Financial counsellor and consumer advocate Bettina Cooper speaks in measured tones, pausing before answering a question to consider her response. But she doesn't mince her words.
"I think the best people who can speak for First Nations people are First Nations people. It's very hard to explain to somebody who is not First Nations what it means to be First Nations – the complexities, the trauma, the demands, the cultural load, the expectations, not just of our people but the world," the Boandik woman says.
It's very hard to explain to somebody who is not First Nations what it means to be First Nations
Financial counsellor and consumer advocate Bettina Cooper
Sitting in CHOICE's Sydney office ahead of NAIDOC week, Cooper reflects on a professional journey that took her from a job as a bookkeeper at a trucking company to becoming a First Nations financial counsellor, then leading a national campaign for justice for victims of the financial fiasco that was the Youpla/Aboriginal Community Benefits Fund (ACBF) scandal.
Finding her place as a financial counsellor
Cooper grew up in South Western Sydney and has lived there for almost all her life.
"My father really wanted us to have the opportunity of education, because he didn't have the opportunity of education himself. We weren't allowed to have days off school. When they had teachers' strikes we were the only kids at school," she says.
Cooper's father died in the middle of her final years of high school. After she graduated, she worked in several jobs as a bookkeeper and clerk. Several years later, she found herself keeping the books for a local charity, where she discovered the field of financial counselling.
"I came across this financial counselling thing and I read about it and I thought, 'I already do this. I do this for my family. I already fix up my family's Centrelink, fix up their energy bills'," she says.
I came across this financial counselling thing and I thought, 'I already do this. I do this for my family ... fix up my family's Centrelink, fix up their energy bills'
Financial counsellor and consumer advocate Bettina Cooper
Cooper then earned a diploma in financial counselling and worked in various jobs in Sydney as a financial counsellor, focusing on First Nations issues.
"Being First Nations is part of my qualifications. The same is if I was a financial counsellor who spoke another language and used that skill to work with clients from that dialect, that would be a skill. Being First Nations and working with First Nations people is a skill. Allowing us to consult with our people in a culturally safe way allows us to have a solution that is culturally determined by them."
Building a dedicated First Nations debt helpline
Cooper was encouraged by a mentor to take a job helping to build up a dedicated First Nations debt helpline, which was called Mob Strong Debt Help – part of the Financial Rights Legal Centre.
"There was a recognition that there was a need for an Aboriginal debt helpline. They hired me and a service coordinator to join Mark Holden – an Aboriginal solicitor who had been working to start the helpline – so three people," she says.
We went from getting 60 calls a month, to a thousand calls in 10 days
Financial counsellor and consumer advocate Bettina Cooper
"We were starting to slowly grow the service, making sure our number was on the bottom of bank letters and energy bills," says Cooper.
"Then one day in March 2022, I was called into a meeting with ASIC and we were told that all of Youpla's funds had gone into liquidation. That day changed everything for me, for Mark and for Mob Strong," she says.
The Youpla fund collapse crisis
First Nations advocates and allies formed the Save Sorry Business Coalition.
Youpla, previously known as the Aboriginal Community Benefits Fund, was a funeral insurance provider. Despite its Aboriginal-themed marketing, it was not owned by Aboriginal people, but signed up thousands of First Nations people in remote communities around the country on false pretenses. When the fund collapsed in 2022, policyholders who had paid tens of thousands of dollars in premiums were left with nothing. There were no funds left to bury their loved ones in culturally appropriate ways.
"When that announcement went out, we went from getting 60 calls a month, to a thousand calls in 10 days. We spent the next three months returning all those calls and then Mark and I went into advocacy mode," says Cooper.
Working with CHOICE
"We had bodies lying in morgues unable to be buried; we had a lot of people distressed. At that point it was actually CHOICE's board and [former CEO] Alan Kirkland who backed the idea of a campaign to advocate for something for Youpla people, because they were not going to be covered by anything else."
We had bodies lying in morgues unable to be buried; we had a lot of people distressed
Financial counsellor and consumer advocate Bettina Cooper
Cooper sings the praises of CHOICE's former head of policy and government relations Patrick Veyret, who helped gather the broad coalition of First Nations advocates and non-First Nations allies which formed the Save Sorry Business Coalition. She says he provided her with the tools and skills to become an advocate and ensure the campaign to get money back for Youpla victims was First Nations-led.
"He mentored me to lead it my way. I would stop and watch him at first, then he was alongside me, then he was behind me and then he stepped away," she says. "There's not many people that would do that without any ego."
Save Sorry Business success
The advocacy paid off when the new federal government came to power in May 2022. One of the first things Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney and Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones did was announce a temporary scheme to pay for the funerals of victims of the Youpla collapse.
Cooper and the Save Sorry Business Coalition continued to campaign until, over a year later, the government announced a $97 million 'enduring resolution', which will see funeral costs covered and some money returned to those who made payments to Youpla/ACBF.
Organisations like Mob Strong Debt help have proven their worth.
More work to be done
Cooper says the outcome suggests that the approach of governments unilaterally imposing policies on First Nations people, rather than working with them, is starting to change, but there's still plenty of work to be done to bridge the cultural gap.
"Far too often I'm asked by other people to give cultural advice, but then they edit that or they change it. It's never the words I've given, it's a sanitised version, because the words I've given make people uncomfortable. But maybe they are supposed to feel uncomfortable. First Nations people deserve the right to be heard and shouldn't have to conform," she says.
First Nations people deserve the right to be heard and shouldn't have to conform
Financial counsellor and consumer advocate Bettina Cooper
Following the Youpla campaign, Cooper says her role as a financial counsellor has continued to evolve to become more of an advocate. A current area of concern is the Centrelink deductions program for First Nations welfare recipients.
Cooper says organisations like Mob Strong Debt Help have proven their worth and now need the financial backing to grow and expand. Funding and pathways are needed to increase the number of First Nations financial counsellors, lawyers and even policy and campaigning advocates if Australia is going to close the gap in financial outcomes for First Nations communities, according to Cooper.
"I have heard from various Ministers the desire to make changes for First Nations people and their financial wellbeing. Unfortunately, that desire is for us to provide them with information and support, but it doesn't come with any funding for us to do that," says Cooper.
"Mob Strong hasn't been able to get funding to expand and grow. We need to value Aboriginal people, and organisations need to be willing to back us so that our voice can be heard."
Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.
