18 JUNE 1995: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BRIAN WRIGHT
What year were you born Mr Wright, and whereabouts?
BW: 1937 in Wellington in New South Wales.
Did you grow up there?
BW: Actually I lived in Stuart Town, which is half way between Orange and Wellington. I used to live down the Mackeraw as they call it, down where the Dam is now. Wellington being the nearest place, that is where most people went to be born.
Where did you go to school?
BW: I went to school in lots of places. We had a residence in Stuart Town, so that seemed to be the base. My father was an itinerant worker and we sort of went from Stuart Town to Sussex Inlet, to Stuart Town to Peat’s Ridge, Stuart Town to Orange, Armidale.
So you went to school all over the place?
BW: I think I changed school eleven times. I finished up the last three years in Orange High School. Those early years I really had some moving about.
Where did you go to work first?
BW: Email. Finished school on a Thursday and started out there on the Monday and forty-one years later I left there. I had had enough of moving around with the school business, I didn’t want to muck around with my work place. Forty-one years in most places would be a tremendously long time, but forty-one years in Email, because of its diversity, I held lots and lots of different jobs in the forty-one years so therefore didn’t become bored with it at any stage. When you got to the stage where you felt you had had enough of one type of environment within Email you could move on to something else.
So where did you work in Email first?
BW: Worked in the Machine Shop originally as a process worker. I worked there for a couple of months and the end of the year came round and they were putting on some apprentices and I got an apprenticeship as a tool maker. Served my time as a tool maker and then moved on. They were looking for some industrial engineers, time-study men as they were called then. I was lucky enough to be selected to go into the Industrial Engineering Department and had a good few years in there. I finished up the Senior Industrial Engineer in that Department. Then I was hiked out into production and found out about the hard cruel world outside. If you had a problem you had about two minutes to fix it, whereas in industrial engineering you poke something into the system today and went back in two or three months time to see whether anybody had found it or processed it. It was a bit different out in production. I worked in production then right up until I retired. Probably twelve months before I retired I left production and went into the Customer Services Manager’s job, but prior to that I was the Production Manager. So I worked through the full gambit of it actually.
When did you first hear about credit unions.
BW: At Email.
Were you at the formation meeting?
BW: No I wasn’t. Norm Sykes approached me and said they were looking for some people to go on a Supervisory Committee to keep an eye on these roosters, I think they were his words, or similar words.
What was his job?
BW: I think he might have been the Treasurer. At Email he was an engineer. He also had served his time as a tool maker and come through the system. He was an engineer at that stage of the game. He came to see me and said they needed somebody who could read a balance sheet and spell cat.
So you could read a balance sheet?
BW: Yes.
How did you learn to read a balance sheet?
BW: Oh I guess mainly through sporting clubs, through football and cricket clubs.
So you were on the Boards of various clubs?
BW: Yes I was on Committees of different clubs, sporting clubs. Norm coerced me to go to the meeting and put my hand up and there I was, I was in.
Had you joined the credit union before that?
BW: No, as a matter of fact I had to go and join the credit union so that I could nominate as a Supervisor on the Supervisory Committee. At that stage I still had a few hesitations, or misconceptions about what the credit union was all about. I thought one way to find out what it was all about was join up. I think it was $5 worth of shares you had to buy. I thought that wasn’t too big an investment to find out what it was all about. I joined and bought my shares and stood almost inside of a week.
Do you remember who was on the Committee with you?
BW: Bobby Stibbard, I guess.
The ones I have got down here are Herbert Shultz and, Theokistus?
BW: Oh yes, Greg Theokistus. Greg Theo.
I haven’t got his first name down, so I can put that down now.
BW: Commonly known as Greg the Greek. He was a fitter out there for many years.
OK I will put that down as well. What did you actually do on the Supervisory Committee?
BW: Well we sat in on all the Directors’ meetings.
Did you supervise them?
BW: Our role, as I remember it, was to just make sure everything was on the straight and narrow and that there was no fudging on the sheets. I always had the feeling that we were a good bit subordinate to the Directors anyway. I don’t think too many people would have put their hand up and really challenged the Directors unless there was something outlandish going on, I guess to that point we were very much figure heads. We went to all the meetings and we knew what was going on and we knew how the place was running. I guess we would have been aware of any fudging that was going on. We couldn’t join in with the discussion the Directors were having. We could challenge it later, but we couldn’t go into the discussion, take one side or another at a Directors meeting.
