Canberra not authorising purchase of material until a firm order had been ...
I don't recall that things got to that stage. However, any attempt at economies were thrown out the window with the small quantity purchasing philosophies extant at the time which just served to push up the selling price needlessly.
As an aside, the best I saw was the support stores function scrapping mega-dollars worth of stuff which had been built up for a known future mandatory mod requirement. Why ? ... hadn't been used at all over the past how ever long. Ergo, Economics/Stores 101, costs too much to hold so get rid of it. Not only get rid of it but physically destroy it. Ah ? Yep, the due time was only a little bit ahead of the destruction .... so ..... then go out and repurchase it all over again. Had they bothered to give engineering or fleet support a quick call, we might have been able to stop that particular exercise in stupidity.
Where do we go when all the holes we've dug run out?
The value of self-sufficiency.
You can only sell the farm once to get the cheaper eggs. If the chooks disappear, there be a problem ....