11 FEBRUARY, 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH IAN LARSSON
I will ask you first, Ian, where were you born and when?
IL: I was born in Hobart, Tasmania in September 1929.
Did you grow up around there?
IL: I grew up in Hobart. I went to a State school there and then I went to Hobart Technical College there and I was a five year technician in training in the old PMG’s Department and I was employed in Tasmania up until about 1958 and then I came across to Melbourne. Greener fields, you could say, but there were opportunities over here for engineering study which I took up.
And what sort of influence had you got from your parents when you were a child?
IL: I have often spoken about this, and the influence was very, very strong in a moral, and just, and a fair sense. When I was growing up the Second World War was on of course and my father went off. He was away from home from 1939 until 1945, so my mother was the dominant parent for those years, and I was about eight to fourteen over those years so it was a pretty impressive time. I have nothing but praise for both of them, very, very much so.
What sort of influence? Was there a religious influence? Political influence?
IL: There was a religious influence. No political influence. It was a religious influence primarily and just a way of living, like you do your things and let people accept you as you are, don’t be frightened to be yourself in other words.
Was your father involved with any unions or any organisations of any description?
IL: My father was an engineer in PMG in those days. He was in the Army Reserve before the War. He was a Mason. He was mixed up in various things at work but no real things. Probably the Masons were his big external influence, Masons and Church.
Which Church?
IL: Anglican Church.
And when you went to school, what did you like or dislike?
IL: Well my schooling was very interesting. I started off in Grade 1 in those days, not Prep, and I started about the age of five. I liked the teacher in the first year, she was very friendly, a sort of a big sister, very nice. But in the second year, which would have been about 1939 I think, a polio epidemic broke out in early 1939, 1938 or 1939 and I didn’t get to school for about two or three months in that particular year because mum was frightened about the contagious aspects of polio. So I went back to school round about late February or March and came back to school with a friend who lived around the corner. Within two weeks he caught polio and he died about two weeks after. Well that sent mum round the bend and I was kept at home again. Now on Easter Sunday morning in 1939 I woke up with a terrible pain in my stomach, absolutely terrible, I will never forget it, and sitting alongside the bed was an Easter Egg and I thought I couldn’t touch that. So I was into hospital at five o’clock that morning to have my appendics out. I was in a hospital called St John’s Hospital for the week and then I was put into an ambulance and taken somewhere else, which I found out was the Royal Hobart Hospital, left in the ambulance for a while and then I was transport to the Vaulcluse Infectious Diseases Hospital. No nobody told me what it was all about, I was eight at the time, so I finished up with polio. So I was strapped up with splints and frames for quite some time, so my schooling stopped until I went to Hobart Tech, the first year of Hobart Tech and that was on three month probation. If I got going well I stayed, if I didn’t well I don’t know. So that was another big influence on my life too, because it was an abnormal incident, for most people it is an abnormal incident to be in hospital for that time and miss schooling. It made me a lot more tolerant and I think my patience, my ability to be patient with people, improved over that time too. So that had a very big influence. I am always early for things because I know if I’m late I will never get there, I am always early because you know you are going to be slow getting there. But that had a very big influence on me, a big influence indeed.
And when you started at the Post Office, was it the Post Office or Telecom?
IL: Well PMG in those days, Post Master General’s Department. I started on 13 January 1947 as a technician in training. That was quite funny. Dad being in Telecom, PMG, said, ‘If you want to become a technician have a go at this entrance exam,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ So two years before I went in I had a go at the exam, I thought I would pass that no worries at all. The results come out and I didn’t pass. I thought, this is strange. So when next year came along and the exams popped up again I said, ‘Well, I will give it a go.’ I didn’t bother working for it but I passed. I thought there was something strange. So I joined that and that was a very enjoyable five years, very enjoyable. I have never worked outside PMG so I don’t know what the ups and downs of private enterprise are like, but I have got a rough idea from observation, but PMG was the place to go.
Were you involved with the union before you were into credit unions?
IL: I joined the Telecom Technicians Association, which is now the ATA, when I first went to work but I really had no involvement, I joined it because it was the union I belonged to and that’s all. I also joined a body called the Australian Postal Institute when I was a trainee and I was more active in that social side than I was in the union. Unions were there, I paid my dues, but I really wasn’t interested.
So when did you first hear about credit unions? When and how?
IL: Well when I came to Melbourne, I was married in 1956 and I transferred to Burnie in Tasmania on District Maintenance as a Senior Technician, I did that in January of 1957. Around about October, sorry June that year, I had applied for Senior Technician jobs from anywhere from Cape York to Alice Springs to the bottom part of Western Australia, I had about fifty-five applications in for jobs at one time. In October a notice was pinned up on the wall at the place where I was working. It said the PMG were looking for engineers at headquarters in Melbourne and there were three types, you could be a qualified engineer, one who was studying to become an engineer, or one who was a specialist in some field. So I had been doing exchange installation work for four years, so I must be an expert, if I’m not an expert there is something wrong. So I sent another roneoed application, number fifty-six, to headquarters for this job and I gave it away. Then I had a funny thought in about November of that year, if I did go to Melbourne what would I do, if I didn’t what would I do. The decision was made in November that if I went to Melbourne I would go straight back to RMIT in Melbourne and do my Communications Engineer Diploma and become an engineer. If I didn’t, I would stay a Senior Technician for the rest of my life. I went to Launceston in December on a transfer and then about the middle of February 1958, Dad called me and said, ‘When do you want to go to Melbourne?’ I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘Well they want you to go over there on a temporary transfer as an engineer.’ I said, ‘My God, they must be short of engineers.’ So I said, ‘Well tomorrow.’ He said, ‘Oh fair go.’ Dad, by the way was the Assistant Director, Engineering, they called him Chief Engineer, in Tasmania at that time. We never sort of talked about work at all at that level because of the political implications could be aligned at me. So I said, ‘Make it the end of February.’ So I came over to Melbourne on 1 March. So I went to RMIT three years part-time, became a trainee engineer, was there three years and I had one year running down, so it was five years of school once I hit Melbourne. By the time my five years was up I was out of all social contact. Back in Tasmania I had been a member of the Scouting Movement from the age of eight right until I was twenty-five, so that was my social and community work there. But in Melbourne I was just lost. Going to the Church out at Syndal this priest used to say ….. this was in the Catholic Church at this stage.
How did that happen?
IL: Well I married a Catholic girl but I converted to Catholicism myself some eleven years after. There was no sort of threat, there was no problem there, but my own convictions took me that way quite some time after. But when this priest talked about the budget scheme. He said, ‘Look you should look at the credit union because of the budgeting. It saves you postage, it saves you cheques and gets things right.’ So being a very apathetic Australian I listened to him for a few Sundays for probably half a year or a year, and I finally said, ‘Well, I’ll go and look at this thing.’ So I went to this credit union, it was a Sunday operation after each mass, on the trestle table you know. So I said I wanted to become a budgeting member so I paid my $10 shares and got a budget form to take home. So I did and I started budgeting. So I budgeted straight away, it was just a thing I did, it was no big deal. So in the June of that year, I have forgotten what year that would be, I came to the Annual Meeting of the Syndal Credit Union. So I went along and I sat and listened. The Annual Report was very simple and I could understand it. The Directors answered the questions of other people, I had no questions. We finished the meeting and we had some red wine and biscuits and cheese, and I thought this is good, I thought this is quite a nice little thing to belong to. I was still budgeting. The next year came and I was in the country on a job so I couldn’t get there. But the third year they had been talking about wanting more active members and people to get involved and I thought, crikey what do they mean by active members. So I resolved to go to the Annual General Meeting that year and sort of just plead innocence. So I read the Annual Report backwards and forwards and I found twelve questions that I believed were legitimate questions, that were not silly, questions I couldn’t quite understand. So I went to the meeting and I asked those questions. Some got good answers, some got bad answers. In those days elections for Directors were taken from the floor on the night and someone nominated me for a Director. I thought, ‘What the hell was this, I didn’t come here to be a Director I came here to be an active member or something.’ I was on the Board that night, so I am a Director, what did I do now? So I think it was fate really. My first Board meeting I went along to about two weeks after, listened all through it. The main work seemed to be loans, we were approving loans all night. The second meeting I said, ‘Are we the only credit union or are there others? Does anyone write to us? Is there a Government official? How do we fit in?’ So this gentleman said, ‘Come and do the correspondence.’ So I did, the next Sunday, opened up the correspondence and in the front there was a blue foolscap piece of paper, which I have still got at home, which had twelve courses run by the VCCA every second Thursday night from 7.30 p.m. to 9.00 p.m., cup of tea after, so I started to going to that and that is where I really got started.
Was that the VCCA or was it the Catholic organisation?
IL: It was the VCCA at the time. The Catholic Church changeover had taken place a couple of years before. When I got mixed up with the VCCA Leon Magree was then the Executive Officer. When I got more active in the VCCA, Don Harris then became the Executive Officer and I was in on the Committee.
So which course did you go to first?
IL: I think it was Risk Management.
Where was it?
