2 MARCH 1994: ACUHC/PT1: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO PAT TAYLOR

I will ask you first Mrs Taylor, whereabouts were your parents living when you were born and what year was that?

PT:       In Sydney in 1935.

What part of Sydney?

PT:       In Kensington.

Did you grow up around there?

PT:       Yes.

Where did you go to school?

PT:       I went to Kensington Public School for primary school, then I went to Sydney Girls’ High School, which wasn’t very far away.

What sort of influence did you get from your parents and your teachers, can you remember?

PT:       Well I seem to remember my first class teacher was a very professional school teacher of the old school where they had a career dedicated to teaching. A typical spinster, discipline, rewards for being intelligent and being top of the class, boiled lollies at the end of the week. I seem to remember her pretty well. Later on I guess I went into an opportunity class and the teacher there seems to stand out as a different type again. A red-headed fiery individual. But I guess at school I was always very obedient and disciplined and whatever the teacher said was law.

But I guess with my parents, not so much my mother and father, I was more influenced by my grandmother who was a person who had migrated from England at a very young age. She had worked in the outback of Australia. Despite little formal education she was extremely well read and well educated and was a never-ending source of knowledge. History and general knowledge, knew an awful lot. I guess I related better with her than I did my actual parents.

She got you reading did she?

PT:       Yes, reading, interested in the world generally, interested in travel. Getting away and seeing what the world had to offer.

How far did you go on with school?

PT:       I went to high school and you did five years in those days. It was the Leaving Certificate. When I left school I had always planned to be a school teacher. Then at the eleventh hour they did those vocational guidance tests and they said that whilst I would be good as a school teacher I would be very good as an accountant. So at the last minute I changed my whole direction. I went into the Public Service where they promised to organise time off to do an accounting course if I took the job. I foolishly went along with that idea.

Why foolishly?

PT:       Well they didn’t deliver. I guess you could call it discrimination. Why did a girl want to become an accountant and this type of thing. So in the end I had to go and do it at night, sort of a course at night on my own volition. I found that very daunting. I was in a class of all males. I stuck it for two years and then I gave it away, I didn’t complete the course at that time.

So what did you do then?

PT:       I worked in the Public Service until I was twenty-one. As soon as I was twenty-one I took off overseas just to see some of the world. I travelled through Europe and Britain, as one did in 1956. Everybody did that sort of thing, kicked around seeing the world, taking odd jobs here and there. I haven’t recorded these down because you work for a while and go off travelling. While I was overseas I got married and came back to Australia in 1958. We rode a bike from London to Karachi and then across to Ceylon and back to Australia.

Was that travelling time formative for you? Did it sort of affect your life after that?

PT:       Oh absolutely. I have always had the wanderlust, although from then on I decided not to do it as roughly as I had done it in the past. No more camping and hitch-hiking. I had had enough of the rough style. If I ever did it again I would do it in a bit more comfort. So I came back to Australia to have a family and didn’t really get back into mainstream work until about 1961. I went to work as an accountant in a manufacturing company, vegetable oils. I worked there in various accounting functions for about seven years.

Where did you first hear about credit unions?

PT:       Well I had only ever seen a Four Corners program. I can’t remember the year, but I remember later on when I got into the movement recognising Dermot Ryan, or some of the City Council guys who were in this Four Corners program. They saved two bob a week, or something, and got a loan. I had seen that program. My reason for getting into credit unions was purely and simply that it was a part-time job that was on offer. I wanted part-time work because I wanted to spend some time with my family and not work all day. So I think in 1968, I think, I came into the credit union arena as the all-purpose person, the one man show, part-time at Gilbarco Employees’ Credit Union. They had just opened a new office in the northern suburbs and I had just moved to the northern suburbs to live.

Was Malcolm Samuels still involved with that?

PT:       Malcolm Samuels was my mentor in the credit union movement. He was the person who appointed me. He was the Chairman at the time. I took on this credit union and I think there was about $450,000 of assets. I did everything from the bookkeeping machine to the accounts and everything. I worked very closely with Malcolm for many, many years, many, many years after that.

You were still there when he moved to the League?

PT:       Yes. I was there for five years and I think he moved to the League about four years after I started. During that time of course that credit union expanded to about three people and I ultimately worked full-time. Then after awhile at the League Malcolm asked me to join him at the League and I went there at his request. I was invited to join a team of Field Officers at the New South Wales Credit Union League.

Was Val Rosenblatt working at Gilbarco while you were there?

PT:       Yes. Val had actually been associated with Gilbarco even longer than I had. She had done a lot of work on a volunteer basis and she wasn’t employed in the credit union at that time. But she had this involvement and this volunteer connection and she was actually the first person that I put on when the business expanded. So she came to work for me as the next employee at Gilbarco. So when I left to go to the League she took over Gilbarco Credit Union.

