"The fact that they've now got to pay for family funerals will cause further intergenerational debt."It'll create a hurdle which will result in them going into poorly regulated credit products and increase the financial harm in that community, and certainly sustain them as one of the lower-socio-economic areas."
"I was a bit young when they used to come around and got us to sign these papers, and acting like they thought they were one of us," she said. "An Aboriginal woman came around and said, 'Would you like to join a funeral fund?' And I said 'yes', because I wasn't in one," Ms Newman said. Gwen Newman, pictured with her grandson, is worried the next generations will have to pay for their elders' funerals.
"But they did nothing to put a hedge of protection around those who are already involved in the product.""A lot of the Aboriginal people here in Moree joined up," she said. The data — which includes people who cancelled their policies or died after 2017 — shows communities in New South Wales and Queensland were the most affected by the company's collapse."We know [there are] 8,000 in New South Wales in the current data and we know it is 1,000 from Victoria.