The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is also calling for the establishment of a national security council that can operate independently of both policy agencies and the intelligence community.

Such an agency would replace the current Secretaries Committee on National Security as well as the National Intelligence Coordination Committee, says the paper, entitled National Security Institutions: Reforms and Renewal.

Overseeing all of this would be a special minister of state for national security, who would report to the prime minister as well as coordinating a response to security issues of cross-portfolio significance.

"Given the growth in the size of the national security community, and the complexity of issues confronting it, having a dedicated minister to provide oversight and accountability is both necessary and overdue," the report said.

The report also argues homeland security, border protection and defence agencies need to integrate and network.

This would drag the security community out of its 1940s framework and into the 21st century.

Issues once on the periphery of international affairs - climate change, emergency management and energy security - have crowded the security agenda, making it hard for agencies to prioritise.

"Despite a decade of reform and large funding increases, Australia's national security architecture remains similar to its original design in the 1940s," said the report by ASPI's National Security Program director Dr Carl Ungerer.

"Better coordination could be achieved if agencies in each of the five functional areas - border and homeland security, intelligence, international, defence and research and innovation - were more integrated and better networked."

The paper goes on to say networks would be more flexible than current inter-departmental structures because they could be formed and disbanded as needs arise.

"They would not require any physical changes to existing departments or agencies but instead would operate between and across them," Dr Ungerer said.

The current special minister of state, Gary Gray, is responsible for Public Service and Integrity and sits on the outer ministry.

The ASPI was founded in 2001 by the Howard government to provide alternative policy analysis to ministers and the public.

According to its website, former air force deputy chief John Blackburn, former Labor senator Robert Ray and current Liberal senator Russell Trood sit on the executive council.

29 September 2010