![AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw (left), ASIO director-general Mike Burgess (centre) and ASD director-general Rachel Noble (right). Pictures by Sitthixay Ditthavong AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw (left), ASIO director-general Mike Burgess (centre) and ASD director-general Rachel Noble (right). Pictures by Sitthixay Ditthavong](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/106459643/f4b60d7c-e266-4505-b008-67a0c14eaf1a.jpg/r0_0_2000_1124_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The announcement of a major national security precinct in Canberra's Parliamentary Triangle signals imminent major investments, experts say, but skill shortages and recruitment struggles could plague ambitious attempts.
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The Albanese government's first federal budget had few surprises but buried in the pages on a few short paragraphs was a plan to build a new National Security Office Precinct in the national capital.
It will be home to some 5000 staff within the national intelligence community, including those from the Office of National Intelligence and the Foreign Affairs Department, with plans to complete the construction by 2028.
While the building's price tag is classified, it's expected the project will exceed the billion-dollar mark.
National Security College policy director Will Stoltz said the major announcement made a lot of sense given the challenges the world is facing.
"Australia's national intelligence community is undergoing an enormous expansion just in terms of the number of people that it's seeking to employ," he said.
"We are living in a more hostile world where there's a myriad of different national security threats, everything from violent extremism, organised crime, through to foreign interference from China and Russia.
"It's a natural response to the more hostile world that we're living in that these sorts of investments are required.
"This is just one piece of a larger transformation of the national intelligence community."
The former Coalition government announced a major investment in Australia's cyber and intelligence capabilities in the March budget, diverting $9.9 billion over the coming 10 years into spy agencies to "strike back" at adversaries in cyberspace.
The pledge means the Australian Signals Directorate will triple its offensive cyber capabilities and double its cyber hunt and response activities with a down payment of $688.7 million in 2022-23.
A new office for the signals agency was opened in Majura Park shortly before the budget announcement was unveiled, offering a new space for defence, federal police and key industry partners to work.
But the rapid expansion of Australia's national intelligence community will require key tensions to be solved.
Dr Stoltz said the significant increase in intelligence and cyber specialists was not as simple as starting a major recruitment drive.
It's not yet clear whether the 5000 or so staff expected to be housed within the central security precinct will be in addition to existing staffing levels or whether staff will be brought over from other headquarters and buildings within the region.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, whose headquarters is situated on Parkes Way across the lake, has around 2000 employees while the signals directorate is approximated to have the same.
The hiring of an additional 5000 national security members by 2028 would mark a substantial increase, the policy director said.
"The big question there is whether agencies can actually successfully recruit that many people," Dr Stoltz said.
"The reality is that the intelligence workforce these days requires a pretty rare combination of skillsets."
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Dr Stoltz added around 1000 people a year were being recruited to maintain the intelligence community at its current size.
"So to get to that even higher level is going to take quite a significant transformation in their approach to recruitment," he said.
"It's an open question about whether this facility or this precinct will actually end up ever getting to capacity."
And it's a question that's been raised recently by the community's watchdog Christopher Jessup.
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security appeared before a senate estimates hearing on Friday warning a number of roles remained empty in the oversight agency due to skills shortages and drawn-out security vetting queues.
Dr Jessup said his agency has funding for 57 employees but had struggled to reach its full staffing limit as promising applicants dropped out during the vetting process.
"The issues that we find with all staff, particularly those with special skills, is that during the period of that positive vetting, they get an interest in doing something else with somebody else, or they get offered another job, and they just disappear out of the pipeline," he said.
"We're at a much greater risk of losing people when they happen to be for example, a specialist in IT, or ... someone with accountancy skills, because they are in high demand. We are not the only people looking for them."
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