The Supervisory Committee seems to have been a sort of training ground for the Board. Did that happen here?
BW: I think it did actually. I think if you could get on the Supervisory Committee and have a look around for a while, at least when you went on to the Board you had somebody that had some grounding in the operations of the credit union.
Although I understand there was one famous Chairman of a Supervisory Committee of the New South Wales League and he used to criticise the Board. However the following year he got swamped. Dave Palmer was his name.
BW: I wasn’t aware of that but I know the name, Dave Palmer, I have heard that name. I wasn’t too sure what he was famous for.
He was famous for having his Board meeting standing up for a start. He didn’t originate that, Queen Victoria did actually.
BW: I wasn’t aware of that either.
I wasn’t until a little while ago. Somebody told me that it was a favourite trick of hers to keep the meeting short.
BW: We didn’t pull any stunts like that. We probably would have been fairly short-lived if we had of done.
So when you were on the Supervisory Committee did you do any systematic checking?
BW: Yes. We used to take the Minutes of every meeting and go through them and make sure everything was recorded as it had happened. We would get the financial details roundabout once a month and go through those and make sure everything was pretty much in line. I guess really that was about the limit of our powers, or the powers that we exercised. Whether we had any more powers or not, I don’t know.
Did you check the loan applications and things like that to see that they were in order?
BW: No, not so much as a Supervisory Committee. At that stage of the game the Directors did all the loan interviews. We used to give our lunch hours away. We used to have an hour then for lunch and we used to do all the loans interviews then. There were no Loans Officers. We did all the interviews and either passed them or made some type of amendment to the type of loan that people were getting. It was amazing the detail that we sort of got into in people’s personal lives, particularly in those early days. There were some pretty rough neddies running around. We had people in there who were committed for $42 a week and they were getting $39 in the pay envelope. It was absolutely incredible. We worked out a restructure of their finances and talked to creditors and talked to them about taking part payment of what they owed and so forth until we got it back to some sort of a level where a guy or girl could meet their commitments each month. Some of the detail you had to get into to get that sort of thing, because we got our fingers burnt a few times. You would go round and set up a structure for somebody and commit them almost to their last dollar and say, “Don’t you even go and buy a pair of shoes for your kids until you come and see us to see if it is all right.” They would always agree. You would get it all down pat and you would find out the next week they had received a bill for a motor engine they had put in a car and they owed another $800 that you didn’t know anything about and you would have to run round all the creditors again and ask them to take a little bit less because another bill had come to light. Some of the people had themselves in some dreadful financial messes. I suppose nothing much has changed. I suppose a Loans Officer these days is running into the same sorts of things.
Did they have problems with Waltons too?
BW: Yes. I think Waltons had an interest rate, at that stage of the game, of something like 25 per cent. We created credit pools for people and got all their loans into the one basket and lent them the money to cover all their loans, whether they be at Waltons. I think Waltons may have been in this very same building, it was just right here somewhere. Marcus Clarke first and then Waltons. They had people in over their heads by a mile. We had lots of applications that the main person on the credit list was Waltons. People took out covering loans to cover Waltons and their cars and whatever and then paid it all back into one place.
So there were quite a few consolidation loans then?