IL: At the 120 Albion Road (?), upstairs, first floor, and I think it was given by Graham Benson. I have never come out so scared in all my life, because he put the message across extremely well. His opening words were, ‘Do you know that someone in this room tonight is defaulting their credit union.’ Well that is a pretty sharp thing to say, but being in the Movement for so long now, the general concept of what he said is right, someone is doing your credit union right down and that is risk management, or staff’s risk management. So I got a pretty good dose of it. The big thing about those evenings was I met on the first night about twenty-five people, and those twenty-five people came from at least sixteen or seventeen credit unions, so immediately I was into the Movement and that what really got me, I felt good about that, very good about that.
Did you go to the Warburton Schools at all?
IL: Oh yes, the Warburton Schools, magnificent. I missed the first Warburton School I could have gone to, but I went to all the ones after that. They were magnificent affairs. You would get about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty there for three days at the long week-end in winter there. I would say that the Warburton Schools were responsible in this State for a very strong co-operative nature amongst credit unions. Now a lot of people say we don’t co-operate down here, but back in those days and even now if something goes wrong in this State the credit companies do come together, no matter what association they come together and they do fix it. In the case of last year with the Reserve Board, sure it was tough, but we all did it and we all of us co-operated together and came out of that year extremely successfully. Despite that we have been put under tighter regulations, so one doesn’t know what goes on.
Are you on the Reserve Board, or were you?
IL: No, I was never on the Reserve Board, I don’t think I would be good enough for that.
Just incidentally, some people have spoken to me about the current composition of the Reserve Board, they are pointing out that it is the bankers who have had quite a lot of problems themselves and are in the ascendancy so to speak.
IL: Yes, to me it is very easy to read it and criticise without thinking. But you have got to look inward a bit and say are we that good. We are pretty good as credit unions, I am proud of how good we are, but some things we aren’t doing quite right. I have seen the Curriculum Vitae of the members and I heard the Chairman speak last night at the Melbourne Chapter meeting and he seems like a teetotaller Unitarian churchman, so I think things are going to be tough. I am not real worried about that as long as he understands, he and they, understand the credit union philosophy, as he says he does, and what it’s all about. Now if they start to make credit unions like banks or anything else they will destroy it. Now it is up to me and other credit union people to make sure they don’t destroy it. There is a lot of people around here who know about credit unions and we can get that message across. It is up to us to fix it. Not sit back and say, ‘Oh they are all bankers, it won’t be any good,’ you’ve got to talk to them, be friendly with them if you can. But the thing that disturbs me more than anything is from the Pyramid debacle last year why credit unions get singled out as being a group that must be put under administration. Now of course we had the ????? failure last year, but that was one thing that happens periodically. It was a fraud case anyhow. I don’t know too much about that, no-one does unless you are inside the know, but I know enough to know that it was fixed within the State, it was fixed with the Reserve Board, it did not worry Government, it affected nobody and no-one lost money. Now that is something you have got to be proud of. Sure we put up with the problems but we did achieve a result. I am sure SEC have now got ??????? and they are going to have some problems pulling that together the same as we picked up Bentmore and Piccol, we are having trouble sorting some of those things out.
Now the foundation of Piccol, were you in on that?
IL: No, I wasn’t. At the time Piccol was formed I was a Director on the Syndal Credit Union and the Telecom Credit Union was formed first and then the Piccol Credit Union ten years later.
Where did the name come from?
IL: Piccol, it used to be known as Postal Institute Credit Co-operative Limited, hence Piccol. Some two or three years ago the name was changed to Piccol because their Bond had gone from postal and telecom to tax and now a couple of Bonds, so it is just a name, Piccol.
So your first involvement with the VCCA was from Syndal Credit Union?
IL: As soon as I joined Syndal, many of the questions I asked related to how the Syndal Board let their members know what the credit union was all about, and I inferred that they were not doing good enough and they weren’t. So I felt obliged to set up a newsletter when I came there. So I started this newsletter within about two weeks and I used to call it Synews and we used to distribute this at the doors of the church. When on the first morning Synews was announced by the priest the copies went at the first mass, until they found out ‘syn’ was spelt s-y-n. So they all went. So I thought having done a newsletter, I will now circulate this around the credit unions around our border purely to say here we are, this is what we are doing and swap newsletters. I sent a copy to the VCCA as well and Leon Magree said, ‘What about coming and giving us a hand to do a newsletter here?’ So I came and helped Leon with the newsletter for some years, four or five years, and he called his a ‘Newsletter’ and I said, ‘Look everyone knows it is a newsletter, give it a name.’ So we started Contact, and Contact was the name we used for quite some time. I worked with Leon and Bruce Smith and I published, I enjoyed that time.
Were you anything to do with the Warburton Weekly?
IL: The Warburton Weekly was a little daily newspaper that Leon was responsible for every Warburton School and I think I got roped in two or three times for that and I have never worked so hard in all my life. It was a matter of seeing what goes on the day before then meeting that night and either writing a poem about it or doing something about it. It was funny. Leon’s sense of humour was just out of this world. Leon is one of those guys.
Have you got any copies of the Warburton Weekly?
IL: I have at home, yes. I don’t know whether I’ve got them at home.
We’ve got some of them from Berry Calverley.
IL: Oh, of course, Berry was everywhere.
Yes, and wherever he was, we’ve got his stuff. Because when he died, I understand the League got about three or four boxes and when we were burrowing around there, when they were culling, we got them. So we’ve got them now and we are keeping them together. He was in Tasmania, he was in Queensland, South Australia.
IL: Berry went everywhere, Berry belonged to that many credit unions it didn’t count. Berry in his time was a real evangelist for credit unions. The first time I met him I thought you’re a rough guy, rude, you know, but his enthusiasm was strong. He did some funny things in a way but full credit to the guy. With guys like him and Stan Arneil and fellows like that.
Did you meet Stan Arneil?
IL: Oh yes, I met Stan up at Warburton. I haven’t seen Stan for years. Talking of Stan, I did know Stan had gone to war but I didn’t know he had been a POW until I heard his session in ‘Prisoners of War’ on Sundays and his future tapes and that really gave me a deep understanding of that man, a deep understanding, and you can see why he got involved in credit unions. Very much so.
You were involved with the Warburton Weekly a little bit?
IL: Oh yes, every time I was up there we used to type it up at night and get it out the next day, but that was fun, good fun. Yes, I have still got those at home.
Well make sure they don’t get lost.
IL: No, I will try and make sure they don’t.
One thing we might try and do, have you got sets?
IL: I don’t know. I might have one or two sets.
We’ve got 1972 I believe, might have some 1971, but we certainly haven’t got anything before that.
IL: I didn’t get to the early ones, those I missed, but I will see what I can find.
Sounds like you might have the same ones that we have. Because Beresford for some reason, I don’t know why, he didn’t have the early ones, the Warburton ones.
IL: My knowledge of dates and things is a bit hazy.
The first one that we have got anything of at all is 1968, I think, would that be the first Warburton Schools?
IL: No it was going a bit before that. I would have become a Director on Syndal about 1967 or 1968 and I don’t think I got to that first Warburton School.
The antecedents of Warburton, was it after Newport Schools, or was it something that pre-dated?
IL: No, I would think Warburton started slightly after. You see New South Wales was the senior body in a way and I think their Newport Schools were going before Warburton got going. They were in two different sorts of areas, I always saw the Warburton School as being a Victorian centre of co-operation and the Newport School I saw as the same in New South Wales.
Yes, well you confirm what I had thought. In actual fact I do know that the first Newport School was actually started not by CUNA Mutual and Stan Arneil it was started by the combined Chapters in New South Wales. The combined Chapters of the New South Wales League, in 1965.
IL: Yes, that would sound right. Did CUNA sponsor that thing?
No, only afterwards. The first two were done by the combined Chapters of the New South Wales League then after that Stan Arneil was appointed to CUNA Mutual.
IL: So he picked it up and did some sponsoring?
That’s right. Right through until he was fired from CUNA Mutual.
IL: No I would have liked to have got to one of them. In the recent seminar, Institute of Directors seminar run in Canberra this year, one of the persons answering the survey, answering the question ‘What would you like to do next year?’ they said, ‘We would like to get back to the Newport School idea.’ I thought that was interesting.
What the boozing?
IL: No, no, I don’t think it was the boozing, I think it would have been the camaraderie and the sort of togetherness, the brotherliness that was there at the time. The brotherliness doesn’t exist much these days, it is more a commercial business rather than people, that is what a lot of people are saying.
What about Chapters in Victoria, you have been involved there all along.
IL: Interesting thing Chapters. Take one step back a bit. I had been on Syndal for four years and I resigned from Syndal just before my four years was up. It was a funny reason that because the Treasurer and the Chairman sort of criticised me in a nice way, saying, ‘You really haven’t done a couple of the things you said you were going to do.’ I said, ‘No that’s right, but they’re not that late.’ ‘Oh but it’s not really good enough.’ So I though about it and I resigned, saying put someone on and I had to laugh because I had probably done more for that credit union as far as outside work as anyone else did and I enjoyed it. But I was on the VCCA Committee so I stayed on there. I resigned in March. Then someone said, ‘Why don’t you stand for VCCA?’ I said, ‘I’m not a good enough Director for that, you’ve got to be better than me to be a Director down there.’ People sort of kept on asking me. So up comes the nominations and I put them in and I sort of took it out again and I put it in and took it out and David Manziviona, a field officer at the time, he was accepting them and I put it in at five o’clock on the day it closed. Well I’ll elect myself so put it in. So I put it in and went to the Annual Meeting, and in those days we had a Board of twelve, six and six, six down one year, six down the next. Terrible situation politically. So six stood down and there were seven candidates and I got on. That’s when I got really worried because I thought I know I got on Syndal Board because I asked a lot of questions, this one no-one knew me, I had been no big deal, big speaker, but I got on. So I examined why did I get on. Well the reason I got on was because I am popular. Why am I popular, because I’d been to all the Chapters. I listened to people a lot and talked to them after that. And that is what I was told by a lot of people, and that is what it is. Then I got frightened. That’s when I realised what being a Director was all about. A very, very frightening experience.