Now I didn’t actually work directly for Malcolm at the League, I worked in the Field Services area. He was working in the development of community credit unions at that time. I went there to work as just what they call a Field Officer, which turned out to be five years of fixing problems in credit unions.

Do you remember some of them?

PT:       I remember some of them, but you will notice on the resume I have put over thirty credit unions and I can’t remember all their names. There were so many of them, so many of them that today are household names, the leading credit unions in Australia. Yet they were messes when I was involved with them.

Do you remember Earlwood?

PT:       Oh long before Earlwood. The first one I remember, my first job I think, was Amicable Credit Union, which was the hospital credit union at Prince Henry and Prince of Wales. That was the first one I was involved with. Matraville Credit Union which is now Dependable, that was my second job. I was involved in that. They were the earliest ones.

What were their problems do you remember?

PT:       Oh the books were just a mess. Just the financial records and how they accounted for things. The unprofessionalism and just a complete shemozzle. Some of them were in deficit, not all of them. Mostly as the years went on they had made big losses.

That was around about the period when deficit budgeting came in and a number of them didn’t seem to understand what that was. Was that a problem?

PT:       That’s right. But perhaps even before the deficit budgeting came in. Deficit budgeting I think was more associated with the developing credit unions like the Blue Mountains and Black Town where they were starting up communities. I don’t think deficit budgeting was ever so much a plan of the industrials, it was just a result of poor management, or lack of management, mostly volunteer run. Or too much power in one person, the Board giving power to a person who didn’t do the right thing. In lots of cases there was misappropriation and dishonesty and those sort of things.

Did you have anything to do with Sydney County Council Credit Union?

PT:       Actually no. I was never involved with Sydney County Council. Oh, I forget, I am getting mixed up with Sydney City County Council. Absolutely was I involved with Sydney County Council. Did I ever. I was the person that sort of discovered that this terrible thing that the Members’ Ledger bore absolutely no resemblance to the General Ledger and somebody had been creaming off interest of people’s accounts. Yes absolutely.

Keith Davidson went to jail for it anyway.

PT:       That’s right. That came a bit later. There were a lot of other things that happened before that. That was a few years down the track after I had been at the League.

When you were at the League can you remember the Blue Mountains amalgamations? The Blaxland and the Springwood ones?

PT:       Yes that also came later. I joined the League at the time that Steve Birt and Ron Swanson and John Porter were all forming lots and lots of new credit unions. That was the big thing at that time, you know creating credit unions all the time as a development field. Yes the big hopes of the Blue Mountains and all those communities. Campbelltown and as you say Blacktown. We had great hopes for those sorts of things which ultimately got into a lot of difficulty through the deficit budgeting.

So what were you doing earlier on then?

PT:       Well earlier on I would travel all over the countryside. Up to Newcastle and spend a few days getting their books in order. Newcastle State Dockyard Credit Union and Marta Misericordia, up in Newcastle. Media and Publishing was another one, it had a different name in those days I think was CPH Credit Union which merged with another newspaper credit union, that had a lot of difficulties.

Was Noelene working there then?

PT:       No this was before Noelene’s time. She sort of settled it down I think when she came along. There was a guy called Ron Farrow before Noelene that sort of got it back into health. But just dozens of them. Rushing round from one to the other trying to keep them all afloat and rectify these problems. I guess one of the big ones was HDH, the Hawker de Havilland, where they lost nearly half their assets in losses.

That was a defalcation too, wasn’t it?

PT:       Yes that guy committed suicide. There were a few suicides. The guy from Amicable committed suicide too. I can’t remember his name.

Was it Ken May who went in there after they had straightened it up?

PT:       Ken May did spend some time at Amicable, yes that is right. Ultimately Tony Johnson. Then it merged with Premier eventually.

What were the records like when you used to get to some of these credit unions and how did you recommend that the records be kept differently in order to straighten them up at that stage?

PT:       Well the New South Wales Credit Union League had a standard bookkeeping system. In those days it was manual. Most of the credit unions were on National 32 accounting machines for the members’ records. Then they had this manual set of books which we put in all the credit unions, this standardised bookkeeping system. Often you would go around once a month and do the books for them. But it was all kept on standardised books so it was a lot easier. It was good.

Were they using accounting machines? Were they electrified or were they the ones with a handle on the side?

PT:       No they were reasonably electronic. Motorbars. Not so much handles but motorbars. The National 32, Burroughs, they were the most popular. Then there was something called a Suntrong, which I remember Gilbarco put in, that was a bit more electronic.

What about the Sensamatic that used to do the tapes and the punch cards, do you remember those?

