The commitment of Graham White and the project office to building in Australia had dramatic and far-reaching consequences for the new submarine project. Most significantly, it harnessed support for the project from many groups that would otherwise have been indifferent or even opposed to buying submarines, notably the left wing of the Labor Party and the trade unions. Without this broad base of support, it is likely that the project would have been considered too hard and expensive and fallen victim to the balance of payments crisis in the mid-1980s.

The project office joined Hans Ohff and John White as the leading apostles for building the submarines in Australia, widely preaching their gospel, the central tenets of which were industrial regeneration, technology transfer, modular construction, quality assurance and industrial relations reform.

In early 1984 a third force appeared when Jim Duncan, a former naval electrical engineer, was appointed to lead the South Australian submarine task force created to get the submarines built in South Australia. Duncan had served with Graham White on HMAS Vampire and they shared a similar attitude to many issues, notably the problems of Australia's old naval dockyards and the navy's lingering colonial dependence on Britain. Duncan also had close links with Eglo Engineering, developed through Eglo's construction work at Port Adelaide.