See the link at post #85 this thread for some reasonable commentary re helicopters.
There are a few journalists who have the scent that defence is a mess; but just as business heads have publicly stated they were threatened by some federal government ministers over the past year, so it seems that some newspaper editors also come under such pressure and their staff might be a bit restricted in what they can ferret.
What is needed now is a storm of letters to MinDef Stephen Smith highlighting how a flawed defence policy is withering ADF capabilities. We must maintain continuous adequate and credible combat readiness by optimizing in-service hardware, where cost-effective, and should not be religiously pursuing some conceptual capabilities plan toward a Force 2030 structure which might not be appropriate 2 decades hence.
The whole plot has been orchestrated to channel taxpayer funding into the major arms corporations who now largely parent defence industry in Australia. The dots are easily connected between some former high profile politicians and military leaders now connected with the arms industry. This is the murky aspect that the media probably would not be brave enough to tackle.