Had you thought that they wanted to remove somebody else?
IL: My political outlook was very naive in those days. I was a great believer in democracy working out properly. Since I’ve learnt that that doesn’t happen at all, even in the credit union, not now it doesn’t. But I could see that the guy that went off, I could see he was a nice sort of guy but didn’t appear to do much. But when I got on the Board I was then going up to the second tier level Boards and in my wildest dreams at Syndal, I was on a very small Board and it was a simple Director’s job, then there was VCCA, then there was AFCUL, then there was the World Council, well they must be very very good Directors to come up here. Just in brief, every time I have taken a step upwards, I’ve not found the standard any better than it was at Syndal, in fact it was worse, and that again worried me. Now whether I did anything to improve it I have no idea. Some would say no you didn’t, but I would like to think otherwise in some cases.
Well, you didn’t answer me about the Chapters.
IL: I’m sorry, Chapters. Well when I was elected to the Board Arthur Carder was the Director who was looking after Chapters. Then it came to appointing people to various jobs and I said, ‘Look Arthur, I wouldn’t mind taking on the Chapter co-ordination role because I know them and it appeals to me. It gives me a chance to move around and meet people,’ so I took that on. At that time we had about eight Chapters running and they met quarterly, so there were thirty-two meetings a year for Chapters. So in my first three years I was doing something like up to thirty-two Chapter meetings a year, plus twelve Board meetings, plus probably twelve publicity committee meetings. It was just flat out, I don’t know how I got time to work with Telecom, PMG, neither did they, by the way. But I had various experience with the Chapters. In Victoria the Chapter organisation was not part of the VCCA. In New South Wales the Chapters are part of New South Wales rules, in VCCA they are not part of the rules of VCCA. So Chapters in this State are totally autonomous bodies unto themselves. What we did back with Phillip Elliot and myself, Phillip did it mainly, we drew up a map breaking Victoria into about eight bits and we suggested this might be the way credit unions could form Chapters and they took that advice and did it. We also said we will offer you secretariat help if you want it, do it yourself but if you want we will help you. Not many took that on for which I am rather glad, because they became self-supporting we did all we could to help them help themselves and they did. As time has gone by we have found Chapters have fallen off, we have now got four Chapters running in the State.
But the period that the Chapters spread all over the State, I mean there are several Annual Reports there where you have got thirty or more Chapters, were they active Chapters or were they spreading, or what was going on?
IL: Not thirty Chapters.
A couple of Annual Reports I’ve got show as many as that.
IL: Is this a VCCA Annual Report.
Yes, divided up by areas and each area has got a whole lot of Chapters.
IL: Isn’t it the number of credit unions in a Chapter.
You might be right.
IL: Thirty-two. In one there was about twelve, fourteen in another, in Melbourne it would have been about ninety. We have got that in the back of one of the Annual Reports it has got the Chapter headings and the credit unions that belonged to them. That’s what that was. We did everything in VCCA to promote the Chapter scene, but VCCA had no control over that and I was very glad about that.
So the rules were totally independent for these?
IL: But I keep on telling Chapters …
End Tape 1A: 5384 Words: 1 hour 50 minutes.
11 FEBRUARY 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH IAN LARSSON
We have just about finished about the Chapters, have we?
IL: Yes, one point as I said I was very pleased to see that the VCCA had no control over the Chapters, but following 1981 when the change of Management Board took place the Chapters tended to become used for a vehicle for VCCA putting its message across. We used to allow five minutes for a presentation in the early days, those presentations went to a quarter-of-an-hour, twenty minutes sometimes half-an-hour, which was not what the Chapters were about. The communication from VCCA was VCCA to credit unions, the Chapter was meant to be a place where credit unions get together, hear a speaker of their choice and socialise, it is a social educational-style of exercise, away from all what you might call the political. A couple of funny things in the Chapters. I went to the Western Chapter one night, and we had a guest speaker out there speaking on debt collection, I can’t really remember his name, Hannah rings a bell, but I can’t really remember the name. Anyway, he was going on about this debt collecting, a very boring sort of talk, on and on and on for about twenty minutes, and one of the members said, ‘Mr Chairman, I move this speaker be no longer heard.’ Well the Chairman and I got quite a shock, because you don’t expect a guest speaker to have a resolution like that moved. So the Chairman put the resolution and everyone passed it. I thought that was very interesting. Also at that time, it may have been the next meeting of that Chapter, I was very, very touched when they gave me a presentation of an engraved pewter mug, it was something I never expected, it was just a very nice gift from that group. Another Chapter experience, I went to Ballarat one night, there was Michael Hildebrand, Eileen West and myself, and we were told that the Chapter was going to close down because it didn’t go anywhere, nothing was going on. So we drove up there with our black armbands on mourning the possible death of this Chapter and we got there and started to talk to them. We said, ‘What do you really want to do?’ We went back to them, ‘What do you want to do?’ and it started to lift itself again. We talked about computers, in those days it was the early days of computers and possible computer networks, possible branching with each other and setting up common places and on the way back in the bus that is when I think really in our minds that the basis of networking or using, what do they call these things now going into processors in a central point, I can’t think of the name. Rather than having a computer of your own, ‘laning’. Rather than having a computer in your own credit union you use a bureau, set up bureaus. On the way back from that trip and after our discussions with that Chapter we really put into place an idea there where we would try and get Victoria to have about three bureaus around and try and get them all working and switch around each other. It was not long after that we looked at the Teledata exercise and then we moved in a bought Teledata, which is another story in its own right.
Well, you’d better start that one then.
IL: Oh God.
Were you Chairman at that time?
IL: I was.
Of the VCCA?
IL: I think I was. I think I was. We looked at the up and coming technology. At that time there were two companies going, there was GCS from Western Australia and Teledata in Victoria. Dean from GCS and can’t think of the guy from Teledata, but they were both fairly aggressive sorts of managers in their own way. Dean had a better marketing presence than the guy here did. Anyhow we sort of looked at this and we negotiated that if we could buy Teledata we could sort of get some control over this. Very naive thinking. Still going on in the credit union this naive thinking. So we then had a special meeting and we got that and we bought it. The reaction that that caused at national level, when I was on the national Board was really outstanding, I was torn apart from having done that without telling the national body. I said, ‘Look, that matter was confidential to our Board and that is what the Board said,’ and that is where it stayed as far as I was concerned. The next minute the national body, New South Wales, had done something with GCS and they didn’t even tell us. So it was a very funny game and all that. So we bought the company.
You mean to say you bought Teledata before the negotiations between New South Wales and GCS?
IL: And we got clobbered for the Teledata one.
Did you know that Les Robinson who had become the Manager of the New South Wales League, after he left the League there, had bought into GCS and was trying to market it?
IL: Yes, I am aware of all those things.
Did he try and market it to you?
IL: No, they were marketing to individual credit unions, it never came to the League, sorry the Association, they tried to market to individual credit unions. In this State there was a mixture of GCS and Teledata and there was a constant argument. As time went by, we started to develop more software in Canada and some things happened there that were not fully known to the Board, to the VCCA Board who was the controlling partner and that was grim. I got into a bit of trouble there because the guy who was running Teledata went to Canada to look at the software over there and Mike Hildebrand, who was the Manager, was on that Board and he started to get very frightened about this too. He said, ‘We’ve got to go to Canada and get Ken to come back, he has got to get home again, it’s costing too much money.’ Well, I took what you might all a Chairman’s responsible decision and said, ‘Right, go, go to Canada now,’ without the approval of the Board. I knew what was going on and I knew it had to be stopped as soon as it could. Now I suffered a bit of kick-back from the Board about that, and rightly so I had no objection to that, but we did haul the stuff back and we stopped spending over there. But the unfortunate part about it is that it gradually went down and then we changed the Board. I was Chairman of Teledata for about six months and that was just before Mike Hildebrand went and we got other people in. A very strong influence from the other camp, northern state, I don’t know what they said but the effect was to get one system here, so they merged GCS and Teledata and wound up Teledata and GCS became FCS, so it all became one. So you really have a monopoly situation in the movement and if it is good or bad I am not real sure.
Were you aware that SEC had already put in GCS before New South Wales got it at all?
IL: Oh yes. There were several credit unions that had GCS before New South Wales got involved at all.
I think the Defence one down here, I’ve forgotten the name of that, also was in it.
IL: It would have been the Defence Credit Union of Victoria. There were several. If I go back into my records, I can tell you from the records I used to keep as to who was on what.
Both the McIntyres in New South Wales were also first in, long before the New South Wales League got into it.
IL: Well you see this was brought about, these things started to happen, when Reg Elliot moved into New South Wales. Reg Elliot and Mike Hildebrand were appointed about the same time in Victoria and New South Wales. Well Mike went after four years and Reg of course went on.