BW: Oh yes. For a year or two there it would have been by far the biggest percentage of loans, to consolidate peoples debts. They just sort of got into so much trouble that in the finish they wouldn’t pay the Housing Commission for the house they were in and when the Housing Commission started to make it too hot they would disappear out of sight. Not only would Waltons and everybody else suffer, but whatever money the credit union had lent them also went by the board. So it was in our interest to consolidate their loans and get them into a situation where they could handle their finances. It was amazing some of the people that we did consolidating loans for and they had a terrible financial predicament when we first took them over, worked them into a situation where they actually had money in the bank, $200, or $300 in the bank, and it was probably the first time they had ever had money in the bank. We had one or two notable occasions where the people sort of got to a stage where they had money in the bank and they would have very few debts, then they would leave Email and go somewhere else and I remember one or two incidents in particular, they got jobs here in town and it wasn’t very long before their name appeared in the paper where they had got back into financial trouble again. Obviously we were doing too much helping and not enough education. The person that we got out of trouble, once they left our environment they didn’t have the wherewithal to keep out of trouble and they just got back into their old habits. Before very long they would appear back in the paper as being evicted from their home or in trouble for fraud in some of the places in which they worked. I guess that was a downfall on our part because we hadn’t educated them well enough. We would handle all their finances right down to the nth-degree so that as I have said earlier they had to have permission to go and buy a pair of shoes from the credit union, we had to give it the nod. I think that sort of thing probably kept people so reliant on the credit union Directors that they essentially went out and got themselves into trouble again as soon as they got away from our supervision, for want of a better term.
Did people used to come round at the weekend looking for loans?
BW: Yes. Most of the Directors, as far as Email was concerned, were pretty well known. They would catch up with you in the street, or at home, or wherever and bone you about a loan. You would find yourself doing loan applications in your lounge room or on the post-office steps. You mightn’t get them to sign on the dotted line there, but you would do all the paper work there. Find out most of what their problems were and why they needed it. Then you would have to sit down and sort out whether they could afford it. I guess that was about the only criteria we used. If you needed it and you could afford it, you could have it.
Did you go to any credit union Schools?
BW: Went to a couple of Schools at Randwick I think it was, a couple of Schools down there. But fairly short education spells. I think they were only one-day things where you could go down and back. I went to an AFCUL meeting at Surfers of a four-day duration I think. Most of it was self-taught, flying by the seat of the pants. In a little bit better situation than the bloke you were trying to help. You would be hoping you were giving them the right advice. Really we had very little training. I know training over the years, having worked with guys at Email over the last twenty years or so who have been tied up in the credit union, training is a fairly high priority. Back in those early days the best bit of training was getting your fingers burnt on the last one, you didn’t do that again but you remembered it.
What was Pat Egan like as a Chairman?
BW: Good bloke Pat, Top fellow. Very dictatorial as a Chairman.
Did he give everybody a say? Did he chop the discussion off or what?
BW: I guess Pat might get to hear this one day, but he was pretty keen to give everybody a say as long as they were saying what Pat wanted to hear. When you think things were going along, and the argument was starting to move away from the way he wanted things to go, you would pretty quickly get chopped off. By the same token, having said that, Pat taught me a fair bit. I was Vice-Chairman to him for a couple of years and during that time he took me under his wing. Not only that, also in the work place he sort of took a pretty deep interest in me. He was the sort of guy who didn’t let you waffle on to much, particularly if you were waffling the wrong words. He was a tremendous bloke for a credit union, he really was the backbone of it for years, he and the Sykes boys and Tony Siemer. I was going to say to a lesser extent, but Tony played a pretty strong hand in it too. Tony was more of the inspiration to get it going than the actual directing of it.
They voted him out, why?
BW: I think they thought there was too many tool makers in there. The thing just about started off in the Toolroom. I am not to sure of the history of it, but I think the credit union probably started in Germany.
In the 1850s, yes.
BW: There were quite a lot of German tool makers in and when things got tight they had this thing in the back of their bonnet about how good things would be if they had a credit union. So they started talking about it to the tool makers out there and they almost had a credit union going in the Toolroom. Then it sort of leaked out that the Toolroom was on to a good thing so everybody wanted to get into the act then. I think early in the piece there could have been as many five or six tool makers in a ten man team. I am not too sure why Tony got the chop, but I think one of the things was he was a tool maker and they were trying to cut down the number of tool makers. Also Tony was a bit of a waffler and when Pat got into the Chair he didn’t wear that too well.
Tony Siemer tells me he was on too many things as well. He was on the Labor Party, the Labour Council and on the Council as well.
BW: He was involved in all those things and he was a very community minded citizen. I think he probably did have a lot of irons in the fire. But I think the one in the credit union got too hot to hang on to.
He told me that he tried to start the credit union in the town?
BW: I wasn’t aware of that. I didn’t know of that at all.
It is in the paper, there is no doubt about that. It was in the same year. It was in August of the year when it got going here. He knew that they were starting credit unions all over through the Union, because there was a push happening there.
