The number of individuals diagnosed with the dreaded Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has risen in Australia, prompting lawmakers and health experts to re-assess laid down national policies and programs on the disease.

In an annual surveillance report released by Kirby Institute, the University of NSW's infection and immunity unit, into HIV and sexually transmissible infections, it found that new diagnoses of HIV cases surged by 8 per cent over a year ago, and by 50 per cent in the last decade.

The report detailed 1,137 cases were tested positive of the dreaded virus in 2011, Australia's highest since 1992. Decade-wise, it was a jump of 418 cases over the 719 cases recorded in 1999.

Greens senator Richard Di Natale blamed Australia's complacency for the terrifying growth of HIV cases.

"New medications have given us a sense of comfort, in that it no longer is the death sentence that it once was," Mr Natale told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

"It's now become more regarded as a chronic disease than a fatal infection and that has, as a result, created a sense of complacency."

He said people must always be on the alert still on possibly getting infected by the virus and that it is a "serious disease."

Diagnoses found in NSW, Victoria and South Australia propelled last year's surge of HIV cases.

''In these three states we have seen quite a significant rise in the last calendar year,'' Associate Professor David Wilson, head of the Kirby Institute's Surveillance and Evaluation Program for Public Health at the University of NSW, said.

While researchers theorized some of the rise could be due to increased and vigilant testing, what appeared seems to be a real rise, they concurred, which could have been possibly driven by a growth in rates of unsafe sex among gay men.

"We were starting to think we had reached a point where it would flatten out," Professor Wilson said. "But over the last year we have realised it has jumped again."

The data showed 72 per cent of people diagnosed from 2007-2011 were men who had sex with men. Heterosexual contact made up for only 16 per cent and only two per cent were found from injecting drug use.

"While Australia can continue to be proud of its successful response over 30 years in limiting HIV, this increase is a call to action to reduce HIV infections in Australia," Rob Lake, Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) executive director, said.

"We know the tools we need, but the political will and policy action must to be there to change the number of HIV transmissions."

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