What planet are you on?
"ASC must remain immune", "ASC like to blame others", "Cover up leading to the 2013 election". Total utter, revisionist BS, ASC is government owned and regularly gagged for political reasons, senior managers who do not tow the line end up looking for a new job very quickly.
The rebaselining wasn't a cover up, it was a cost cutting measure that involved making a very large number of engineers, technical officers and technicians redundant as engineering, supply chain, etc. were cut to the bone and amalgamated with submarines. At the same time many shipbuilding and CoA functions were handed to Raytheon in Gillards failed attempt to achieve a budget surplus. The very people tasked with identifying and fixing the issues with Navantias design data and supply chain, as well as those fixing the blocks BAE f'd up beyond all recognition (the quality was so bad that senior BIW staff suggested it may have been deliberate sabotage, i.e. objects jammed into supposedly tested and certified pipe segments, reworked welds so bad that entire plates and frames had to be replaced) were cut back meaning inevitable schedule slips and cost overruns.
The whole time ASC was blamed and publicly caned for a faulty design they didn't select, an incompetent block subcontractor they didn't want but were forced to take on and an alliance partner who knew nothing about shipbuilding but was empire building their way to prime. The whole time Johnston wouldn't talk to government owned ASC but was being back grounded over expensive dinners and trips by Raytheon and BAE, while working with the WA government to kill major ship and submarine construction in Australia while moving most sustainment and modification work to Henderson.
BAEs performance was so bad that apart from being nursed and spoon fed by ASC welding, marine survey, dimensional experts, Lloyds and ABS were also contracted specifically to bring them up to standard. Part of the problem was Tenix lost many of their best people when Howard awarded AWD to ASC and they followed the work. Many of the senior ASC managers you and many others criticise are former Tenix personnel from the ANZAC project who were head hunted by ASC, while many others came over after BAE bought Williamstown and gutted the place, replacing competent people with their own lackies. In the end the Australian operation was such an embarrassment, as well as a threat to gaining future contracts, that the UK dispatched some of their best people to fix things, starting with sacking most of the deceitful and incompetent senior managers who screwed up the blocks for ship one and lost the contract for ship two.
I know you BAE types love bagging ASC "the prime is always to blame, blah blah blah" but the truth of the matter is BAEs performance and behavior was beyond incompetent, it was criminal. Quality and schedule was so bad it proved to have less impact on cost and schedule bringing the work back in house than leaving BAE to rework it. Some blocks actually proved so bad that had the full scope of the amount of rework required been realised, it would have been quicker and cheaper to leave the blocks in Williamstown and build new ones elsewhere. I never actually visited Williamstown, BAE panicked when they found out we wanted to come over and inspect their work. In the end the block subcontracts manager asked us to hold off because the thought of having ex-submarines test and certification people there was too frightening and intimidating for them.
Considering that the hulls were fabricated in Spain, below cost and ahead of schedule, how is it Adelaide and Canberra were both late and riddled with defects if BAE is so perfect and faultless? I would love it if BAE got half the bad press and political pressure ASC has had to put up with, it might give you guys a better perception of reality.