BW: OK. I was blissfully unaware of Unions.
You never saw that program Stan Arneil did on the television, there were two, Meet the Press and the other one was Four Corners on credit unions in 1963?
BW: No. I have seen the Four Corners episode or part of it.
That was the year before you started, 1963.
BW: Before I started, yes. I think everybody was talking about credit unions and everybody was hungry for a bit of a word on it. I met Stan Arneil at the AFCUL meeting in Queensland. He certainly was a man who could put a sentence together. He was a very well spoken guy. Certainly knew what he was on about.
What about some of the other people you were on the Board with at the time? We have got a list of them, can you call them to mind? Between 1968 and 1971.
BW: When did we go mutual?
You went mutual in 1973.
BW: I was still on the Board then. I can remember we had Board meetings around here in a little office in Lords Place.
That means the 1977 thing is wrong then. They have you down as being off the Board in 1972. 1973 you are not on, not according to that. I will look now through all the Minutes and make sure. Well we had a bit of confusion out of that, what years you were on the Board. I have got it down wrong in the first place, and also you had in your mind wrong as well. Unless the Annual Reports are wrong.
BW: I guess they are probably right. I certainly can’t remember being a Director and going back to the Supervisory Committee.
Standing down in 1971 and going on to the Supervisory Committee in 1972.
BW: Well is surprises me, these things do happen. I will probably worry about that now for the next ten years, but I wouldn’t bet money on it though.
Can you remember some of the others that were on?
BW: I can remember all those guys. Norm Binns, who was a close friend of the family and I worked with Norm in Industrial Engineering for a good few years.
Did he used to do the newsletter?
BW: Yes. His wife Judy was a very prominent staff member for a lot of years. Norm used to do the newsletter.
We haven’t got any of them around, what did they look like?
BW: A two page, dustcover type thing.
Were they roneoed or were they printed?
BW: They were roneoed because we would knock one up and do them out at work.
Like typing on a stencil?
BW: Yes. Because of my years with Email I guess I would know just about every person on that list, at least until the credit union went mutual and we started to bring in some of the Directors from other credit unions. I worked and was on the Committee with people like Pat, Jack Bernie and Brian Condon and Bobby Stibbard and Ted Wall. Now they are all fairly prominent members of the staff at Email. I had associations with them both at work and on the Board.
What about Bert Driver?
BW: No Bert came in after I left. It was after we went mutual and I think Bert came in probably the year I left. I had very little association with Bert Driver.
Max Fricke, do you know him?
BW: Yes I know Max from the Toolroom at work. I think Max came into the credit union, on the Board, after I finished. He would have probably come in after I gave it away. He was a character unto himself Max. The mad musician. He used to play at a lot of the Email functions, he played a little squeeze box and a very good musician.
So you mentioned when you first came in you were one of the people who didn’t want it to be a larger credit union.
BW: I can remember having lots of fairly heated discussions, particularly with Pat, about the pros and cons of going mutual or staying with Email. My thoughts were that as Email it was a union of the people, a small group of people who all were acquainted with one another and were there to help one another. I thought that was the aim of the credit union, to pool our resources to help one another in our little community. That is how credit unionism had been explained to me. I could see it was certainly going to become a lot less personal when it was on a larger scale, it couldn’t help but do that. The other thing was that I could see it wasn’t going to be very long before the office wasn’t going to be at Email. I got all sorts of assurances that it would always be at Email and that there would always be a credit union office at Email. I am not too sure if there is now.
Yes there still is.
BW: It is still there. I know Jock was trying to kick it out, Jock Cregan the Manager. While I was there it was open two days a week at lunch time or something. That was a far cry from what we had initially, it was there nine hours a day, five days a week. I know the staff had a much more intimate knowledge of the people they were working with and I could see all that evaporating when we went on a larger scale. I guess the size of the mutual credit union now verifies what I was saying, it is now a very friendly bank, that is how I see it. It has got lots of things going for it and I am still a member and I virtually don’t belong to any other bank, and haven’t since I joined the credit union, but I still believe it was a more friendly organisation. Obviously if it had stayed just strictly Email many of the facilities that are available now in amounts of money that are available and so forth, wouldn’t have been available, so it certainly has an up-side. But I was fairly vigorous in my resistance, but I succumbed to the numbers.
