'll be interesting to watch. He appears to be very pedantic.
But as to an interest or knowledge of defence...an unknown quantity.
It all comes down to what his brief is, what he has been told he needs to do. i.e. sell ASC to BAE and bugger Australian shipbuilding for ever. Maybe kill off certain expensive projects and or capabilities, or push through particular thought bubbles that sound good but wont hit the budget for a decade.
His top priority will be getting the white paper out to replace the wishy, washy fluff produced by Smith. Depending how much independence Johnston had and how far he strayed from party lines there may be a major rewrite required. I suspect a big part of Johnston's anti ASC bias was actually driven by his parochial desire to move the majority of submarine and surface ship sustainment and upgrade work to WA.
The inconvenient truth was the West has been the source of most maintenance issues with the Collins class (in fact the only docking that was ever stuffed up in Adelaide was actually project managed by WA with personnel flown over to do the work), Collins crank shaft, Farncombs generators, etc. No matter how many talented staff were seconded there it was still the same core management, project teams, workers and contactors. The issue is in WA all the best people (and many mediocre ones as well) were snapped up by mining and other high paying industries, with government owned ASC paying well below market rates. The mining construction boom may be over but resources industry still needs the same sort of people marine sustainment does. I won't bother ranting about Austal or BAE WA.
Potentially the biggest gain for defence is the change in minister may roll back the ridiculous, expensive and destructive pork barreling where Johnston was hiring consultants to invent excuses to justify his moving of work and jobs to the west.