PT:       Yes that is right. Then a couple of the credit unions were on some Commonwealth Bank punching system too. They started to move into the punching. There were a few systems around. There was a semi-computer system before the big move later on, in the Earlwood days, which you referred to earlier to the computer system brought from Western Australia.

Were you involved in that?

PT:       Oh absolutely, right from the start. As a matter of fact it was Geoff Cambridge and I who were working together in CU Consultants. He went over to the West on a visit and actually brought that whole technology to New South Wales.

Did Les Robinson come into that at all?

PT:       Yes, there was Les, Geoff and I had a company and we were actually going to go into partnership with GCS. At the last minute, because we had done a deal on a handshake and not on a formal document, Reg Elliott and a red-headed guy from the Credit Union League gazumped us and did a formal deal and so FCS was born.

Was there any bitterness there on your’s or Les Robinson’s part?

PT:       Well Geoff, Les and I were bitter, but that’s business. You don’t do deals on handshakes. We learnt a lesson. I think in the long-term I am not sorry. I have gone on to bigger and better things and I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

Now there is a whole area there which is still a bit hazy. For instance had the GCS been put in in Victoria or any credit unions in New South Wales before Geoff Cambridge got on to it.

PT:       No. It was in Western Australia and then Andy and Brian came over here. The first credit union that went on to that system was John McIntyre’s, AWA.

Helen’s?

PT:       No. I don’t think so. John McIntyre’s I thought was the first. Then Earlwood was one of the early ones, a real guinea-pig.

Some reckon that it was in Victoria before John McIntyre got it in New South Wales. Is that true or not?

PT:       I am unaware of that, I guess that is possible.

Also it was mentioned while I was doing Sydney County Council Credit Union history that, and this is a quote from their point of view, they said that Geoff Cambridge said he had one on the wharf, one of these computers. It was actually for somebody else, but they could have it if they wanted to put it in. The system was put in there. Is there any truth in that? Or is that a different sort of perception?

PT:       I am a bit hazy on whether they went to that system.

They did go in, but when I don’t know.

PT:       But that would sound like a Geoff Cambridge statement. Whether it was on the wharf or not would be another story. But I can believe that to be true.

According to Brian Dean they put it in over one week-end and it worked first thing.

PT:       Yes, There was amazing success with the conversions and how it all went. There were a whole seasons of them that I was involved with. Earlwood and Amicable and Central, or Mutual as it was in those days.

They were all successful?

PT:       Yes they were all extremely successful. Marvellous system.

None of them had troubles with the change-over?

PT:       No it transformed the way we did business miraculously. A quantum leap forward.

Where did you learn how to use the system and how to educate people on the system?

PT:       Well I guess it was at Earlwood. That was a sort of a bit of a training ground as I recall. The whole team of CU Consultants at the time, we had two or three operatives apart from the Directors. We were all hands-on and we all got our training there with Dean and company.

Can you remember some of the others?

PT:       Well there was John Banks, there was Kate Doyle. There would have been Keith Mannix and a young guy who went to America, Steve somebody.

I have a picture of him actually, at County Council Credit Union, and I just can’t remember the name either.

PT:       Oh you are thinking of Steve Altey. No I wasn’t thinking of him but he was there. Liz Brady.

She is in Tasmania now, I think.

PT:       Yes. She spent a lot of time at Sydney County Council on an exercise with that computer.

When did Ken May come into it?

PT:       Well Ken May, I couldn’t tell you what year he started.

He started during that exercise of the Sydney County Council one. So it would have to be somewhere around 1977, 1978. Even 1976.

PT:       Didn’t he start in the NRMA?

I think he was involved with NRMA and Amicable.

PT:       Yes, NRMA, Amicable then Sydney County Council, that’s right.

What were the problems with NRMA, do you remember?

PT:       No, I don’t remember any major problems there. Just similar to everywhere else. Just a lack of professional people keeping the records and running the business.

We sort of haven’t progressed through your experience. First you were a Field Officer at the League, now exactly how did you move from there? Were you on the Stabilisation team within the League?

PT:       Yes, well I started off as a Field Officer and then I think after a year or two the Stabilisation group was formed. I worked then with Geoff Cambridge in the stabilising of these credit unions that had funds injected into them to rehabilitate them through the Savings Protection Fund. There was a whole host of credit unions that benefited from that financial support. I used to inspect them and make sure they were on the right track and look at their accounts and analyse the results that they were all going in the right direction. There would have been half a dozen to ten credit unions involved over a couple of years in that exercise. Eventually that became a fairly significant part of the League’s operations. It expanded and had more and more people in it and I ultimately became the Manager of the Stabilisation Section. There were people like Keith Mannix and Tony Johnson all working in that area. Liz Brady. A whole team of Field Officers or operatives.