End Tape 1A: 4212 Words: 1 hour 15 minutes
18 JUNE 1995: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BRIAN WRIGHT
I was going to ask you about the different employees that they had. Do you remember how it was when they got first somebody part-time?
BW: Yes I think Ailsa Sheldrake was there part-time at first. She was the first one that I can remember being in the credit union as an office worker. Then Kathy Pickett came along and she was working for a few hours a day. She married a guy called Thompson, they have got Thompson’s Nursery in town now here. As the numbers in the credit union picked up we picked up a few more hours here and there. Are you aware of any part-time workers before Ailsa.
I don’t have any names, no.
BW: I don’t know of anybody prior to Ailsa Sheldrake. Then Kathy was there for a while.
Ailsa Sheldrake was Secretary before she was an employee.
BW: Was she? I couldn’t confirm or deny that. I don’t know.
We have only got the one Annual Report for that period unfortunately, at the present moment. I will have to look back. But when she first started she is down as the first employee, but I don’t know whether that is so. I mean I started with another credit union the other day and everybody told me that one particular person was the first employee and then the next thing I look at the Annual Report and somebody else was there for a few months first.
BW: It could have even happened out here. The one that I remember first was Ailsa.
Well it says in the Annual Report of 1967/68, so 1966, “During the latter end of the year 1967 it became increasingly evident to your Directors that our existing staff, namely Mrs Sheldrake could not handle the increased workload.” Does that sort of jog your memory at all?
BW: I think that is when they appointed Kathy Pickett.
Now when you were on the Supervisory Committee, was Ailsa Sheldrake there as an employee?
BW: Yes. She had been there for a couple of years at that stage of the game, or a year anyway, and was pretty well known to everybody. I distinctly remember her being there.
Then she left. Do you remember why she left?
BW: I have got a feeling that they put a Manager in over the top of her. Did Peter Collins come along then? I think Peter Collins might have been appointed Manager.
Well she was never actually Manager.
BW: But she thought she was, and actually she acted as a Manager. She did all the things that I guess Peter Collins was doing when he was first appointed.
Well she was the Secretary of the credit union, officially.
BW: That is probably right. But she made a lot of business decisions as the Secretary and she would tell us about them later. I think that probably got to a point where we thought we had a Secretary running the thing, so we decided to put a Manager in. When Peter Collins came in that upset Ailsa somewhat, and Ailsa took off for further places.
Pat told me she wanted more money, she wanted a fairly large increase in salary, and that the credit union wasn’t prepared to give her that because the idea was that you get roughly the same money as the members of the credit union.
BW: Pat could be right in that. That might have been the catalyst for the appointment of Peter Collins. I believe Ailsa was getting to the point where she felt she was managing the place, and to a large degree she probably was, and she started to be chasing more money. I think the Board thought at that point if they were going to be paying somebody to manage the place we might as well have the Manager that we want, rather than necessarily the manager we have got. They looked around and came up with Peter Collins.
Where did he come from?
BW: I don’t know. I think he might have come from a bank.
What was he like as a Manager?
BW: He did a pretty good job in the early stages of the game. He was a bit like us, he was learning as he went along, because the credit union was a bit different to the background he had. I think he was a pretty affable sort of guy and he got on pretty well with everybody. I think the people got on well with him after awhile. He was seen to be the downfall of Ailsa, who was immensely popular particularly amongst the women out there. I think when Peter Collins came along he had to break down that barrier for a start off, because a lot of people saw him as uprooting their favourite girl Ailsa. It wasn’t very long after that Ailsa took off and they then saw Peter Collins as being not only appointed over Ailsa but having got rid of her. Ailsa obviously left of her own volition, but maybe the things that went on might have hastened her decision somewhat. Peter was pretty well accepted after a while and I think did a pretty good job.
What about premises, how many different premises do you remember?
BW: Well we started off on the Pay Office verandah.
Did you have a filing cabinet?
