There's a ton of absolutely garbage reporting on it. No like seriously a ton of the articles are just more mainstream media uncritically reposting claims by a couple cranks in Australia that LARP as a think tank.

Anyhow, a fair assessment is the program has gone massively over timeline and budget, so in that sense is a failure, however the resulting aircraft is very clearly the best in its class both in absolute capability and value.

Going forward there's broad awareness in the government that the program management mistakes of the F-35 program cannot be repeated. There's a general consensus that 3 decade long development projects just won't be relevant in a world where drone concepts and similar are evolving rapidly on a year by year basis. There's also awareness the government needs to act more as the integrator that owns the project to avoid lock in issues.