They could all do everything? There was no specialisation?

PT:       No they were all pretty much generalists, yes. They could all do everything. We didn’t do a lot in the way of marketing or anything in those days. It was more collecting bad debts, doing the accounting side of things and the lending. Making sure they had good lending policies. But in those days marketing wasn’t what it is today. They did start a bit later on with the Blue Mountains and those sorts of things. It started to get in to achieving growth.

Now the Stabilisation group at the League, was that working under contract to the Registrar? What was going on at that time?

PT:       Well when the Credit Unions Reserve Board came into existence and replaced the Savings Protection Fund, the legislation there gave the Registrar power to appoint administrators. So that’s when this appoint of an administrator, which in most cases was Geoff sometimes myself, by the Registrar that became a sort of a relationship that we had. We had to report to the Registry as well as our job sort of being in the League. We had this position or office which was conferred by the Registry and which a fee was payable for. So those fees went back into the coffers of the League because they were financing all this assistance that was forthcoming.

Now under the Savings Protection Fund, you remember that obviously, who was you liaising with in the Committee, the Common Board?

PT:       Well there was a Common Board and I would go to those Common Board managers and give my reports on the progress and what was happening in the various credit unions which the Common Board was Directors of. So we had regular monthly Board meetings and updated the Common Board on the progress of what was happening. Budget comparisons and that sort of thing.

Was it Brian Charlton throughout that who Chaired the meetings?

PT:       Brian Charlton was associated with that for a long time. There were a lot of people on that Board, you know well-known names.

Any stories?

PT:       Um, no not that I can recall. They were usually pretty routine affairs.

The Savings Protection Fund Committee was set up in the first instance with Frank or John Francis Richards as Chairman, yet most people reckon he didn’t ever act as Chairman. Do you remember that?

PT:       I don’t remember his association with the Savings Protection Fund at all.

Well he appeared as Chairman in the first year. But everybody seems to think that he didn’t know that he was actually.

PT:       It was probably a formality in the set-up phase before it sort of ever did anything. But Les Robinson of course would have been keen on establishing that.

Were you there when in was established.

PT:       Yes, I would have been. I went into the movement in 1968 and in the Association, or the League, in 1973.

In the first instance, I believe, the report came out from America under the name of Dermot Ryan, but I believe that he and Ken Miller were both involved in it, and that was 1967.

PT:       Was it that early.

That was only a report. They had been over there. I think Ken Miller had been over there in 1966 and 1967, or 1967 and 1968. Dermot Ryan had only been over there in 1967. He came back and he had his name on the report, but I believe they both did a number of reports between them.

PT:       That is probably right.

So going into the time when the Committee was on, do you remember some of the others apart from Brian Charlton? I mean John Gormley was on it for years.

PT:       Yes he was.

There was one of the Chairman’s of another credit union, was it West, Clive West.

PT:       It could be.

You don’t remember it.

PT:       You are taxing my memory there.

Well I have just done Power Credit Union as well and I am thinking of their annual reports you know, in my mind. So by the time you moved through to the point where you are in the Stabilisation team at the League, what happened?

PT:       OK. About that time there seemed to be some changes going on at the senior management level. Les Robinson, and I don’t know the ins and outs of it, seemed to be that the Board weren’t all that happy with him, or Ken Miller wasn’t, or something. But there seemed to be something happening in that area. At the same time they were talking about the costs of this Stabilisation group and the sort of intelligence going around was that it was going to be disbanded. We were a bit concerned about what our futures were. Les had always given that sort of impression that our particular function was going to cease. Subsequently he left, or retired, and Reg Elliott came on board. We had the expectation that this work was going to stop, so Geoff and I decided to go out on our own and contract directly with the Registrar. We already had these titles or offices of administrator. We discussed it with the Registry and they were prepared to give us the work.

Who at the Registry?

PT:       David, the Registrar, David Horton. We decided to go out on our own and several of the staff decided to come with us. Later on Les Robinson came in so we formed CU Consultants. We specialised in the work we had been doing, which was looking after the credit unions that were under administration. We did that for several years until Geoff got itchy feet and wanted to change. He always wanted to do something different. I think Les might have gone first from the company, then Geoff wanted out. So I am left with the company now and I didn’t ever wind it up.

So it is still going actually?

PT:       I still do an occasional consulting job and probably will in the future. But the number of administrations has reduced and the work phased down. So there wasn’t a lot to do, but it kept me meaningfully employed for a while. We phased down without Geoff’s drive and Geoff’s contacts of course.

End Tape 1A: 4330 Words: 1 hour 40 minutes.