BW: Oh gee, I don’t remember, but I know we didn’t have an office and we went in on weekends and built the office. Bert Holmes was the engineer on the project and I think he was Superintendent of the Paint Shop. I am not too sure what his credentials were for the job. He seemed to be the boss man. We closed in a little bit on the end of the Pay Office Verandah. We were saying as we went along that it looked so bloody terrible that they would give us a decent office, and they did. They saw it as a terrible eyesore and they moved us into an office at the other end. We were there for ages and they remodelled that office two or three times. Then eventually we moved over into where the Customers Sales were, over in the office then. They moved them out and put the credit union over there. They were the two moves, three moves, within Email. Then as I say after we went mutual I think we had some meetings, and from memory we picked up the Base Hospital Credit Union. One of the big things for the sales pitch about picking up the Base Hospital was that they were going to provide office accommodation for us to have our meetings in, but that never ever quite came to fruition. They had a room up there where we had a few meetings but then somebody wanted to charge us for it. So we said if we were going to pay we might as well have an office down the street. Plus the fact people who had joined the credit union after it went mutual didn’t want to go to Email or the Base Hospital to do their business, so it became essential then to have an office in down-town Orange. As I say they had this block of land down here in Lords Place and they rented the building off Dick Clarke, the BLC Building back in Lords Place, back on the northern side of Sommer Street, and they were in there for quite some time. Then they moved into here.
There was also Anson Street one year.
BW: Don’t know anything about Anson Street.
You told us about two different locations of Lords Place.
BW: Yes I went to two or three meetings in it, it was just here on the southern side of ????, on the eastern side of Lords Place. Then they rented the BLC Building off Dick Clarke for some time on the northern side of Sommer Street, in Lords Place, and then they eventually bought that building I believe. They lived in that for some time, and then bought in here.
For my own clarification, there is a picture on the front of a number of them around about 1980, was that the second place in Lords Place was it?
BW: That’s right. The old BLC Building, Belinda Lee Clarke Building that one. Dick Clarke is an identity out at work. By himself he started off as a draftsman and worked his way into engineering, then got into customer sales, which suited Dick, he was a bit of an entrepreneur, SP Bookie and all sorts of things. He also owned a lot of land around town and he built the building around there about the same time as his daughter was born and he called it the BLC Building, which was Belinda Lee Clarke. Email Credit Union, by then it was a mutual credit union, moved in to there and rented it from Dick and eventually bought it from them.
What about other offices? Was there an office in the Orange Base Hospital as well?
BW: When they first went mutual they picked up the Orange Base Hospital.
Orange Base Hospital joined in 1969. Let’s have a look. You’re right, you didn’t pick them up until you went mutual. They were actually founded in 1969.
BW: Until we picked them up we weren’t mutual we were only Email.
You went mutual in 1973. That is when you picked them up.
BW: That would have been when we picked them up, yes. One of the selling points was they were going to provide an office at the Orange Base Hospital. I think we got a meeting room there on a few occasions and that was about the extent of the hospital’s contribution as far as office space went. I think that same room was probably used by the Orange Base Hospital credit union people, but I don’t know that there would have been too many Emailians who saw the inside of that office.
I see what you mean. What do you remember about accounting? Any accounting machines when you were there?
BW: No very few. We used to work in pretty closely with the Pay Office. Ailsa used to go into the Pay Office and set up a lot of the pay-rolls and the deduction sheets and so forth in the Email Pay Office on their equipment.
So you used their accounting machines?
BW: Used their accounting machines, yes.
Do you know what sort they were?
BW: Haven’t got a clue, haven’t any idea. I remember pay-day was on Wednesday and we would get the pay sheets from the Pay Office at about 3.00 o’clock on the Wednesday and by then a lot of the people who had made contributions had already taken the money out. They had money deducted from their pay for all sorts of schemes, like trying to avoid garnishees etc., because that saves the game if your pay-packet was below a certain level because they could garnishee your wages. They would have money deducted and sent to the credit union and the credit union would get the money about 2.30 in the afternoon and the people would take it out at five to twelve the same day. That went on for a good while. They would sign a sheet and have it deducted from their pay and pay-day used to pay at five to twelve and the first people in the door on pay-day would be the ones that were dodging the garnishee man. They would have their money and be gone by twelve o’clock and we wouldn’t get until 2.30 or 3.00 o’clock.]
