Well a great deal of the blame can be placed directly to Codock. Success took over 11 years to build and was 4 times over budget, there was no money left and there was no way the govt was going to repeat the effort with another hull. That government owned facility was atrociously inefficient. The record with the Battles, the Anzacs, the Q conversions and the Darings, they all speak for themselves at both dockyards.
I have no doubt the French documentation contributed to Success' failure but they were by no means the major mess.
I had the misfortune to do refits both there and at Williamstown when they were government owned, late, half completed, poor workmanship. It took the crew all the way to the next refit to sort the mess. Mind you that's when engineers were trained and capable. They also had an excellent FMU Fleet Maintenance Unit, mostly based on Stalwart, to help them
The facility was government owned but privately operated and while far from perfect it was no as bad as made out. I used to believe they were shocking inefficient until having the pleasure of working with a number of outstanding individuals who were trained there who proved to be as good as the best I have worked with from anywhere else, including BIW, Govern or VT.
Like any yard their performance was due to a multitude of factors over and above the usually blamed poor management and union idiocy.. Major factors at Codock were related to workforce levels priorities, something I became very familiar with at ASC. The number and type of workers was micro managed and they were pulled off one job and put on another at the whim of the customer, the CoA. Submarine refits, maintenance and upgrades pretty much had priority over the same for skimmers, which in turn were prioritised over new construction. Jobs already started were slowed or suspended to provide resources for higher priority work, or even worse, when money was short and planned work deferred.
I used the word "priority" a lot and it could be determined "urgency" or "importance", with urgent/high priority things not necessarily being truly important. This meant projects like ASW upgrades and conversions of WWII frigates and destroyers had priority over new construction, hence the delays to the Darings and River class DEs, even though many of the converted /upgraded ships saw limited if any service.
Sadly there were also sacrosanct sections and capabilities that were always fully manned and funded, even when they had nothing to do. Then there were vital niche capabilities that were let whither and die before rebuilt over and over again.
Codock was a vastly more capable than Williamstown and no more difficult to fix. What's more it could have built every ship and submarine the RAN has commissioned since it the yard was closed. All that was needed was the same sort of reorganisation, including consolidation of unions to remove demarcation disputes, that saw such success at Williamstown and ASC, followed by a continuous build of surface combatants, submarines, amphibious and support ships. Codock was more than capable of building either Oberons or even better Barbels for the RAN.
enjoy your time here. You are right in that a country does need a nuclear industry to support a nuclear navy.