2 MARCH 1994: ACUHC/PT1: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO PAT TAYLOR

PT:       Subsequently it became Reserve Board policy not to appoint administrators. They saw that was having damaging effects on member confidence and publicity wise. So they tried, wherever possible, avoid appointing administrators, rather to place credit unions under direction. At the time they had a credit union, which was Repatriation and Hospitals, which was in a lot of difficulty. I met with them and they arranged to appoint me to take over as Manager of that credit union.

Was Brian Wetherby there then, or had he gone?

PT:       Brian Wetherby was on the Board of Repat and Brian Sharpe was the Chief Executive of the Reserve Board. So I took the job at Repat, and it was under direction. In other words you had to comply with certain policies and interest rates. I had been used to that, I had been the person dishing them out for many, many years. Now I was on the other foot, I had to take this direction from other people. So that caused a few sparks from time to time. But we were only under direction for a few months and that was removed. So I was with them for nearly ten years, actually nine years, working at Repat and Hospitals, which changed its name to Premier a few years after that.

What was the advancement of the credit union during that period? Did you become much larger?

PT:       Yes I think it was about $10 million when I went there in 1982. It had a substantial deficit at that time. When I left in 1990 to go over to Perth it was about $130 million at that time, that was in about nine years. It had reserves around about 10 per cent, or in that ilk. So it had done a lot of spectacular things in the early years, but in the latter couple of years it wasn’t getting the growth. As you know there was a lot of staff reductions in the health industry and a lot of shake-up there. So the potential was not what it had been and I thought it was appropriate to look for a merger. A few of the potential that was there, we had missed out on a couple of hospitals like Westmead and a couple of others. We had lost out to other competitors and I saw that as being not enough to work with to do anything spectacular. I mean it could have rolled on, but I thought it had sort of run its course with no new fields to conquer.

Did the Board agree with you?

PT:       Only by a sliver. I think if the whole Board had been there the night the vote was taken I probably would have lost. That takes me back to one of the reasons I left Gilbarco, actually, for the same reason. The Board would not go along with any expansion. They had this small industrial credit union and I wanted to expand it to be a mutual in the North Ryde area, which John McIntyre did later on with AWA. But I mean I was always ahead of time and I couldn’t take the Board along with me. That was one of the reasons I followed Mal to the League. But the Board only agreed by a sliver. But in recollection it was a bad move, because the promises and the expectations of the merger weren’t realised. It is a pity the full Board hadn’t been there that night.

What you mean the merger with Endeavour?

PT:       With Communications.

That was not a good move?

PT:       No it wasn’t.

What as Communications it wasn’t a good move?

PT:       Well from Premier’s point of view it wasn’t a good move. It promised to be a good move but it didn’t eventuate as such.

Why do you say that?

PT:       Well instead of an amalgamation, the coming together of two cultures, Premier was totally absorbed into Communications’ culture. A lesson I learnt was whoever becomes the Chief Executive it is obviously going to retain the culture of the group that Chief Executive comes from. It was very disappointing from all Premier’s perspective, that merger. In retrospect I wouldn’t have done it if I had my chance over again.

Who was the Chief Executive of Communications and the combined credit union after?

PT:       Alex Sarler.

He has remained there. But there have been a lot of other mergers. Do you think they have been successful?

PT:       Well I mean it is hard to say. If you look at numbers I suppose they are. Well, no, actually that is not true necessarily. Being involved I know that it is not a successful merger. The sorts of, if you like, management policies or culture that was in Premier has just been totally absorbed and we disappeared. It has really been a merger into Communications rather than two credit unions getting together to become a new credit union.

So what was the difference between Premier’s philosophy and policy and the new credit union as it became, Communications?

PT:       Well Premier was a totally decentralised organisation, where staff had a lot more authority, flexibility, ability to make decisions. Endeavour is a very centralist organisation.

I see.

PT:       We don’t want to get into those sorts of criticisms do we?

Why not. I don’t see why not. Mind you I had an interview with David Nelson, I had a wonderful interview with David Nelson who gave me a long lecture on limited privilege, you are entitled to your own opinion. When I asked him to sign the release he said, ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Did you ever come across David Nelson? A barrister.

PT:       Yes, I know the name.

He has just started Southern Mutual and he took the Registrar to court for refusing his bond. He is a barrister in the city still, but he is not involved with credit unions anymore.

PT:       Anyway the reason that I was sort of happy about getting the Repat job in the first place, was that I had been in the position of always telling other people how to do things. Criticising them if they hadn’t achieved. But I thought here was a chance for me to practice what I had been preaching all these years. But fortunately, I mean, I got the results and I did a good job there and I was more than happy with it. I thought, well you can’t do better than this. But I find you can.

How did you find that out?