There was no time lag with the pay-roll deductions?
BW: No. It would come through that afternoon. Even that, by the time they came through the money was gone.
Was there any objection to them drawing it out before it arrived?
BW: There was eventually. As Directors we had a talk to a few people. That is how we realised what was going. There were a few husbands that weren’t just dodging the garnishee man, they would take their pay envelope unopened home to the wife and say this was all they got in the pay envelope and they would go round and get their spending money for the week from the credit union, which was their deductions. They would put $10 in and take $10 out, and it would be $10 for the cunning kit. So all the scholars didn’t go to university.
Did you have a box on the credit union application form for them to sign that you had the prior right to attach any money from their superannuation? Or didn’t you have any superannuation?
BW: I would say that 95 per cent of the people who were making use of the credit union didn’t have any superannuation then. It would only have been a staff scheme, probably foreman level and up. The people on the shop floor had no superannuation whatsoever.
So you probably didn’t have those boxes.
BW: Not that I can remember.
They were illegal anyway.
BW: Well we wouldn’t have had them then. No I can’t ever remember seeing a box of that nature. Probably didn’t understand what it was for if I did.
Tony Siemer was saying to me that several of the wives of either Directors or members of the Supervisory Committee were working at the credit union and he said that wasn’t allowed. For instance over at Central West Credit Union the Chairman’s wife was the Manager of the credit union.
BW: That necessarily by itself doesn’t make it legal of course. I think one of the people that he would be referring to was Ailsa Sheldrake and Reg. Reg was a Director or on the Supervisory Committee.
There were the Binns too.
BW: Yes Norm and Judy. They would probably be the only two that comes to mind. Judy worked here for years and Norm was a Director.
In various places there are Managers who are also Directors. Also you get a situation in some I know where you have got Directors, even Chairmen, who are part-time employees of the credit union.
BW: Norm and Judy were very well liked by just about everybody. I am pretty sure Tony wouldn’t have been directing his thoughts towards that couple, I would be more inclined to think it was towards Ailsa and Reg Sheldrake. Reg wasn’t obnoxious, but he was a funny sort of bloke, didn’t get on with everybody.
He wasn’t saying that he had anything against them or anything like that.
BW: There was a feeling, I am not to sure if it was Tony, that Directors shouldn’t have their spouses working in the office. I can remember a couple of meetings where they talked about the Sheldrakes and I am not too sure what the insinuation was, what they thought they would get up to.
There was also another situation that happened in the early days, if a husband and wife were both members of the credit union, this happened particularly after 1969 when the Credit Union Act allowed family membership, they used to say if there was a shortage of money for loans they would object to both the husband and the wife having a loan, they should have one jointly was the attitude. Did that ever happen round here?
BW: Can’t say I ever ran across that. As I say we used to do all the loans.
Did you have a waiting list?
BW: Yes we had a waiting list for loans.
Was there a special list, an urgent list, or anything like that?
BW: I think as Directors we used to get together and say maybe this bloke was in desperate trouble and if he didn’t get a loan by a certain time he and his wife and kids are going to get turfed out of their house and they would get preference over somebody who wanted to buy a car. I don’t know that there was any list per se, but I do know the Directors used to get together and weigh up the loans and we would put the money where we thought it was most needed. I don’t know of any list, by your line of questioning it sounds like selected people got the money first.
In some credit unions there were arguments that there was a special list and that some people got the money first. You are the first person I have asked this question.
BW: I know we used to get together and at Board meetings. We would do the interviews at lunch-time through the week and we would get together at a Board meeting and discuss all these loans. Usually two Directors would do an interview for a loan. They would put their case and say this person desperately needed the money, and the next bloke would get up and present the case for the person he had done the loan interview for. Then we would decide to pay this one, pay that one. You might only do that for two or three special ones, special hard cases or needy cases, then you would fall back into first in best dressed.
Well it doesn’t sound as if there was any sort of official list then.
BW: Not to my knowledge. Not a priority list.
The credit union had already joined the League Central by the time you were on the Board. So you used to borrow money if you needed?
BW: Yes you could borrow money from the League if you needed it yes.
What about Christmas, did you borrow money round about Christmas?
