A high-profile journalist says attracting attention to the problems facing Aboriginal communities has always been a struggle because people in cities prefer to ignore them.

Former ABC and Channel Nine reporter Jeff McMullen is hosting a symposium in Alice Springs today which is aimed at confronting the divisions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

He says fresh thinking is needed to solve health and social problems.

"We live in a kind of a 'Matrix of self-interest' - not that Keanu Reeves cyber world, this one is one where you burrow back in to your own little bubble, you don't want to know about the other city, the other town, the other country," he said.

"In some cases you don't even want to know about the other town or community down the road."