‘Financial abuse’: how a debit scheme to help vulnerable Australians led to exploitation instead

According to Services Australia, the department that administers the scheme, Centrepay is aimed at supposed to reduce financial risk. Composite: Guardian Design

In February the Albanese government announced a $97m compensation scheme for thousands of Aboriginal people who lost all that they had paid to the predatory funeral insurer ACBF-Youpla.

When ACBF-Youpla collapsed in 2022, it left more than 13,000 Aboriginal people, some of them elderly and in palliative care, without the means to pay for funerals.