BW: Yes. Christmas was certainly a very high demand time for money. To be quite honest I can’t specifically remember borrowing money at Christmas time, but it would seem the right time of the year to have to go to the League for money because that was certain the time of the year when our highest demand was one. A month or two prior to Christmas.
We only just touched on the management of Peter Collins. Was he a good Manager?
BW: Yes I think Peter was a pretty good Manager. As I said earlier, he faced a fair bit of resentment when he first came in because of the Sheldrake situation. I think after he settled down into the job he did quite well.
Do you remember why he left?
BW: No I can’t really. Actually I think he may have left after I got out.
Well he left at the end of 1973, 1974.
BW: I had probably just about moved on by then. I don’t really remember why he left. I have got a feeling he went down to Canberra way somewhere, but just why he left I am not too sure. The credit union had gone mutual by then. No don’t really recollect why Peter Collins left.
When you were talking about going mutual can you remember who was against it going mutual and who was for?
BW: There wasn’t very many against it. I remember asking Pat Egan to record my name and he wouldn’t talk to me for about a week. There wasn’t too many. There were a few that had expressed doubts and I guess I was the devil’s advocate for those people. I was sort of silly enough to get up and speak my piece, but I didn’t get that four-foot long spoon that I have got at home hanging over my bar for nothing, I earned that, the stirrer’s spoon.
Did you get that presented by the credit union?
BW: Yes.
Who was the instigator?
BW: Can you hear me Pat. I think Pat Egan might have been the instigator of that. I can’t recall too many others getting up at the Annual Meeting, or a Special Meeting I think it was, that we had for the decision to go mutual, but I did. While I was talking I seemed to have quite a bit of support but then when Pat got up and chewed lumps of me, I had a lot less.
Did anybody supersede you as the credit union stirrer after you had gone of the Board and Supervisory Committee?
BW: Who said I was a credit union stirrer, Pat Egan said that. I don’t know. I am not aware of any other spoons being presented, but I have got one.
When they started the credit union magazine in 1980, they had a Credit Union Stirrers’ Column.
BW: Did they, I didn’t catch up with that.
Well I think Tony Siemer as well was not above asking a few questions.
BW: Probably so, I can imagine Tony asking some awkward questions and questions that people didn’t want to answer. I used to always love them myself. Sometimes I must admit it was done for a stir. But I had genuine feelings about going mutual. I thought it was going from a small union of people to as I say a banking operation, be it ever so friendly. I still think we have got a banking organisation here now, a very competitive banking organisation that is fairly friendly too, but is nothing like the personal credit union we had when we kicked off.
I was waiting outside for about twenty minutes until I could get into the building today. I didn’t know what bell to ring. Those two ATM machines certainly were worked.
BW: Yes people certainly know how to work those.
They certainly were working.
BW: It is amazing. I was afternoon shift for about four years, from about 1985 to 1989 or something, out at Email and my afternoon shift would finish in the wee small hours. It was supposed to finish at midnight, but you would make sure everything was wrapped up and ready for the next day. Sometimes it would be 2.00 a.m. when I was coming past, or even later, but on many occasions you would come past the ATM at 1.30, 2.00 in the morning and there would be people working it. You would wonder what the blazes they would need money for at that time of the night.
Well the pub over the road is open twenty-four hours a day.
BW: I suppose that is a bit of insight, isn’t it. It used to astound me that there were people there using the ATM at that hour of the morning. I am sure you are right there would be plenty of good business being done there from 8.30 on.
I was quite surprised. There are a lot of credit unions that don’t want to have them themselves. They want their members to use other people’s.
BW: I know they are very convenient, and they are convenient for a lot of people, but once again I think ATM cuts across the very threads of the credit union. The credit union is a union to get people inside and have a very union of people, whereas the ATM you never see the people, you only see their money. I hate to say it, but they are numbers. Lots of people never come inside the door. They have pay-roll deductions and take their money out through the ATM and anybody in the credit union from the Manager down wouldn’t know what they look like. That is very different from what it started as. I still believe there has been a good deal of individuality lost by going mutual.
Well thank you very much Mr Brian Wright.
End Tape 1B: 3944 Words: 1 hour 15 minutes