PT:       Well I had this Board meeting on one night and I got a phone call from Reg Elliott. I had been having a few problems with my Board at Premier. I got the impression they weren’t too happy with how things were going, but everybody denied it. But you know I had a gut feeling and I felt they weren’t happy. As I said, I felt Premier had come to the end, got to that point. Not that I was looking for another job, but I wasn’t as geared up as I had always been. So I got this phone call from Reg Elliott for ringing and saying, ‘I know you are not interested, but we have got this problem over in Western Australia. Can you come and talk to me about it? Could you see your way clear to going over there for three or six months? We have been all around the world, but can’t find anybody.’ Well he didn’t say that, he said, ‘You’re the only person that can do this job,’ and all the rest of it. Of course the truth really is, ‘She is the only stupid idiot that is available and hasn’t got any family commitments.’ Obviously Keith Mannix had put them up to it. I just sort of jokingly said to the Chairman, ‘How would you feel about me taking three months off to go over to Perth?’ The Chairman didn’t have a problem but the Deputy-Chairman did, and with the Deputy-Chairman was more than happy with my performance at the time. Anyhow I said I would think about it and get back to him. This was on a Wednesday night. Anyhow he rang the next day and I hadn’t given it another thought. I said, ‘Oh well I will come and talk to you.’ I went down to CUSCAL, well it wasn’t CUSCAL then it was AFCUL. There was Reg Fowler, Keith Mannix and Reg Elliott there telling me all these dreadful things about United Credit Union.

Was it called United then?

PT:       Yes it was called United. It hadn’t changed its name. It must have been a very difficult thing for Reg Elliott to ring me and ask this, because Reg Elliott and I never spent a lot of time together. The day he arrived at the Association we all handed our resignations in. So he did not have a very good start and I guess he wasn’t happy with us. But he didn’t really know all the background that had gone on before and why it had happened. Of course I think he is a bit of a male chauvinist also. So Elliott and I were never ever pals. It must have been terribly difficult for him to ring up and ask me this. He must have been put up to it by Fowler and Mannix.

Anyhow we sat down and I heard all these terrible stories about United. I said, ‘All right I will do it.’ I went home that night and I just nearly had a panic attack and heart attack and everything else. The next morning I rang up and said I couldn’t possibly do it. Then I went home the next night and slept and I thought if they came back to me I would do it. Anyhow Reg Fowler, this time, gave me another go, ‘Please help’. I think that was on the Wednesday and I was in Perth on the Monday and three months is now three years.

We talked about WA Teachers’?

PT:       It was nothing to do with that?

Were you involved at all?

PT:       No.

Did you know about WA Teachers’?

PT:       Yes, it had been a constant subject of press coverage in New South Wales, so we knew about WA Teachers’. But I don’t think they were members of the WA League, or whatever it was at the time, they weren’t in the fold. Of course R & I had rushed to save them, so it never became an issue of the movement helping out WA Teachers’. They’d organised that through the political arm in Western Australia. So we as a movement were never involved with WA Teachers’. But the publicity went on and on and on. But United was something different. I think that was at the time after Pyramid had failed and financial institutions were falling over everywhere. The gurus of AFCUL were a bit concerned that another failure would really rock the industry so they wanted to save it at all costs.

What was the nature of the problem when you got there?

PT:       Oh well just everything. I mean the credit union had never made a profit in twenty years. It just appeared to be a line ball situation. When you really got down to it, its deficit was $5.5 million. When you cleaned everything up and brought everything to account. Then there was loans, commercial loans, pubs all over Victoria and WA that were falling over.

Was that legal, those loans?

PT:       Oh they were legal. They were legal. The Act in WA is a bit different to what it is in New South Wales. They were legal, they were just made up at a time when everything was on a high and the businesses failed.

But those sort of loans, commercial loans, wouldn’t have been legal in New South Wales would they?

PT:       Oh commercial loans had only just come in in New South Wales. It wasn’t the legality of them that was so much the problem. They were pretty uncommon. It was really only the United that was in this sort of business. United was actually a very forward thinking and a very advanced credit union. I’ve unfortunately had to kill a lot of the innovation and things that they were doing in order to sort of bring the thing back to stability. But in retrospect I regret some of the things I have pulled down. Because those are the sorts of things that we are obviously going to have to move to in the future.

Such as?

PT:       Well commercial lending, which I just stopped. I didn’t know anything about commercial loans, I had never been involved with them so I didn’t do them. Things like financial planning services and real estate, all these sorts of things that to me coming from New South Wales I didn’t think were credit union business, we don’t do those things. Let’s get rid of them, let’s cut costs. But now credit unions are having to find ways to earn income other than from loans. Because there is such a little margin these days in interest you have got to look for other things to bring in your income. So in a way what the previous Manager of United did for the credit union, he did some marvellous things. It would have been so easy to make a profit because he had such a fee structure. He had interest rates, he could have made profits easily. Why he didn’t I will never know. But had he made profits then he would still be alive and kicking today and he could have done it easily. But lots of the things that he had done were way ahead of credit unions generally.