Mike Hildebrand, do you remember how he was appointed?
IL: Yes, I appointed him and fired him. Fired him is the wrong word, it was made clear that things weren’t so good so he left, he resigned and left. But I appointed him.
What was that about?
IL: Because the operations of VCCA were not performing as they should have been and there were a few things being done, one of them was the use of consultants and a couple of things being done with an insurance package which was pretty good but it was being done outside of Board direction. I mean you just can’t tolerate that and he knew that and he just went and that was OK. I’ve got lots of funny feelings about that because a stronger Board would have kept him and the Credit Union Movement today would have been a very different picture if Mike Hildebrand had stayed on here, no doubt about that, I mean nationally.
We are going all ways round here, but we’ve got to keep at it. When Mike Hildebrand was appointed, look at the Managers generally and the ones you were involved with, were you involved with the appointment and the leaving of any of the Managers?
IL: No, I came into VCCA as a Committee member. Leon Magree was there. I was there when Don Harris was appointed.
What about when both Leon and Don Harris were there, how was Don Harris appointed when Leon Magree was already Manager there?
IL: That’s something I can’t answer. It was done by the then Board and I would think, bearing in mind the things that happened in those days, somebody fell out with somebody, or somebody promised they’d do something better than somebody else. I don’t know.
And how did it work?
IL: Well, when Don came in Leon then took off for New Guinea and spent some years up there with the Commonwealth Bank and credit unions up there. Then he came back and he went to VCCA for a while and then out to Waverley or somewhere else for a while. Now Don took it up and Don lasted probably four years, I think it was four years and eight months is the standard time for Managers.
What happened with him. How did he come to leave?
IL: The then Board, I wasn’t on the Board when this happened, the then Board wanted a higher quality of Manager I think. You would have to talk to people before my time, but that was my observation. So Don then went and they appointed Geoff Conrad then.
Now how did that happen, were you in that?
IL: No, I wasn’t. Benson was Chairman then.
So were you there when?
IL: I was there when Conrad went and Ken Plugh and myself, Ken was the Chairman and I was the Vice-Chairman, we met in this room on a Saturday, as Peter Hodgkinson says, it was Mother’s Day and he has made several comments about that, and by about half-past three, four o’clock in the afternoon the decision had been made. We’d been discussing Conrad for nearly two years but no-one had any strength or guts to face up to the issue, and this day it was faced up to and we said, ‘Right, we’ve got to have a change.’ So it fell to Ken’s lot and my lot to go from here to that corner and pass the news. It actually fell to my lot to actually make that announcement. It is funny, when you’ve got to do it it’s OK, but it’s when you finish it hits you. But Conrad’s didn’t hit me so much, it did but not much. Then Mike Hildebrand, Jim Carroll was on the Board then as Vice-Chairman, my Vice-Chairman and I was Chairman, and we interviewed the prospective people, David Denning happened to be one of the people on the list, and Mike was chosen. He did some very good things. He established a better capital base for the credit union than we had before and he did some other very good things. After about four years it got a bit sort of, not out of control, but a little bit and he wasn’t what you would call a very liked Manager amongst the other Association Managers because he was so blunt and forthright. Anyhow he had to go and we had another meeting one day and said, ‘Well look, things aren’t that good,’ so he went. Now that was a very hard day for me because I had appointed him and I had to fire him, or tell him what the facts were, firing is the wrong word we talked to him and he resigned. So it was a great pity. So Phillip came in and he was Interim Manager until David Denning picked up around about April or May in 1981.
How did you alight upon Phillip Eliot? You appointed him didn’t you?
IL: No. Phillip was appointed by Don Harris way back. You see Phillip was a field officer backing from Wadey to Albert Road.
So he was acting during the period?
IL: Yes, he was Interim Manager, he was acting. Phillip’s one of the very very strong co-operative guys. Very good.
Is he still around in the Movement?
IL: Yes, he is the Executive Officer of the Credit Union Association Limited. In this State we’ve got three Associations, we have VCCA, CUA and Southern.
How did that happen?
IL: Southern happened a long time ago because smaller credit unions were very unhappy with the dues and I think some got a bit unhappy with the purchase of Teledata, but it was mainly dues. They said they were paying too much and getting nothing so they formed their own association of about fourteen. The other Association, Credit Union Association Limited, that started up about three years ago as a result of this 1980/1981 business coming down there and Project Renewal. That group of six credit unions became very upset with the approach being adopted for Project Renewal. There were so many things being said, so many questions unanswered, over and over again their questions weren’t answered, so they said, ‘We don’t know what’s going on.’ So they pulled out. Phillip was working at Piccol Credit Union at the time and he went across as the Executive Officer of that Association and that is where he is now.
These other Associations, do they have central banking systems and things like that?
IL: No. The interesting thing is the Southern Association was set up purely as a communication exercise and they would represent the Government in the place, their small credit unions, and they have done that reasonably well. Nowhere near as aggressively as the AFCUL line has. CUA was set up for one reason only and that was to have another voice in State Government because of some of the things that were happening. We wanted to make sure there was a balanced point of view. CUA represents 30 per cent of the membership and the assets of credit unions of Victoria. It is a big hunk of people and is causing a lot of problems, sorry seems to be causing a lot of problems in the Movement as a whole. It is objecting even now to the AFIC legislation, not objecting to all the AFIC legislation, but objecting to some of the parts of AFIC. It is just not good enough to bring in, so their is a role being played there and Phillip is involved in that particular role.
Now I suppose we had better go back and try and clean up in a systematic way. It is my fault, not yours. When you mentioned Teledata I said we had better deal with that now and we did.
IL: We did that and we dealt with GCS at the same time.
Fair enough. Well your knowledge of it. Now the next thing, can we go back to your Directorship and can I ask when you first came on the VCCA what Committees were you on and what voice did you have? Central banking was already well in position. Stabilisation, what about that, were you on the Stabilisation Committee?
IL: No. The Stabilisation Committee got up and running before I came onto the Board.
Therefore the push towards community credit unions must also have happened at that time?
IL: The push towards forming credit unions happened when Don Harris and Leon Magree were at 182, they set out a real program to develop a lot of credit unions, small credit unions.
But what about the time when the parish credit unions particularly, but a number of others, were being enlarged or were being amalgamated to form community credit unions which gave rise to the problems through deficit budgeting, did you have anything to do with that?
IL: Deficit budgeting reminds me of the talk in Canberra two years ago, the tape there. There were some mergers of small parishes which took place and at the time the changed they did take the opportunity to change their name to become an open credit union, which in my opinion was a normal development of parish credit unions, quite normal. The issue of deficit budgeting I think was another issue but it happened probably about that time. Now as I said to you in Canberra a couple of years ago, I was quite surprised, when I was on the Central Board and I had been there about twelve months, I started to suggest to that Board that we should start looking at doing a bit of deficit budgeting. On that Board was a Sid Crone, he was a Director from ICI and he was an accountant. He said, ‘Over my dead body you will deficit budget.’ So he told me a bit about it and I saw what he meant. So then I tried to find out where this came from and my understanding was that deficit budgeting was sort of promulgated from AFCUL down, as a matter of fact if you remember that discussion in Canberra that Dermot was seen as being the architect of this and he deficit budgeted AFCUL, quite a big deficit there. So every credit union started deficit budgeting. Now in this State it was picked up quicker than anywhere, it was stopped quicker than other States but it did cause some problems. Because people talked about deficit budgeting but they didn’t talk about a planned deficit, which we discussed two years ago too.
But you weren’t involved in any of that?
IL: I was not involved in deficit budgeting. If it was deficit budgeting it was because we hadn’t got to the point in the year when a break-even had occurred.
Actually what I meant was, were you on the Stabilisation Committee when it was picking up the pieces?
IL: No. I wasn’t. I was never on that Committee at all.
The Legislative Committee?
IL: Gee, that is hard now. I know I was on the Publicity Committee and Chapter Committee.
What about the Publicity Committee then? What did that do and where did it meet and who was on it?
IL: The Publicity Committee I first went on that before I was a Director and that was Bruce Smith, he was an employee at the time, he would Chair that and run it. Vin Barker was on it, he was the guy who went off the Board when I came on. A couple of other people who I can’t recall, I would have to go back through notes at home to find that out. Their role was to look at what do credit unions need and what should VCCA be doing. What do members want and what should we provide. This could be posters and folders, those sorts of things, you know. It did some reasonably good things but it was not dynamic, not dynamic as such.
So what other committees were you on? Any other committees before you became Chairman, or Vice-Chairman?
IL: I don’t think so. You see Publicity and Chapters took up all my time, there was no time for anything else. Thirty-two meetings a year, there is no time.
So what do you remember for the time you were Vice-Chairman that we haven’t spoken of? What about when you were Chairman? I mean we are skirting Jubilee Lake here as well.
IL: Yes, Jubilee Lake was in that whole process.
Who started it?
