Just for the sake of completeness and to hopefully put to bed further questions, I found the original and follow-up articles in the Australian, which is the outlet which first reported on the unsolicited offer from Navantia Australia for three additional AWD's. The first reporting on this was made 5 April, 2022.
A link can be found
here to the results in a search for "Navantia" on the Australian site.
A link can be found
here for an article dated 30 May 2022 in which the Chief of Navy VADM Noonan had testified at a Senate Estimates hearing on 1 April 2022
Below is a partial quote from the linked article in the Australian.
It appears that original the Australian article reporting on the unsolicited offer is paywalled.
BTW for those not from or familiar with Australian media, the Australian, the Melbourne-based the Age, and the Sydney-based Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) are all major Australian daily newspapers. As such, to just ignore their reporting would be to demonstrate a disinterest in factual discussions.
Somewhat related to the above, but if someone is familiar with the Senate hearing transcripts reporting system and could find and post a link to the hearing where CN Noonan stated that there was no contemplation of additional
Hobart-class destroyers, I would be interested in reading through those transcripts.