The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the "the haves and the have-nots" in Australia, with supply chains to Indigenous communities still under pressure, a regional policy forum has been told.
Charles Prouse, head of Indigenous-owned and operated consultancy group NyikBar, says delays in getting resources to Aboriginal communities during COVID outbreaks last year were partly due to bureaucracy.
The delays prompted volunteers and business leaders to source transport, bottled water, books, and internet dongles, Mr Prouse told a forum of the Governance Institute of Australia on Thursday.
He said the divide between metropolitan and remote communities cannot "go back to status quo".
"There's still a lot more work to do, there's still pressure on the supply chains," he said.
"I do see green shoots of both innovation and human support and resilience.
"We also see the enormous divide that COVID has exposed, whether it's infrastructure or resource access, or the ability to buy something.
"We've got to get a more equal playing field between the haves and the have-nots, the city and the regions, which is slowly happening, but we all have to make it happen."
Regional Australia Institute chairman Christian Zahra said the population boom in country areas will continue over the next decade.
"The population trends that we're seeing now are long-standing enough for us to identify them as trends, rather than a blip," Mr Zahra said.
"Our hope is that [the national economy] will continue to grow in terms of the proportion of national economic output coming from rural and regional Australia."
Mr Zahra said governments must work to understand the varying needs of regional, rural and remote areas, and ensure communities get their say.
"There's massive diversity in rural and regional Australia," he said.