IL: Jubilee Lake started as a result of the Warburton Chalet burning down. See once Warburton Chalet burnt down, we had no place, no real home, to have seminars. Now we went down to Cowes, the International at Cowes several times which was quite a nice place. We went up to a couple up at Warburton but they weren’t big enough. So I don’t know who started this off, but certainly Conrad and Benson were very much mixed up with getting it going and Moffet and someone else, well those three I remember were the main ones. They looked round and we employed Leon Turner. The Committee was formed to develop a convention centre. Leon was employed as a consultant and I think he did a very good job on researching convention centres, and had that convention centre been built it would have been ideal. It was designed with the noise area over here and the convention area here, not like the hotels you go around with cutlery and china being knocked around all over the place. It was very ideal. They had quite a battle with Daylesford Council to get the approval from the Council to build it. They finally got it. They got a 99-year lease signed after a lot of effort. Then it came time to get money to put into it and this is where Leon Turner said, ‘I’m not a finance man, I am a guy who can research it, but I am not a finance man.’ He told the Board that and they said, ‘Well, you’ve just got to go and find the money,’ and I think that is where it started to trip over things. Now we got some money in all right and then we changed the Board. That was an interesting time. We had plans to go which looked all right. We were going to change the Board and change Management so Leon went out and Mike Hildebrand came into management and I come onto the Board, a few of us come onto the Board. The first meeting we had of that Board a new set of plans were dumped on the table. I nearly did my block. There was a consultant sitting there and I said, ‘Who asked you to come and what are these plans about?’ I was livid because all we had to do was to use the plans we had and get the foundations going. Once that was done, in my opinion, people would have seen there’s the plans, it’s on the way and they would have started to support it. Had that have been done we would have had a very very good convention centre. It would have been separate from here, I hope, a separate body altogether because we shouldn’t be involved in those ventures. But after that it slowed down.
And what about the decline of Victoria VCCA’s finances until a meeting that was held?
IL: At Postal Headquarters. Well that …
Was that during your Chairmanship?
IL: Yes it was during my Chairmanship. I found some very difficult things to answer there because I knew some things were getting down and one was the over-expenditure on consultancies, that was one, and one was also the purchase of Teledata. The thing I learnt during my time on VCCA was if you have got money in a central bank from members’ deposits, that is sacrosanct, you don’t invest that in any commercial risk. That has stuck with me and a lot of people in the State since. That is one of the reasons we are against certain things in the national body at the moment because that safeguard is not there, at least we don’t see it being there in the Act. I know there were two guys on the Board who said that they knew what it was and I said, ‘Would you please tell us what you find is wrong,’ and they started raising issues about that account is $10 out, I said, ‘Tell us what is wrong, don’t criticise,’ and they couldn’t. Now I got the impression that there was something wrong but I don’t know what it was. But when Mike went and we started to put it all together we did a total balance of everything and when the new Manager came in we wanted to have a clean sheet. Now to have a clean sheet you write a lot of things off that you really wouldn’t do in an ongoing business. So my personal feeling is that the whole thing was made to look worse than it was. When you do those things you’ve got to expect that, so I’ve got no objection, but it was an interesting time to go through.
Do you remember the actual meeting?
IL: Yes. There was more than one. We had about two meetings. In fact when this happened this was so stressful to me that I asked Peter Timmons, who was the Executive Officer who I also appointed to AFCUL, I said, ‘Look Peter I need someone who is remote, who is not mixed up with the day-to-day things to come down to give us a hand.’ That was good in one way, bad in another way, but I think it was good in the long run. He helped me get through a few things there. Then we got the New South Wales General Manager mixed up with the World, which in one way was a think a bad move, I think we should have done something down here. Because the ambitions of people at that time were well-known to me because of my association with the national body and everything else and I could see a sort of problem coming up here if we weren’t careful. Anyhow Reg came down and gave that talk and we copped it. I am sure we could have fixed it all ourselves, our own people, I am sure we could have because as I have said before the co-operation between people down here when things go wrong has always been very very good. They will give you a kick in the arse, but they will help you get it fixed. So Reg came down and they got it all sorted out and away she went. We had to be very very careful about that time too, because we were told how much help we were given from outside the State. There wasn’t one cent of money that came from any other State to help out us out of that time and there was a liquidity problem round about the Christmas/January of that year and that was handled by Eddie Forth, who was our central banker here, and he was absolutely magnificent. He knew all his credit unions, he knew all their requirements, he spoke to them every day and said, ‘What do you want today, or can you leave it until say three o’clock?’ He was managing it so finely that it went out. The other big issue about that time that affected me, because I was a Director on Piccol and I was Chairman of VCCA, and Piccol had by far the greatest deposit here, $13 million in one place, which was serious from Piccol’s point of view because it showed blind support of the Movement. You must never do that, you have got to spread your money. People still haven’t woken up to that, even now. You must spread things. I knew very well that if there was something wrong with VCCA, Piccol wouldn’t get its money back and if something went wrong with Piccol, they would get their money from VCCA, so both were going to fail and I was in the middle. If that wasn’t a conflict of interest, nothing was, not a conflict, I just pleaded, ‘Look we have got to do this very very carefully,’ and we did, we got right through it. I think we wanted some money at one stage until it was over and we had lots of noise about New South Wales putting money in, but that money came from our own Reserve Board. So again, the State supported itself.
The Reserve Board had been set up by that time?
IL: Yes, just.
Were you involved in the setting up of the Reserve Board and the Advisory Committee?
IL: No, I never got mixed up with Stabilisation or Reserve Board work, that was left to people like Les Harcourt, Peter Hodgkinson, the accountancy people, accountants’ brains, and they were pretty dogmatic, you would know if you have met them, they were pretty dogmatic guys and they would just do as they wanted and they did a good job too, did a very good job.
What about your involvement with AFCUL, how did that start?
IL: Well, that was interesting, AFCUL. When I joined the Board I got on in June or July and there was a meeting in September of that year to form the national Board, on the north shore, Noah’s North Shore, which I mentioned two years ago too. So I went to that meeting as a delegate from Victoria and I watched the formation of this Board and that was my first introduction. I had met Dermot and Jack Coyne and others at Warburton from time to time, so I knew some personalities but I didn’t know what it was all about. So I went to that. So my relationship went from there. I was delegate to AFCUL every year after that and later on Peter was the National Director and we went for a change. I think it was me saying we really wanted to consider changes in these positions from time to time, not every year, but from time to time. It was again like being at the Syndal Annual General Meeting, I was offering a suggestion and I finished up being nominated. It seems as though I set it up for myself and you can’t get over that feeling, but I didn’t it was just that I thought we should follow certain principles, so I finished up and was appointed. It took Peter about four months to resign after that, it was quite funny. I was on AFCUL from that time through and it was a funny history at AFCUL, it was interesting but …
End Tape 1B: 5211 Words: 2 hours.
11 FEBRUARY 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH IAN LARSSON
We were talking about when you started on AFCUL, on the Board of AFCUL.
IL: Yes that’s right and I took up the job on AFCUL which is matter of bedding yourself down and seeing what happened. Peter Hodgkinson had really kept the VCCA Board very well informed about AFCUL, I pretty well knew what the game play was, you could say, how we were performing, what we wanted to get done. He had kept us all well informed and I though I would try and do the same thing when I got and push this same line.
Were you knowledgable about any of his battles with Dermot Ryan at any stage, mainly over the foundation?
IL: Yes, Peter had seen deficit budgeting go on, which Dermot had a go at AFCUL, he saw that there was a $120,000 deficit at AFCUL which took quite a while to get out of. That came out when I was there with Peter Timmons, we cleaned all that up. But Peter always wanted the foundation to be a capital fund, in other words people would put into the capital fund, earned interest on the capital fund and that money was used to do the work of the foundation. The aim was to build that capital fund up and up and up so it earned good money. We hoped also in the long run to provide a management for that fund as well. Now until that happened of course, AFCUL had to provide the funds to manage that particular body. Now the big fight there was that Dermot was more, ‘Look, we’ve got the money, let’s use it and help somebody.’ Dermot was very very good in nature, but I think very short-term in thinking about what the business was. The business has got to be viable and go on forever. There have to be certain basic structures you put together. Peter wanted to see the foundation there as a capital fund which grew and we used that to run the show so it was all quite clear and above board. But Dermot was more of a hail fellow, well met, wanted to get things done, do right by people, whereas Peter was looking at the business, the ethical side, the business side of it to keep it going.
So how did you and Peter Timmons work together, well?
IL: Oh yes. I have never worked for a better guy as an Executive Officer than Peter. Every time we went to a meeting he was all there. When you went to an Annual Meeting, he was all there. It was almost like a doting child, but honestly his efficiency and his care for detail was so magnificent, he would have been one of the most professional managers I’ve seen in all my days. Most professional.
What about Kevin Murray, before him?
IL: Kevin Murray was of the Dermot ilk, Dermot put Kevin in. Kevin was a very good-hearted guy, he really tried to make things go, but he was, I think he might agree I don’t know, that he was a little bit restricted in his ability to get, shall we say, to the higher levels, that Peter did. But then again don’t forget Dermot achieved Tax for us and he was a pretty rough, cigarette ash-dropping all over the place guy, now he achieved that. Peter Timmons can lay claim to the bank case we won. You’ve got to ask us why we did it, but we did it and we won it. Now that showed me, proved to me, that the Credit Union Movement could, as a trade association, win significant benefits for the credit union in the trade association alone. Let’s ignore all the commercial, let’s do that. Now that was good. Then as time went by of course we see the move, if you like, I call it centralisation and control of all the commercial ways top-level, well primarily control, and that is where we are now. But Peter, I found, was excellent, very good indeed.
Were you still President when he resigned?
