PRIME Minister Scott Morrison's declaration "we will spend what it takes" for national bushfire recovery is bound to have been welcomed by huge sections of the community feeling forgotten and overtaken by the COVID-19 crisis.
About one third of property clean-ups nationally have now been completed, Mr Morrison said on Monday.
At a cost of more than a billion dollars to the federal government, Mr Morrison said things were moving quickly, but focus must now remain on continued support.
The comments came as the federal government announced the release of another $450 million from the $2 billion bushfire recovery scheme.
"This doesn't stop, you can design support measures, but reality requires continued connection with communities," said Mr Morrison.
At a press conference at parliament house to announce the new tranche of funding Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud said the federal government would not take a "cookie cutter" approach to how each community recovered.
"This must not be led by Canberra," he said.
"Wildlife recovery is very important, tourism and forestry have been hit very hard.
"Australians are healing at different stages and this must be reflected in our reponse.
"We must repair our nation in a manner as comprehensive as we can make it."
Mr Littleproud acknowledged the huge mental health challenges facing Australia.
"No two communities are the same, there are very different impacts and we need our communities to help drive this from the bottom up."
He said the failure of telecommunications networks during the bushfires had made clear Australia needed more towers and more satellite dishes.
"We're working with the telcos now," he said.
He said 100 local government areas across the country had been affected.
Earlier on Monday Mr Littleproud told ABC Illawarra of the formation of local economic recovery plans, where the federal government would tap into the community with civic leaders, industry leaders and they would determine what recovery looked like.
"I don't want political interference in any of this.
"It's very important the communities are empowered to make these decisions and that's what the local economic recovery plans are about, bringing that community together to make those determinations."
He said while state governments were best placed to understand their communities, the federal government was putting on additional 24 extra staff to put more people on the ground to help people undertake applications and fill out the paperwork they send into the state agencies to get the money out.
National Bushfire Recovery Agency chief and former Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin said 260,000 individuals had now received immediate relief and $170 million had been distributed to small businesses.
Mr Colvin said demand had already doubled the federal government's predictions in January.