Professor Greg Austin from the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at UNSW Canberra proposed the new "cyber security reserve" in a discussion brief issued earlier this year, in a bid to help support experts in police forces, Defence and Canberra's intelligence establishment.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull earlier this year launched a $230 million cyber security strategy, after confirmed breaches at the Bureau of Meteorology and Department of Parliamentary Services, but that package did not include a civilian corps.

Professor Austin said a new "Cyber Civil Corps" could become a central force that could work with the current separate teams in state and federal police and the intelligence community.

It could start with a central office of about 200 employed staff supported by up to 2000 civilian corps members, including specialised "rapid response teams" who could be called in to work on major attacks.

"It could be a major state-based attack on Australia's assets, it could be a series of hacks," Professor Austin said.

"But we'll never develop in our different police forces a significant expertise in cybercrime, so we now have a choice of either dividing up the overall pie, as it is, or creating a concentrated national centre."

The centre would also not simply be focused on the cyber world, but also monitoring and responding to real-world events such as natural disasters or power failures, and how those events could impact the nation's cyber security.

Professor Austin also said the centre, if it was taken on by the federal government, should not fall under the Attorney-General's remit, as that portfolio was "much more focused on crime fighting and national security".

"The chief reason it should sit under the communications minister's portfolio – or a new minister – is that cyberspace is largely a civil domain, it's an area where open communication is important and it requires something apart from a strict national security perspective," he said.