Anyhow this three months that went over there for just went on and one. Eventually I organised the merger of Premier with Endeavour and then I took the job permanently in Western Australia, where I am now.

You are going to stay over there?

PT:       Yes, until I retire. Fortunately it has worked out of its deficit and it is very close now to achieving a full capital adequacy. It has had good results for the last three years.

How many members has it got now, roughly?

PT:       Oh well on the books there are 50,000, but there is really about 40,000 I suppose, once you clean up the inactives.

What about the other credit unions in Western Australia? Are there any bigger ones than that?

PT:       No, it is the largest, but Police is fast closing on us. They have got good growth in Police, whereas United has been pretty static over the last few years.

Is your bond fairly tight?

PT:       No, it is the community at large.

The whole of Western Australia? Have any of the other credit unions got that size of bond?

PT:       Just about all of them now. They have all extended their bond to the community at large. Because it isn’t a very big community in Western Australia. There are really too many credit unions there for the population.

Does that pose any particular problems after being an industrial union to extend your bond in that way?

PT:       Well it does because you don’t have pay-roll deductions. So you have got to employ collection officers to collect your money. People, even good payers, need that sort of prompting. So your lending becomes different. People tend to be a bit complacent if they have got pay roll deductions coming in all the time from a close-knit industrial group. They perhaps don’t lend as carefully as one would need to people you don’t know from anywhere situation. You have got to market too, you’ve got to spend marketing dollars if you extend your bond outside your specialised group.

Is there any difference between Western Australia now, by comparison to the other States, say New South Wales?

PT:       Absolutely. The market is so tight over there. It is so rough. Interest rates are so competitive. Their per cent is lower for loans in Western Australia than they are in New South Wales. 2 per cent or 3 per cent lower.

Are you going to make any further changes over there? Can you see any coming up?

PT:       Oh well one is going to have to make changes to stay alive in United. Something has to be done. It is one thing getting rid of the deficit and one thing making a profit, but you have got to grow. If you can’t grow there is no point in being in business. United’s challenge now is to find a way to grow the organisation. It had down-sized from $250 million, down to $170 million. It went down to about $140 million, it is now back up to $170 million. That is when the runs were on. When I went there we were shipping money, staff were filling their pockets with money and going up to our northern branches to keep them stocked up with money. People were queuing up at the doors. There was a real run on the organisation, it was terrifying. Trying to keep it out of the newspapers, trying to keep the press away and trying to counter the concerns that people had. That was a terrifying experience.

The Registrar, when you went over there, how did you get on with them?

PT:       Very well actually. Of course I had a lot of help from CUSCAL, people like Reg Fowler held my hand. He knew the Registrar, Mataxis at lot better than I did. He was very nervous, as you can imagine, of being in that position. He was convinced that the whole thing just couldn’t be saved. He had it sold off here there and everywhere.

Had the Reserve been formed then, over there?

PT:       No it hadn’t. That is why the credit union industry had to put the hat around to find some money to assist United. There wasn’t at that time a Reserve Board over there. It was formed during this period. But once Mataxis saw, or the Registrar saw that we were doing the right thing, that we had stopped the run on the funds and we were starting to make profits, he became very helpful. He was very appreciative of what was happening. Of course he lost he job in WA Inc outcomes eventually. But, no, he was extremely helpful. Then during those years the Reserve Board got formed. They are now WA Financials Institution Authority, WAFIA.

The business of WA Teachers’. I know you weren’t there at that time, but were they saved? Who saved them? How did they save them?

PT:       Well the R & I Bank just took them over.

So they are not a credit union anymore?

PT:       No, they don’t exist any more. All the losses were worn by the R & I Bank.

There are some unusual situations. I mean what about the Pyramid Group, the Farrow Group in Victoria. They are a situation where there was a credit union, I understand. Do you know anything about that?

PT:       No I don’t.

1. Well you have pretty well brought it up to date now, on your experience. Do you want to go back to something in your earlier experience. In the days when the Registrar was putting in administrators in the first instance, and then later on when the Reserve was putting credit unions under direction, they seemed to come into a policy of come in on a Friday night, change the locks, put a new staff in for Monday. Were you involved in any of that?

PT:       Yes, I was actually. The specific one is the SDA. That is the one credit union that we didn’t save. In all the years that I was involved and all the credit unions that I was involved with, SDA was the only one that we didn’t save. It was not in the League, it was outside the League. When the Reserve Board came into existence, it didn’t meet the criteria of the Reserve Board so it was not covered by the Reserve Board either. Now this was one of those situations where Geoff was appointed the administrator and yes that is what happened. We went in and changed the locks and it all happened over night.