IL: No, my term as President finished up in March 1981, my last meeting at AFCUL.
And what do you think was significant about the time of your Presidency at AFCUL?
IL: What was significant in my time was that we had three planning meetings run by Geoffrey Um, can’t think of the guy’s name, from UNE, Geoffrey?
Meredith.
IL: Geoffrey Meredith from UNE and these planning meetings were good from the point of getting input from a group of people at AFCUL seminars, but carried no formality about it which always worried me. Because if you are going to get things done you’ve got to come from the credit unions, through the State body and up to the national so that it is all funded and directed in the right way. Now these AFCUL conventions that we had at Surfers and Adelaide and Sydney, or Melbourne, and we had groups here working and we used to put input into those things. That input then went virtually straight to AFCUL to use. When it got to AFCUL you then had the Board meeting from all the States and they would say, ‘Well we’re not going to do that, we’re not going to do this.’ So really, it got some good things done, but I think it wasted a lot of resources. So that was one thing that happened during my time. The most significant thing, I think, was the appointment of Peter Timmons as far as I was concerned, and not only that we only cleaned up the deficit while I was there. By the way, also at the time, we also fought the Bank Inquiry, the Campbell Inquiry, that was on while I was there. Again, just having a look at a book while I was at home this afternoon, Peter prepared a book, Reg went to that presentation. It was all marked out and all done and he then performed extremely well at that. Very good indeed.
The circumstances of your leaving the Board of AFCUL?
IL: Well, it was funny. When the Victorian scene was getting pretty hard here for the last six months of 1980, I was getting very depressed, very depressed indeed. I could not get to certain people and say, ‘Let’s address the issue,’ and then two guys left the Board who thought they knew all about it and we were convinced they didn’t.
Who was this?
IL: Nigel Westerby and John Woodhams. They both left and they were the two guys who thought they knew exactly what was wrong, but I said, ‘Well if you know what’s wrong, let’s put it on the table and discuss something and fix it.’ But for some reason it didn’t work. But also during that period, the last part of 1980, Teledata, because we had a problem there, Ken Steel was the Manager of Teledata and in August or September of that year we dispensed with his services and that was another one of my little jobs as Chairman of Teledata. You wonder how you go through these things, it is very hard to live through, very hard to live through. But when that was finished we employed Price Waterhouse as a consultant to get things straight and we had meetings every Tuesday mornings at seven o’clock, myself, Rob Davey, this consultant over here at Teledata. On the day that Mike went, on 27 November, the next Monday night we had a Board meeting, it started at five and went to a quarter-past twelve in this room. I have never been through such a painful experience in all my life. I wont go into it, it was just painful. The next morning I fronted up at seven o’clock down at this place and I got here and I had asked the consultant here the previous night, because Teledata was part of the scene, and he said, ‘Gosh you looked bad last night,’ and I said, ‘I felt bad.’ He said, ‘When were you at the doctor last?’ I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve been going for the last two years.’ So he said, ‘Well you promise me you will go this week, because you are not too good.’ He was so right. So I went to the doctor that day and he takes my blood pressure and it is something like 130 over 200, it was terrible. He said, ‘You should be dead.’ I said, ‘I feel as though I am.’ He said, ‘Look, what you’ve got to remember is one job, on salary, so just go and do it.’ So I came back here that night and I started putting the resignations in. That is not because I wanted to, but because I was being told to. That hurt me because in retrospect I wish I had never got off. Because having been through experiences like that there are certain things you know you can’t do again.
But you sat on the Board didn’t you?
IL: Only for two or three months.
Incidentally when there was that big changeover of the Board, where there was a number of people replaced, was there a number of resignations first or was it?
IL: It was a contrived situation.
Who contrived it and how?
IL: It’s an interesting point, I’ve got two things mixed up here. We had a committee of three look at us at one stage, of which Col Minch was one, but I would be inclined to say there was so much pressure brought to bear from outside the State and for political reasons because of the future controls which are now almost in. You can see it all coming out back in those days and if you were going to be in the road, you had to go. Well some people said, ‘Well, I’m tired of this, I can’t stand it.’ I hung on until about April I resigned, because I could see the people coming in, the change in direction was going to be so great and depart so much from what I though was basic credit union direction that it wasn’t really good. That is really how it all happened.
Well actually the six people came on on 24 April 1981.
IL: That’s right. It was a sort of on off situation. It was all engineered to be done that way.
It wasn’t six, seven eight. We’ve got Richard Crosbie, Roy Smith, Gavin Farnsworth, Lloyd Cameron, Ken Morris-Ashton, Ian Smith.
IL: Ian Smith was on before that.
Right. Roger Bell, no he came on later, sorry, they came on the following year.
IL: No, it was as a result of all these meetings and things that people started to look for new Directors. It was quite funny where these Directors came from, because you couldn’t even get them interested before and that was the interesting part about it.
Who did get them interested, was it a group of people or were they sort of rounded up by ..
IL: No, I think it would have been a group of people. Someone talked to them, I don’t know who, but someone said, ‘Look how about coming on and giving us a hand,’ and that’s how it happened. The day Mike resigned, we had an AFCUL meeting that next weekend and I took Eileen West up with me and we told the Board what had happened and I went up there with a written resignation, because I always believe in the Westminster principle, if you think something smells, you must offer to resign. So I offered. So I talked to Peter first and he said, ‘There’s nothing wrong up here, don’t do that,’ and I said, ‘I’m just making sure things are clean Peter, I don’t want any problems.’ So we discussed it before the Board meeting and it was never put and I was happy. The next Board meeting comes up and one Director, who shall be nameless, suggested that I should have resigned, and he was at that previous Board meeting. I thought that was about how I assessed him, let him be nameless, but that really upset me. So I stayed on as President of AFCUL to the end of that meeting then I had made up my mind I wouldn’t stand for President again, but I would probably have stood for National Director. But with the changes taking place down here there would have been more people wanting that job and I could see no point in fighting for it. I had had my time, it was good, and AFCUL I think was about my most successful time. I enjoyed it, very much.
You presided over the decrease of a deficit.
IL: I did. Also I was President for the first World Council meeting out here, which was interesting. It was quite funny, I often think I should write a history, ‘From Overdraft Deficit to AFCUL President in Ten Years’, because that is such a conflict in terms. But the World Council was a big thing that happened up here. I enjoyed that. But since it was in Sydney and I was down here there was a sort of remoteness about it, but nevertheless, I enjoyed that. What led me up to that was a trip with Ken Miller the year before to George Town in Guyana and then to Nairobi, we went to two World Council events there. One World Council event in Nairobi and a week’s seminar which Ken had been asked to speak at. That trip too, in itself, really opened up my eyes a lot to the World Council. Not that it changed my views on the World Council much. I had developed that over a period of time in AFCUL. I thought there is another Board that is not going to be as good as my Syndal Board and I wasn’t far wrong. But we discussed the World Council in Sydney at those meetings and it was really enjoyable and a worthwhile time. An interesting side to that trip too, when we went into Nairobi we got there on a Saturday, we lost our luggage but that’s another story, we got in on Saturday, went to the hotel and we started our meetings on Monday, Kenyata decided to die. When Kenyata died I reckon I turned white because it was a black country and I have seen what happened by the press when you get a top man dying, what happens, there is bloodshed. So we were confined to our hotel, but gee I was frightened those two days. Then it came good.
Tape continued on 30 July 1992 in Sydney.
I am going to ask you, Ian, can you fill me in on the split up of the VCCA between services and representation that occurred?
IL: Yes, I think I can. Piccol was, I think, one of the instigators of this. The aim was to split the VCCA into what we would call core business side, which included the central banking, and the other side was to have those business which some members wanted and some didn’t, and they were basically risk ventures. Our aim was if you wished to be in a risk venture area then you take the responsibility of putting your shares into the company, taking all the profits and taking all the losses. By doing that you kept the company separate from the core part of VCCA which meant that all negotiations with Government and the central banking situation which was required by small credit unions could be kept clean from any commercial ventures. That was our real aim. I know that Piccol, I am pretty sure of this, did put a paper up along these lines with the central banking in the core business side. But when it got submitted and started to be dealt with, the central banking section was moved across to the commercial side which we thought, I mean I thought, was the wrong thing to do because it meant ultimately that any credit union who wanted to use central banking had to pay to be a member of the core business and additional fees to be a member of the commercial side, which we didn’t really want to see for small credit unions. That is where it sort of got started. No we had no objection that it went on it moved along but it moved along in a fashion that it didn’t go the way we wanted to see it. In fact, in retrospect you could say that the restructure of AFCUL in the Project Renewal sense really reflected what had happened in VCCA, so you saw a national picture of VCCA and you had the central banking and finances all in the commercial side not in the core business side. So there was a sort of a pattern that came from VCCA to a national level. We were still not really keen about that because we had small credit unions who wanted central banking and should be given that service really had to pay more for that. Other arguments could be offered that they didn’t have too pay that much, I don’t know quite how it was worked out. But that is what the aim was. Now going on from there, just because it didn’t go the way you wanted it, that didn’t affect Piccol in any disaffiliation move. The thing that brought the disaffiliation of Piccol to a head was we tried to negotiate things to get what we wanted and we lost a few things, which didn’t worry us too much.
Like what?
