There is actually a lot more to the current situation. There were allegations of corruption and backroom deals. I was quite involved with the day to day of this operation both on the JMOVGP and contractor side at different times and have my own thoughts.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/defe...817-128jr.html

The Adagold/Hifly aircraft are "rough" and many of the troops complain but they are much better than the dodgy Soviet turbo diesels provided previously. A number of incidents lead to the ADF banning personnel traveling on Soviet era aircraft. The RAAF also didn't have the capacity to provide the airlift support at the time but SHOULD do now. I'm not sure paying a broker to provide foreign jets on a long term contract is a good deal for the taxpayer.

Some time back the ADF were in a huff that it needed to be provided by an Australian flagged carrier, it was offered to both VA (330) and QF (747 as RR powered machines were being retired) and both majors turned the job down. I know that two other local carriers seriously looked at the job but at the time everyone was told that the ADF would only offer 1 year contracts as they expected the KC-30 to take on the role and swap out the tanker aircraft supporting the Wedgetail and Superbug and others.
As it was short term no one would commit to the set up costs and ADF had no choice to continue using HiFly with some CC provided by Alliance. Plans obviously changed and the KC-30 never took on the job. 5 years later Adagold are still creaming it and the Australian companies that were offered the gig are not getting any benefit.
Simples

The RAAF doesn't have enough tankers now so this was only a dream by someone in Defence to use them on this type of op. The RAAF used Qantas to support ops from Japan/Korean War/Vietnam/Butterworth with DC-4's/B707/B747...

It seems the ADF has always been short of airlift.

During the worst of COVID, there were two A340's sitting in BNE, the second arrived to supply future backup/recovery in case of tech issues after the single one broke down somewhere en-route on one of the trips. Don't think the second ever moved in the months it was there.