The AS350's were bought as a training helo in the early 80's to replace the UH1-B's, the AS 350 was selected to apease the french as the RAAF was about to choose the F/A 18 to replace the Mirage 111 and the Blackhawk to replace the UH1-H, with no french a/c being chosen the french said if we didn't buy something off them spares parts supply for the remaining years of the Mirage would be a problem!!!!, (sound familiar with french company's!!), so the AS350 was chosen (I was told the RAAF wanted MD500E's, training ,spec ops etc ie: Little birds). So the AS350 was modified to suit the Australian requirement, the twist grip , was designed by a RAAF Engineer to be incorperated onto the AS350 as the UH1-H was still the primary utility Helo in Australian and as it had a twistgrip as well the B206B-1 Kiowa it was easier to train a pilot to suit several types in emergency procedures , the twist grip was then patended by the french (the RAAF forgot to!!!) and was used as the throttle design in latter AS350's (if you see a twist grip from a AS350 B3 in pieces its a very close copy of the Australian designed one in the old ex RAAF machines).
The stories with ineptitude and interferiance in Australian helicopter selection criteria you could fill a book with,
eg, useless sideways facing seating in the Blackhawks, only Blackhawks in world with that seating -makes getting to injured pilots hard as pilots seats will not drop right back, guns will not swing in as they hit gunners seat, no access to cargo hook in cabin, and all this for $1 M extra per a/c for development , design and manufacture , UH60's don't have these problems, the S70A-9 was the forerunner of the UH60-L as the A-9 was the first to run the -701A engine and uprated Xmissn, all at Australias cost for the R&D.
I was on Blackhawks from day one , when we wanted to get rid of the sideways seating and replace with fore/aft UH60 seating we were told no as to much time and money had been spent on them despite the fact the sideways facing seating degrades the operational capabilities of the A/C (if you see a S70 A-9 now they run a mix of both seats but they will never get full UH60 setup. We had 5 of the first 6 a/c delivered to Amberly in the late 80's fitted with UH60 seats before being told to revert back to the inadequate side seats.)