More than 35 million hectares burnt across Australia last bushfire season, the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements heard on Thursday.

However National Bushfire Recovery coordinator Andrew Colvin said his agency only had a role in helping people across a 13.5 million hectare range.

That's because the National Bushfire Recovery Agency only has a direct hand in helping areas which have been formally declared under Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.

The number of declared disaster areas had grown from 42 to 111 since the agency was set up in January.

However there are areas of the Northern Territory and South Australia which are not covered, Mr Colvin confirmed.

"We're not dealing directly with the local government areas that are non-declared," he said.

Approximately $225 million in one-off disaster recovery payments had gone out to more than 190,000 claimants. Another $14 million had been paid to around 3000 people under disaster recovery allowance, which provides people whose income was affected by natural disaster with a short-term allowance for up to 13 weeks.

However around 23,000 claims had been rejected for disaster recovery payments. More than 1400 claims were rejected for the disaster recovery allowance.

Mr Colvin said the way Australia has traditionally responded to natural disaster had been stretched by the summer's bushfires. At one point, fires were burning across four states, with large parts of the country cloaked in smoke.

"Most of our recovery from disaster frameworks have relied on the principle that you needed to be directly affected by the flood or by the hurricane, the cyclone, by the fire," Mr Colvin said.

"What we quickly found, once we started to do - consult with the communities was that the indirect impact of this particular event was massive. And that the [disaster recovery funding arrangements] didn't properly contemplate, and some of our arrangements didn't properly contemplate how to deal with that, so we have to quickly find ways to deal with that indirect impact and I think that is still an ongoing issue."

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This meant there were jurisdictional inconsistencies in the level of support provided.

"The reality is that there are differences across jurisdictional boundaries and the experience of an Australian recovering from this event can vary depending on which side of an artificial line that you sit," Mr Colvin said.

"I'm not just talking about state lines, it can also vary at times from local government boundaries as well. There are embedded inconsistencies in our framework that only become an issue and a concern if the disaster crosses jurisdictional boundaries, which doesn't happen a great deal."

Emergency Management Minister David Littleproud announced the disaster funding arrangements would be reviewed on Wednesday.

Mr Colvin said if a jurisdiction that was not covered by the arrangements approached the Commonwealth or the bushfire recovery agency for aid, the request would be considered.

"That hasn't occurred to this point and hence why we're focusing in on where local governments have requested support from the Commonwealth," Mr Colvin said.

Meanwhile National Drought and Northern Queensland Flood Response Agency coordinator-general Shane Stone told the commission there was a need for a national "acts of God" agency.

While Emergency Management Australia - which sits under the Department of Home Affairs - provides a coordination role, Mr Stone said a standalone statutory authority should be established to "jump in" and assist.

"Because at the end of the day you will be judged by how quickly you arrived on the ground and how quickly you delivered the first support for people caught up in a dire situation," Mr Stone said.

"The idea that when something comes along that we jump through the hoops and try to set up another taskforce that is embedded within a government department and we reinvent the wheel, and there is no consistency in terms of what one might or might not do ... there are so many learnings from what we've all been through that I find it hard to believe that we wouldn't try to capture all of that and the corporate knowledge that has now been accumulated across a raft of people who would be able to hit the ground running."