IL: Well I think it was getting central banking back into the core business side. Things like that. It is a fair time ago, I am not quite sure what is happening in this part now. But the particular event that I recall was that we went to an Annual General Meeting and there was a special resolution up for a contribution of $40,000 for a marketing campaign and the $40,00 was to be going into an aggregate contribution of a certain percentage of each credit union asset. It was quite small really. And they said in their notes they would rather prefer $100,000 but $40,000 would do. As a result, the resolution was put to the meeting for $40,000. The number of credit unions that attended that meeting would have been about forty-four, which meant there was about fifty to sixty that weren’t there. When credit unions get notices of a meeting asking for $40,000 they think they can probably afford that so don’t bother coming, it will be all right. Now during the meeting one delegate moved that the amount be raised to $200,000. I did say to my delegate, ‘For God sake get up and tell them you can’t do that. You can’t raise money resolutions up.’ Well our delegate didn’t do that, which upset me. Then the Chairman said, ‘Well, yes I think we can probably do that,’ and he said to Roger Bell across the floor of the meeting, who had just be re-elected as a Director, ‘Well can you handle $200,000, Roger?’ Roger says, ‘Oh yes, of course I can.’ I got absolutely appalled, I thought it was a totally unprofessional way of running an Annual General Meeting. So the resolution went through. So I did talk to the Chairman and the Board directly after the meeting and told them what they had done, it was illegal and that when the fifty or sixty credit unions who did not attend the meeting did not pay their dues, under their rules they would be obliged to suspend them. My final paragraph was, ‘What a wonderful way to bring about unity in the Credit Union Movement.’ Now that really upset us so much, not only us but for or five other credit unions that is that was the way it was going to be administered then we really had no business in staying here. That is when we caused Piccol to go.
Were you a Director Chairman of Piccol at that time?
IL: I was a Director.
Not Chairman.
IL: No.
Are you Chairman now?
IL: No. I was Chairman of Piccol for one year after Ken Plugh resigned and Gary Oliver became Chairman after that. I can’t think of the year, it is a long time ago now.
But they disaffiliated on your recommendation, did they?
IL: Not on my recommendation. No it was an observation of the Board who was at the Annual Meeting and they realised that if that what was going to happen, we’ve got doubts about the ability of that group to really administer things and that is what we went out. When we went out though, we said, and I can remember talking to Piccol and saying, ‘Now let’s be very careful how we handle this. We are going out but let there be no talk of forming any other association. Let’s wait until the AGM, or a Special Meeting in October the VCCA are running, to see whether some things get put straight. If they get straight we will probably go back in but if it doesn’t we wont.’ There were things that went on, Project Renewal then got mixed up with it and a few other things happened, details of which I can’t recall at this stage, and we then stayed out. Following that was the AFCUL meeting which was due to be held in Darwin which was transferred to Singapore. Now just before that we had decided that an association must be formed for the six credit unions that were really concerned about what was going on and that is when you got the six credit unions to form CUACUL and that was registered almost the day before we went to Singapore. So a very very full delegation went to Singapore and we let AFCUL people know that we were there and we had a talk about things, we were not hiding, we are new association we would like to talk to you about things and then there are other people who can talk to you about those interviews far better than I can. So it was really set up at that time, that was the split. The policy of CUACUL was we are aiming to get one association, but we are not aiming to get one association at any cost. There has got to be some sort of give and take around the place. That is where it started and that is where we still are, coming right to the current day. As you know AFIC legislation is now in. Under AFIC we have things called SSAs, State Supervisory Authorities in the States which have been established.
What is AFIC?
IL: Australian Financial Institutions Commission, sorry about that. Then we also have things called SSPs, Special Service Providers. The Special Service Providers are those bodies that provide the financial, the actual liquidity, back-up and other commercial services. They are being set up and I don’t expect to see them established probably until September, it depends on how hard the AFIC people work to get them established. With regard to CUACUL, some twelve months or more ago CUACUL decided to say well look if SSPs are going to be set up, we are aware of some credit unions in Queensland and New South Wales who were twice as unhappy as we were, perhaps some talking should go on. So talks were held between these groups and several credit unions then formed the NCUA, the National Credit Union Association, and that was really necessary if you were going to go into the SSPs. So ultimately the NCUA would become our legislative side and the SSPs, two of them being formed, we then form the liquidity one and the commercial side. Now that is on the way through now. Those applications were lodged on 1 July this year ready to go away. Even AFIC have come up with you want the core services side and you want the commercial side and the financial side has got to be clean which has always been our proposition way back in the early ’80s. We want a clean financial part with no commercial risk, we want a clean legislative body with straight talking to Government and that sort of thing. So AFIC has really brought it about you know, in a funny sort of way.
That is interesting. What about the situation re CUSCAL and the Board and the Council? You won’t be represented on any of those. What about the financial side of things can you still deal with CUSCAL in that sense?
IL: If we deal with CUSCAL under certain conditions, if we pay the appropriate fees to join, I think, I’m not real sure but I think, that could be done. But you see under AFIC there are many options for credit unions to go. Under AFIC you can belong to a SSP, any SSP that exists for you, or you cannot belong to any SSP and do you work with established banks under certain guidelines. So Directors have got to think now, ‘I’m in charge of my credit union and I have got to make sure my credit union is doing the right thing.’ Now they have the option to do what they want to. It is very important that Directors be made aware of the options open to them. The CUSCAL comes from what we call the affiliated movement, well there are two affiliated movements now, but the first affiliated movement. Credit unions used to have associations above them and then AFCUL. Now that stream still exists except that AFCUL now has become CUSCAL and all State associations are being wound up and will become branches, there will be a branch representation in each State of the CUSCAL thing, and they will then serve those credit unions. Now the credit unions can elect to belong or not. That is up to them. Now with the CUACUL side the same thing exists, the credit unions exist, we pay membership dues to CUACUL and also membership dues to NCA. When the SSPs get going the NCA will become the main body and the State associations will be sort of advisory committees locally, so we will finish up exactly parallel to AFCUL, but on present indication running at a much cheaper rate.
Will they have the services available though?
IL: It depends what services your members want. You have got to ask what services do the members want and provide it for them. If you over provide the services and charge them for them and they don’t use them, well you will see that is right. Now we have got to watch that we don’t form exactly the same problems and there is no reason why we shouldn’t. You’ve got to be serious or we could make mistakes.
I have heard that there are some overall service organisations that are already talking to affiliated credit unions about setting up as providers, the ones that are not in the system at present. I mean they are trying to get into it by providing services which are available directly to credit unions.
IL: I’m not close to those sort of things. All I know is what is happening in the CUACUL side. Generally speaking the six in Victoria, five in Victoria, it is actually eight there now, concentrating on right now on the formation of the two SSPs on the eastern seaboard grid with the Queensland League as the base operator. That is our total concentration right now. The services that we will be offered will be the normal central banking systems, an EDP system and I don’t know what else at this stage. They are probably offering those sorts of things. They will stick to a really core business operation, to that side.
Well this is really a computerised operation run over the telephone with a number of services. One will be insurance, you won’t have one insurance available there will be a whole series of them who can provide a different insurances and you will be able to access it via the telephone through a computer, that is the idea. The idea is also that there will be a number of investments in different organisations to be provided through the same way. This will give the credit unions, whether affiliated or not, access to a number of services independent of. This is affiliated credit unions who are suggesting this.
IL: I can understand where that might be coming from and I probably know why it has been set up. That is one thing you have got to watch. You see if that is happening still in the affiliated movement now, they have still got a problem with unhappy people. Now we were unhappy at the start and we know there is some unhappy people there because some people haven’t yet pledged. I am trying not to comment on that too much because I am too far away from it now and it would be wrong for me to make any comment about that.
End Tape 2A: 4900 Words. 2 hours.
30 JULY 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH IAN LARSSON
Now there is one area which I haven’t asked you about, which you have been involved in, and that is ICUD? How did you first come across that and were you in on the formation of ICUD?
IL: I first heard about ICUD when I was on the AFCUL Board, in fact Bill Howe mentioned the Institute of Credit Union Directors in New South Wales quite some time ago. I got the impression it was not a very strong body and I thought it was a good idea, I think it is a very good thing to have an Institute of Credit Union Directors because the Institute of Credit Managers has been going for quite some time and it is successful, providing a peer group and educational facilities. So I kept it in the back of my mind. So when I finished with VCCA in May 1981, I had this basic two years rest out of everything, although some people think I was very active in that time I don’t really understand that. I am still quite surprised at that. But it was over that time I gave more though to the formation of ICUD in Victoria, as a Victorian group. I arranged with Jim Muller, who was Chairman of the Ballarat Credit Union, one weekend to go up and stay with him and said, ‘I would like to talk to you about setting up ICUD in Victoria, let us talk it through and see what we think.’ So we spent most of the weekend, all day Saturday and part of Sunday mapping out what we thought a mission would be, first of all is there a market for it, how many Directors are there, about eighteen hundred Directors in Victoria, do we really think they need it from what we know, yes they do, if they do what sort of mission would we follow and how would we set the business up, how would we restrict the business. So we played with that for the whole day, and I have still got the original notes, and we thought we were almost right to go. So I said, ‘The next thing is, as soon as we start setting up another group for Directors there will be immediate opposition from other established groups who will say why are you doing that,’ and I said, ‘especially with me in it, it probably wont get off the ground. That upsets, me but I think it will be the case.’ So we then put it in limbo for nearly a period of two years, maybe three. Then the Police Credit Union had delegates go to a Bathurst meeting in New South Wales run by New South Wales, and they came back enthused and they wrote a letter out to all credit unions saying, ‘We think we should for this,’ and I just clapped my hands for joy, I said, ‘Beauty.’ The Police did such a good job, everything was right, they told the Registrar, the VCCA, everyone that mattered on the Reserve Board, all credit unions, they called a meeting, the lot. Well before they had that meeting we had an AFCUL meeting in South Australia and I made it a point of mixing with the Police group. They knew they wanted to do something, but they didn’t know what they wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do but I couldn’t do it. So we got together for the weekend over there and we agreed that it looks good. So we formed the body and I became Vice-President on that night, which was an interesting thing, I was back in the game again which I thought very good about.