Had Stan Arneil been previously fired? Or was he fired at that stage in the proceedings?

PT:       Stan Arneil?

He had been Manager. But not from the start, nor at the finish.

PT:       Oh he wasn’t Manager when this happened. No.

So he had been previously fired. He told me a story which I confirmed with Jack Lange about he fired Jack Lange and the next thing he got fired.

PT:       No he was gone when they were actually put under direction. But I remember John Banks and I were driving down in a car and we heard it over the news or something. There was all this queue of people down there. Actually this was the worst one. It was actually one of the Registry staff that went in and did this.

Do you know who he was?

PT:       If I had a selection of names I would know?

Wasn’t Charlie Butler?

PT:       No, it was someone next down the line from him who went there. Of course you know what the Registry are like, they don’t worry about things like members are going to rush and draw their funds out or anything else. They just do what they have to do, according to the letter of the law. Whereas we would always try to say that an administrator had been appointed, but there was nothing to be concerned about because of this, that and the other. I guess this was a big mistake of the New South Wales Credit Union League, and a mistake of Reg Elliott, they should have put the money up. It could have been saved. But they just sort of stood on their dignity on this one occasion and of course those people lost a lot of money.

What about Kurri Kurri?

PT:       Well that was before. That goes back and there wasn’t a Savings Protection Fund. There wasn’t the organisation. There wasn’t the support, there wasn’t the staff in those days. That is going back a few years. That was very small by comparison. But they are the only two in the whole credit union history of Australia that have failed.

It is amazing, considering. It didn’t happen in Queensland. It didn’t happen in Victoria, with all the problems they had in Victoria, no members lost money there.

PT:       That’s right. But as I say, the Kurri one was a long time ago. The SDA one could have been avoided. They put the hat around for United, if they had done the same thing.

They did do the same thing actually, I have seen the paper work.

PT:       They didn’t get enough.

They didn’t do it quick enough either.

PT:       They didn’t do it hard enough. That’s right.

I have seen the paper work actually, I got it from Stan Arneil. When they did put the hat around, but it was too late by that time.

PT:       There are a few other stories about SDA, but I suppose I am not really going to put it on the record. About certain Directors who had money in fixed term deposits who arranged to have them released.

That would be interesting. There were also a number of political stories.

PT:       This is a political story.

I have been interviewing in political fields.

PT:       Well you need to interview a certain Minister, I should say.

Maybe have interviewed him as well. There are a number of tapes which are confidential and have been put away. I have interviewed a lot of people in that field. Both in the Labor field and the other side as well, there are quite a lot of them which are confidential for the time. Wouldn’t care to do another tape which is confidential, would you?

PT:       No.

Any other stories from those days? I mean what happened in the end with SDA? Did you preside over the winding up of it?

PT:       No. There were professional we call them Receivers appointed. Once they were appointed our role ceased.

Was the real problem with SDA difficulties with bad debts, or were there many other problems as well?

PT:       The same range of problems that was always the case. Poor records, bad debts, Members’ Ledgers not balancing. You have got a list of accounts here that don’t bear any resemblance to the total value of your loans or savings in the book. The same old range, all of those problems. Bad lending, bad debts.

Well we are coming to the end of this tape now. What about your time in credit unions, any high points that you can think of? Any regrets?

PT:       No I don’t think there are any regrets. I mean there have been high points, but they fade away. I mean I am sort of at the highest point now that I have ever been at. I think that is good. I haven’t got to the point of coming down yet. I have always gone on to bigger and better things. I have always been invited to go to the next job, I have never applied for a job in the credit union industry. I have always been head-hunted sort of thing. Things were getting a bit down at Premier in the latter years but as I say I have jumped over to this new challenge, which is the biggest challenge that the credit union movement has ever seen. It is the hardest credit union in Australia to manage. It is the biggest challenge ever in the whole credit union industry to overcome and I am the person that did it. So I mean I will got out on absolutely the highest point you could possibly do. So I have done a hell of a lot for the credit union movement, I am a very low profile person.

But you are a very tough person people say. Is that true?

PT:       Oh I am tough, I am hard, you’ve got to be. But I am certainly not well-known or high profile. I won’t go down in the annuls of credit union history or get an Australia Medal, but I still have probably done more than anybody, but in the area that people don’t want to know about. It is in the dirt, I have worked in the dirt. Without people working in the dirt the industry wouldn’t be where it is today.

But I now myself what I have done and that is enough for me.

Thank you very much Mrs Pat Taylor.

PT:       Thank you Richard.

End Tape 1B: 4510 Words: 1 hour 45 minutes.