Who was President?
IL: Helmut Winsler from Police, he was there for about twelve months. Helmut was a very busy man in Police and unfortunately he had to resign because of the pressure of business and I became President after that. Well ICUD from our point of view was set up to do three things: one was to hold forums for Directors; prepare educational papers for Directors and to run educational courses; and that’s the only three things we would do. Our symbol, we adopted a symbol in that year which was a round ring, a solid ring, inside of which was a triangle. The solid ring represented the person and the triangle inside represented those three things that we did, forums, papers and education. The symbol, which we can’t afford to get coloured yet, the symbol of the ring is, the colours on the ring round the top of the ring is white, round the bottom of the ring is blue which represents the sky and clouds, which gives a sort of visionary aspect, and the triangle in the middle is green which represents terra firma. What we are sort of saying is this symbol represents Directors with vision making decisions with their feet on the ground. This was our whole aim. Now that symbol has been adopted by Western Australian recently and Tasmania adopted it about the same time as we did. About a year after that we wanted to pick a motto. Well I was keen to see a Latin motto because Latin is a dead language and you fix it there and it is going to be the same all the time. So we asked Marnie and Gavin to come up with some Latin about this. They came up with a slogan which is Rediam, Rationum and they gave us three definitions of that. The first one was I am ultimately responsible, which we chose and the last one was, I pay the bills. Now I pay the bills has real meaning but we didn’t think that would be really conducive to a good motto. So our livery now has the symbol and the Rediam Rationum, I am ultimately responsible. So our whole aim is we deal with the Director. It is wrong to say we don’t care about credit unions or associations, but our main concern is with the Director, training the Director so that when he joins the other Directors on the Board that Board is in a position to make pretty good and reasoned decisions. Now if that happens then a credit union is good. If the credit union is good, then the association or the federation well that is going to be good, and that is the whole aim of it. We’ve worked closely with New South Wales together on this and a couple of years ago we formed, a bit longer than that two or three years ago now, we formed a national body called Institution of Credit Union Directors Australia. That is a committee of Chairman of each of the State ICUDs and we met by phone generally and try and get the national Director development program oriented. Now that committee set up the basic six modules for Directors for training which we all work off, we try to keep those updated. We work off those basic training modules.
You have an annual meeting as well, don’t you?
IL: We have an annual meeting. The annual meeting is held immediately before the national convention in Canberra. It was held there last year and will be held there again this year.
But the national convention is somewhere in …
IL: In Canberra. We fixed the national convention. New South Wales run two in Bathurst and I think in the University of New South Wales, then we offered to pick up the next one. We could see that the University wasn’t big enough for what we wanted and we did want to try and get everyone under the one roof if we could. So we moved to Canberra and it overflowed and we had accommodation in the two motels either side. But it seemed to get people together.
This is in a few weeks time isn’t it? End of August.
IL: Last weekend in August this year. Last year we ran the seminar and we chose for the theme there, ‘I am ultimately responsible’. This year New South Wales have chosen to pick it up and there run is ‘Directors achieving the vision’.
We are doing a display, by the way, which Jack Bannister is taking up. That is the Historical Co-operative. We are relying on you and others who might be there to put the Historical Co-operative forward at the convention.
IL: OK. You’ve got to watch some of those things. I must admit that from my point of view, I think with the Historical Co-operative I could do that. When it comes to other things.
I will do it if you like, but somebody has to pay for me to go there.
IL: I think to advertise the Historical Co-operative is good because that involves more people, Directors and staff and we should try and promote that because it is a very important issue.
Now the other people who were involved in ICUD in Victoria, at any particular level, have you got anything you can contribute in that area?
IL: No the committee that we have had, there was a committee of six, Trevor Lowe is the Secretary of Police Credit Union and even though he is not a member of the Council, he is our appointed Secretary/Treasurer. I have a very high admiration for his work and assistance. At the present time the committee consists of myself as President, Jim Muller from Ballarat as Vice-President, Harold Gardiner, Sid Myers, Bill Manson and Neil McPherson. Then we have Trevor as our Secretary/Treasurer. It is that group that works. We’ve got Trevor and Ron Ritchings, who is the other guy, Trevor and Ron work on the administrative side, the policy work, Ron prepares the newsletter Trevor does all the finance as well as the secretarial work. Myself, Bill Manson and Neil McPherson are working on the Director Training Development Committee, we have done that all this year and I hope to move off that next year and put someone else on and let them run it. I want to keep on getting off things so they sort or run and keep on going and I think we will be right. But bearing in mind we have the national seminar to run plus our only local program, myself, Trevor and Ron Ritchings will again form the committee for the national seminar and will start working on that now and I will run through there. So it is a very co-operative little group and they certainly have stuck to the business of the ring and the three points. If I suggest something they say it is not the business, and that is real good. I even do it to be devilish, devilment sometimes. It has been real good they have stuck to the business and done the right thing. This is our first year of full-time seminars and we had one on Saturday at which we had thirty-six credit unions there and this was a seminar entitled: ‘A survival kit for Directors of small credit unions’. This was to do with AFIC because we consider, in fact we know now, the small credit unions have not really got too much of a guernsey in all the considerations for AFIC and we are not too happy to see them go because they are one of the basic fundamentals of credit unionism. They are the true volunteers, they get together in small groups and they really do some good work. The bigger ones I don’t think appreciate this. The bigger ones are more like the big commercial bodies and to survive you have got to walk over everybody, that’s what it looks like anyhow. So we are very happy with that seminar and I think we will find next year a local development program will be better because we have set the pattern this year. So as far as I am concerned, since I left work on 31 July 1991, almost all of my time has been ICUD work, seminars and that sort of thing which has been very enjoyable but also sometimes very stressful.
Now what about AICUM, what have you been involved with with them?
IL: AICUM I have been, I suppose privileged to attend their seminars in Albury for most years. I consider AICUM, certainly until we got ICUD going, and Graham Humphreys might go mad at me now, but I consider AICUM is the best national conference we’ve got. It is a non-political place. You get about three hundred and sixty or seventy people there in Albury for the Sunday night through to the Thursday morning. There is ample time to talk to each other, to meet each other after and talk about things and hear some pretty good speakers. That has to me a sort of combining affect, it pulls the Movement together very well. Also my personal relationship with Graham and AICUM back in Victoria and at Graham’s level is good, quite good and we try to make sure we keep that relationship. There have been talks by some people of merging the two, well as far as I am concerned, as far as the general movement in ICUD, no way. We’ve got too many things like that. We’ve got two different roles, ones a management stream and one is a director stream. If we both get the two institutes running well and training well, then we are going to bring together good Directors and good Managers to manage the credit union system and the decisions they make are going to be based on their own deep thought and they are their decisions, which is what we are chasing.
There is one other area which I haven’t asked you about yet, which I am now. Were you a foundation member of the Credit Union Historical Co-operative?
IL: No, I wasn’t. No not me.
So when did you get involved in the Historical Co-operative and how?
IL: Well I heard about the Historical Co-operative quite some time back when Dermot formed it and I did become a member fairly early because I am interested in keeping history. My own input of course has not been all that good, but I have got a very strong interest in maintaining a history. The next event I remember being associated with was a training course run down at Murray by Tom and Clarrie and Jack Bannister down there, and that was quite a good weekend, a very good weekend. I remember I tried my first interview there, I interviewed Tim Dyce and even though it was a role play, we interviewed seriously. The things I leaned about Tim in about ten minutes was amazing and it changed my opinions of a few things and it was interesting. I wanted to do things for the Historical Society but then being mixed up with ICUD and Piccol Credit Union took up a lot of time and I have not committed as much time as I would have liked to. Well the next event I said I must go to was the Annual Meeting in Queanbeyan, I went there last year or the year before and I look forward to going their again this year. I think it is a good place for people to get together again and talk about things, but I realise we have got to do a bit more than just talk about them, we’ve got to do something about it and I’m not contributing as much as I should. From the Victorian point of view, Leon Magree is doing some excellent work, as with the VCCA this year and I think he is to be commended for that effort, he really is.
When did you first meet Dermot Ryan, by the way, how long have you known him?
IL: I would have met Dermot Ryan when the National Board was formed in September 1978 or 1977. It might have been 1976/77. I joined the VCCA Board and my first AFCUL meeting as a delegate was at North Shore Noah’s when they formed the National Board and I first met Dermot. No, I am sorry, I met Dermot at Warburton Schools in Victoria a couple of times before.
End Tape 2B: 2730 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes.