ANSWCU 38: 23 MAY 1990: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH ROBERT DAVIS WHO WAS AT ONE TIME A DIRECTOR OF THE ASSOCIATION OF NEW SOUTH WALES CREDIT UNIONS, WHEN IT WAS THE LEAGUE.
I will ask you where were you born and when?
RD: I was born in Balmain, 1928 on St Valentine’s Day.
Did you grow up in Balmain?
RD: For the first five years. After that we moved to the North Shore.
So you don’t remember Balmain very much?
RD: Oh yes, I’ve still got relatives over there. I spent a lot of time there.
Where did you go to school?
RD: Willoughby.
What school?
RD: Willoughby Public School and then Sydney Technical High School at Paddington.
What do you remember of your father? What did he do?
RD: My father was many things. Salter, picture framer, a business in Balmain, and finished up as a cab driver.
Did he influence you in any way do you think?
RD: He influenced me in lots of ways.
In what way did he influence you?
RD: He and I had several differences of opinions about major things but we were always mates. I think my consideration for other people is probably the main thing.
What about your mother, how did she influence you do you think?
RD: My mother, basically, was a very servile-type person. She lacked confidence in herself. She came from a Scottish background. I don’t know what influence that had.
Whereabouts did your father come from?
RD: He was second generation Australian.
What did you like or dislike about school, can you remember?
RD: I basically disliked the discipline, it wasn’t fair.
Any subjects you liked or disliked?
RD: Maths was a speciality, English.
So you liked English?
RD: I liked English.
What did you dislike?
RD: Mainly ancient history, history I was being taught, because it wasn’t Australian history. This probably caused a lot of trouble at that school because I remember asking why we weren’t taught Australian history because I wasn’t particularly interested in English or European or American history. Especially at high school.
So when you left school what work did you do first?
RD: I was an apprentice at Garden Island Dock Yard.
As what?
RD: A pattern maker. A lot of people probably wouldn’t know what a pattern maker was.
Making patterns for castings mainly.
RD: Yes.
Did you like that?
RD: I loved that.
Mainly woodwork?
RD: Mainly woodwork. Small bit of metal work.
What was it like to work at Garden Island, was it easy, hard?
RD: During the War years it was hectic. The apprentices always had a good time.
Didn’t get very well paid.
RD: No. I was lucky. Pattern makers got two shillings and six pence a week extra over and above the other apprentices. Twenty-eight shillings a week.
Pattern making at Garden Island, was that where you got involved with a union first?
RD: No I didn’t join a union until after I left Garden Island. When you say union, you mean a trade union?
You were involved with a trade union before you were involved with a credit union were you?
RD: Oh yes. I wouldn’t join a trade union until I actually joined the Postmaster General’s Department.
So when you finished your apprenticeship, where did you go?
RD: After knocking around the country doing odd jobs around the place I joined a film company and got involved in making a few movies. This got me interested in electronics and when the movies were finished and I was looking around for something to do, then PMG’s Department were calling for trainee technicians. So I thought I would give it a go and I finished up as a technician with Telecom, or PMG’s Department in those days. I was a technician for about eighteen months but there wasn’t much in that, I knew I could go further than that, so I went into the drafting office and became a draftsman.
Was that when you joined AAEDST&A?
RD: That is where I joined the Alphabetical.
Where were you working at that time?
RD: In the GPO.
Were you a delegate there?
RD: No, not for quite some time. I got involved. I have a tendency to get involved in things and try to make things better, if I feel there are injustices being done.
Yes, well there is nothing wrong with that is there?
RD: No. More people should do it.
So what happened in the union? One of the earliest credit unions. When did you first hear about credit unions?
RD: I was just trying to remember that after you called me. I have a feeling that I read about them somewhere. I read a story that Kevin Yates had put in one of the papers, Sunday papers.
Are you a Catholic?
RD: No.
Anglican?
RD: Presbyterian.
There was involvement of the credit unions, both Anglican and Catholic, the Catholics first.
RD: Kevin Yates was Catholic and he started a few others, I think it was one with the Hibernian Society wasn’t it.
It was called Universal anyway.
RD: I think it was the Hibernian first and then the Universal.
Universal first.
RD: Universal first, right.
Well it was supposed to be the first proper credit union in New South Wales, although there were some savings and loans societies before.
RD: Well the Co-operation Act at the time talked about small loans societies, there were no credit unions as such. But Kevin had seen the work of credit unions in Canada and America during the War and he brought the idea back.
So you read about it?
RD: I guess I read about it. So I delved a little deeper and got some more information about it, spoke to a few other people.
Within the union?
RD: I think it was within my office actually, to start off with.
Which was where?
RD: On the eighth floor of the GPO building. Most of the fellows there were in the union anyway. Then I think we got talking to the union about it, they made a few inquires, a few people got together and we formed it.
Can you remember where and when?
RD: Well it was up in the union’s office, I am trying to think, the union office was in Elizabeth Street at the time. The Secretary of the union, it was before Bruce Leslie’s time, and I am trying to think of his name. But I remember Bruce being very keen about it when we spoke about it at union meetings.
So the actual foundation meeting was at the union office in Elizabeth Street?
RD: In Elizabeth Street.
Which block in Elizabeth Street?
RD: Well, it was down near the Liverpool Street end. The union owned the building.
Was that near the Worker Building at all? The Worker Building is in Castlereagh Street between Bathurst and Liverpool Streets. They owned the building did they? Was it between Liverpool and Goulburn?
RD: Between Liverpool and Goulburn. I think the number was 272. I wouldn’t be sure of that.
Well I think that is now George’s, the computer ????? I am not sure.
RD: It was only a three storey building.
Was it right near a very old car-parking building?
RD: Not that I can remember no. The whole block was taken up with small buildings.
Well the car-park was there before, I am sure, because it is one of the National Trust things. So it is an early car-park, the earliest surviving car-park in Australia, I think.
RD: I didn’t know that.
It has got hundreds of marble pillars in the front and it has got a service station as well. So who was the first Chairman of the credit union, do you remember?
RD: Unless I saw a list of the Directors, I can’t say. I can only think of one man, Les Patterson, but the only thing I can recall was being a Director.
As a matter of fact I do have a list of the Directors because I checked it up with the Sydney Credit Union. A list of the first Directors and a list of the last, I have. That is where I got your name. I next saw your name in the Annual Reports of the Association, the League, so I followed that through and finally looked in the phone book. Somebody said he lives up that way and so I tried and there we are. Nobody seemed to know where you had got to.
RD: Well I’ve only just retired from the ABC so somebody there would have known.
The ABC are not very communicative either.
RD: Not since they have become the Communications Credit Union.
Well they wouldn’t give me anybody’s addresses. Or phone numbers, or anything. They said ?????
RD: Yes, that’s normal.
So I rang you on spec and got you. The League had started by that time, hadn’t they? Did you have anybody from the League there that day when you started? Did you Chair the meeting?
RD: No, I didn’t Chair the meeting. I think it might have been Stan Arneil. I had met Stan at that stage.
Do you remember what year the credit union was started?
RD: In the ’50s anyway, early ’50s.
One of the very early ones, I think. Just after the Transport. Did you visit the Registrar’s Office, the Registrar of Credit Unions at all?
RD: Yes. But even then I wasn’t very impressed with the service. They were very suspicious of us.
Did you ask them to tell you about their credit union, did they have it going at that time?
RD: No they didn’t seem to know much about it. We spoke about credit unions and they spoke about small loans societies. They had a set of model rules for co-operative societies which we decided didn’t apply to what we were trying to do. I remember that we did have some discussions with a fellow down there, I can’t remember his name, about the changes to the model rules that we would required. He was very reluctant. There was no real. This was the impression. There was no real help to form our society.
They must have already have started their own credit union at that stage, I would have felt. Because the Alphabeticals were after Transport Credit Union weren’t they?
RD: I think they were. But as far as the Registrar was concerned, I can remember some years later going down there with Stan Arneil and George Shiprock and I heard Stan say to the then Registrar, your Inspectors know nothing about credit unions because they don’t even belong to one. That would have been after 1963.
Now that is peculiar, because I was told by people like Ken Miller and other people in that group, Transport Credit Union, that when they started their credit union they were the second industrial credit union in the country. They said they were only the second because the first one was in the Registrar of Co-operatives’ Office.
RD: Well, I can distinctly remember this session. Because I was on the Board of the ABC Credit Union at that stage, for about two years. An Inspector had inspected the books and had criticised us quite severely for some of the procedures we were adopting and we fronted up, a few of us, fronted up to the Registrar sort of saying, This is a lot of bull because you people don’t know what you are taking about. We are running a credit union, we know what we are doing, we know the people we are dealing with.’ It impressed me at the time, Stan Arneil saying, ‘You people don’t know anything about credit unions because you have never belonged to one.’ Which didn’t impress them at all.
No, I don’t suppose it would. In actural fact, of course, the Office had been trying to start credit unions back since 1924. I think the Registrar at that time, I forget his name, went to the States in 1924 and came back enthused about how good credit unions were in the States, you see. He used to try to get them going here and nobody was interested.
RD: Yes, I can imagine that. But knowing how bureaucracy works.
That is when they started the small loans business.
RD: One of the credit unions was the Commonwealth Bank Credit Union which started around that time, wasn’t it?
Early ’60s.
RD: Early ’60s, yes.
But yours had started in the ’50s, before Stan Arneil was in the credit union business at all, I believe. Did you think he was there at the meeting?
RD: I think he was there, yes. He was there at a lot of meetings. Because I became very friendly with Stan over the years.
Well, I will have to pin that down actually, because that is quite important. Of course, I haven’t got an interview with Stan, he sometimes talks with me on the phone, but he said he wouldn’t do it for publication you see. So I said, ‘Why don’t you be interviewed and then say we can’t publish it, several people have done that.’ He said he was thinking about it. He did an interview with Maggie Niven in which he stated the years that he did various things, you know. I think we are about to be invaded. So can you remember the differences between you and the Registrar at that stage in the proceedings when you went round there and they objected? What were they objecting to?
RD: Basically the fellow that we spoke to down there was very concerned about security for the loan and he wanted to make sure we had mortgages and all sorts of things and guarantors for loans. I convinced the people.
Over a certain amount, was this?
RD: No this was all loans. The maximum loan that we could make when we started was two hundred and fifty pounds, $500 as it is now. They were demanding that we have absolute security. This wasn’t the idea at all, as we saw it. It finished up that we came to some arrangement. I remember that finally gave up on the mortgage side of things, it would have been second, third mortgages or something like that, but they wanted Bills of Sale on vehicles if people were buying cars, or furniture. We finally agreed to that. But every loan that we made we had to have something secure. If it wasn’t a Bill of Sale they wanted a guarantor. But over the years we managed to get away from that.
How did you come to go onto the Board of the League, the New South Wales League, do you remember?
RD: I was trying to think back how. I think I was attending, I think it was the Association of Credit Unions then, wasn’t it?
No, I think it was the League then. It was the League then. It changed its name in about 1966, but it was still the League before and after that.
RD: Yes, I think I used to go along to the meetings.
Here is something that might pin things down. When you started was the League actually the Savings and Loans Association?
RD: I think it was.
In that case it is before 1958.
RD: Because I can remember, it was the League that tried to get the name, ‘Credit Union’ incorporated at least into the Co-operation Act at the time.
Well that was 1958 by the time they got that.
RD: Then they worked on getting a Credit Union Act.
Not until 1969, yes.
RD: But that is bureaurcracy isn’t it. Having worked for a basic government department for forty years I can understand how slowly they work.
So you can’t remember exactly, because you didn’t start until 1960, did you?
RD: 1960. I went to a meeting and somebody asked me to stand.
You were a delegate?
RD: I was a delegate to the League, or to the Association.
And somebody asked you to stand, do you remember who?
RD: No, I can’t.
Wouldn’t have been Stan Arneil?
RD: Might have been Stan. Might even have been Kevin Yates because I had a lot of time with Kevin Yates in those days.
What about Berry Calverley, do you remember him. Incidentally in 1960 he was the President.
RD: Yes, I remember Berry, but not whether I ever spoke to him about me standing.
In that case, 1961 Stan Arneil became President and remained so for four years. Do you remember him being replaced by Don Harvey, the argument they had?
RD: I wasn’t on the League at the time. I remember there was an argument.
Do you know what it was about?
RD: No.
Well Don Harvey told me it was about Stan remaining as President on the League at the same time he was employed by the Registrar’s Office as a Development Officer. Don objected to that and he said he was going to stand against him. Which he did and won.
RD: I can understand that. Yes I had forgotten that Stan was in the Registrar’s Office.
You didn’t know that, or you don’t remember it?
RD: I remember it now. Now that you remind me of it I remember.
Do you remember the first meeting of the Board that you attended?
RD: Not as such. We were up in Devonshire Street, a little building up there. I think it was above the Universal Credit Union’s office.
Do you remember something happening regarding an accounting machine while you were on the Board up there?
RD: No.
Do you remember Clarrie Murphy becoming the Manager?
RD: Yes, I remember Clarrie Murphy becoming the Manager.
He bought an accounting machine and it wouldn’t go up the stairs.
RD: All right. I have had experiences like that myself. I have designed control booths for the ABC studios that they haven’t been able to get in because they haven’t been able to get them upstairs or round corners. I don’t remember that one, sorry.
Do you remember any of the issues that were involved while you were a Director?
RD: There were no major issues, we just sort of dealt with policy, basically education, trying to get the credit unions to educate their members. I can remember some of the cases that came up, or some of the stories that came up. There was one, a Catholic parish that was going broke and we were very concerned about it. When we had a look at it, it was because the Parish Priest was using it as the poor box.
What do you mean using the credit union as a poor box?
RD: He was using the credit union as a poor box and he was just handing out the money. So there was a discussion whether we should have some sort of ruling that Parish Priests weren’t Treasurers of credit unions.
I don’t know if you should mention which parish this was.
RD: I’ve got an idea where it was, but I can’t remember the exact one.
It wasn’t Father Gallagher’s surely?
RD: No. We did manage to save the credit union by sort of having a meeting with them and stopping the Parish Priest being able to get at the funds.
Mind you Dermot Ryan had the same trouble with the AFCUL Foundation later. He was using, well of course that was the idea to give away the money, but they didn’t have much money so he was giving away the capital.
RD: Credit union people are like that they just wanted to help.
Did you meet Father Gallagher at all?
RD: Yes.
What was your impression of him?
RD: I was most impressed by him. No, I was thinking of Father Ganey actually.
Father Ganey, yes.
RD: Sorry, Father Gallagher?
Antigonish Association, Lidcombe.
RD: No. I might have met him in passing, but no Father Ganey was the man.
Where did you meet Father Ganey?
RD: I met him down at Newport at one of the Newport Schools, I think it was the one there, because Carlos was there, Carlos Mantos was there.
Well he was there at the 1965 one too.
RD: Well, I was at one of those.
Can you remember Room 19?
RD: Not the one we spent a lot of nights in, long nights, drinking nights.
Sydney Credit Union’s room.
RD: Yes that was always the one. Even in those days I didn’t drink very much so I never hung round for very long.
Did you know Dermot Ryan in those days.
RD: I remember the name. I can just sort of picture a fairly big fellow.
Fairly short but he was fairly solid.
RD: Yes, but all the Sydney Credit Union fellows were pretty wide.
Morrie Daley, he is the present Manager, still Manager. He was the second Manager after Owen Jones. Do you remember him?
RD: The names are familiar.
Did you attend the Chapter at all, any of the Chapters?
RD: No.
But you did attend the Newport Schools?
RD: Yes, a couple of the Newport Schools. In fact it was afterwards Stan Arneil and I had been out to Comalco and we got them to come down to one of the schools. I was a bit annoyed about it, because they came down. It was a long way to come from out Fairfield way. But Stan and I went out there and spoke to the management, spoke to the staff about forming a credit union. Then we invited them down to the School for one night.
Did they form a credit union?
RD: Well they did form the credit union, but I don’t know how it went.
It was subsequently amalgamated, I think.
RD: Probably was. Because that is the way most of the credit unions have gone.
End Tape 1a: 3360 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes
ANSWCU 38: 23 MAY 1990: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH ROBERT DAVIS
You mentioned something about Stan just then.
RD: Stan used to say to people when he was trying to form a credit union, especially when he was talking to management and they’d always suggest that the Company Secretary, who was usually an accountant, be appointed as the Treasurer or the Secretary, Stan would always say, ‘No, one thing you don’t want, you don’t want accountants on credit union boards. Accountants are only interested in money. Credit unions are interested in people.’
Stan was an accountant.
RD: Stan was an accountant.
Do you remember when you first met Stan Arneil?
RD: It was at a Credit Union League function.
Would it have been a Newport School?
RD: No, it wasn’t a Newport School. I think it was at a delegate’s meeting. I couldn’t be sure of this. But I can remember meeting this fellow and being quite impressed by what he was saying, his attitude was very close to mine. It was people we were interested in, not money. This idea of helping people to help themselves, that was the thing that really sold me on the idea of credit unions. That is something that Stan and I often spoke about was the educational side of credit unions. I am a little disappointed that seems to have gone by the way. As the credit unions have got larger that educational side seems to have disappeared. Maybe it is just a phase, I hope so.
One other thing that I forgot to ask you a few minutes ago, did you have any trouble with finance companies or loan sharks that you had a personal experience?
RD: No, I had no personal experience. I came from a family that believed that if you didn’t have the money to buy something, you didn’t buy it. My mother was Scottish and her family, you could call them dour Scots, and they were all the same. All the family were out here, the whole ten of them, and they were all the same, if you didn’t have the money you didn’t buy it. But when I was working at the GPO I heard a few tales about money-lenders from a few people there, especially one particular fellow who had set up in the basement of the GPO where he was lending one pound for two shillings a week. He was an employee of the Post Office.
What was your job in the Post Office?
RD: I was a draftsman at that stage. Every second week somebody from the drawing office used to escort the pays from the Commonwealth Bank across to the GPO.
Did they give you a gun?
RD: An unloaded one. But there was a tunnel underneath Pitt Street from the Commonwealth Bank to the GPO. You had to go through a series of doors, pick up the trolley and wheel it through.
Was the telegraph room still operating, the room, was that still operating while you were there?
RD: Oh that was still operating. The mail sorting room was still operating. I had worked in there in school holidays in previous years and would often hear Stan Arneil and the other fellow from, a pair of them that worked in the mail room together at one stage.
You knew Stan Arneil from then did you?
RD: No, not from the mail room but the stories he told about the mail room and the set up in the mail room, just brought back memories of when I was working there at Christmas sometimes, school holidays. It was a very oppressive place. You were locked in, they actually locked the doors to the room. There was a balcony around the room with peep holes for Inspectors to look down on the sorting table to watch what people were doing. There was even the infamous, it was called the ‘shit house derby’. If you wanted to go to the toilet, you had to pick up a numbered button, a copper button from the wall, place it on a moving belt. When you went to the toilet and if you took to long the button would fall into a box, a sealed box and this would be opened by a supervisor later on and all the people whose numbers were in there would be given a ‘Please explain’. You can imagine people racing up the stairs and diving to grab this button before it went into the box.
Sounds like something out of Ford’s assembly line.
RD: But that was the GPO in those days.
You said that you then moved over to the ABC. How did that happen?
RD: I applied for a job in the ABC in 1963.
Doing what?
RD: As a draftsman and I got it. I had been studying television at college a couple of years before that and I was getting bored with the PMG. I didn’t fit in. It was the rather staid, conservative attitude of the people there.
Did you stay as a draftsman at the ABC?
RD: I stayed as a draftsman at the ABC right until I retired, which was only a few weeks back.
Just that you have got a booming voice which projects itself, I wondered if you ever got on the radio?
RD: No. Not commercially.
But you have the ability to project your voice.
RD: Ah yes, you should hear it on the football field. My wife says she can hear me, no matter where I am standing on the field. Not playing. Just on the sidelines.
Now when you worked with Stan Arneil, you were on the Board at that time or was it after that you were on the Board also that you worked with him?
RD: I worked with him on the ABC Credit Union Board for two years.
Before you came on the League Board?
RD: After.
Oh, you had left the League Board?
RD: Yes, because I left the League Board in 1964. I only joined the ABC in 1963. I became in the ABC Staff Association matters then.
Can you remember why you left the League Board? The Credit Union League Board?
RD: I was voted off.
Do you remember who beat you?
RD: No, I don’t. There was always some politicking going on. I have never done that.
Well that was about the time that Don Harvey stood against Stan Arneil for President.
RD: Maybe because I might have been considered as part of the Stan Arneil faction. There were some dissatisfactions there, but you experience that on any Board or any Committee you are on. Some people take it personally and some don’t.
Were you involved at all in the insurance split?
RD: No. I am just trying to remember. I wasn’t involved directly in the split.
Were you on the ABC Credit Union Board at that time?
RD: 1971. No.
Your ABC Credit Union with Stan Arneil was instrumental in setting up the Association of Credit Unions.
RD: No, I was not involved. I got off the ABC Board and got more involved in trade union activities for a while.
What year did you get off the ABC Credit Union Board?
RD: I was only on it for two years.
1964 to 1966?
RD: Yes, it would have been round that time.
Oh well you were off the Board before the split came about.
RD: Yes. I can remember reading about it and talking to a few people about it.
Did you know Stan Arneil still at that time?
RD: Oh yes, I have known Stan all these years. It would only be about twelve months ago that I called in to see him at his home. He is a very sick man. Busily writing books.
Is he writing about credit unions at all?
RD: No, his present book he was on while I was there was dealing with a Catholic Order, some Brothers, I don’t think it was the Marist Brothers, some other Order. He was doing quite a bit of research into that.
Yes, he did tell me something about that, I am not sure which one it is, wasn’t it some of the customs?
RD: Look, I can’t remember.
No, I can’t remember either. He had already finished One Man’s War.
RD: Yes, he had finished that. That had been published. He is working on this other one.
Well, the Association itself, you were not involved with AFCUL at all?
RD: No.
What about the World Council? You were never on that? Or the Foundation?
RD: No. never any of those.
Did you go to Fiji during the time you were on the credit unions?
RD: No, I don’t particularly like travelling. I have never volunteered for anything.
And you were well out of the Alphabetical Credit Union by the time it became amalgamated with Sydney Credit Union?
RD: Oh yes, well out of it. I had even switched away from the Alphabetical Union to the ABC Staff Association.
And you became more involved with that?
RD: I was State Secretary for about two years. I actually resigned from it a couple of years ago over an argument about policy. It is the only time I have been out, where I have worked and not belonged to the unions. I will not go into that. It was a very personal thing that I felt very strongly about at the time.
You have been involved with a number of other things haven’t you, what else have you been involved with? You were on Boards and such like.
RD: Oh I have been involved since 1968, 1969, very much involved in soccer. I have never played the game. I played rugby union at school and rugby league later on and didn’t get involved in soccer until my son was ten years of age. He started playing and then I have been on the Committee of the local association, the ??????? Association for many years, life member of that association. At present I am Secretary of North Shore United Football Club which is playing in the State League, Division One, the highest level of football in the State, which is keeping me very busy.
This club as well, the 729 Club.
RD: Oh, the 729 Club. I have been on the Board for nine years. We were elected when there was a lot of trouble at the old club. There was mismanagement to put it mildly and it needed a clean sweep and practically six new Directors were elected. We cleaned it up. Sacked everybody.
Back to the League and credit unions. Kevin Yates, when did you first meet him?
RD: It would have been either when the Alphabetical Credit Union was first formed, or shortly afterwards, because Kevin was very much involved with the Association then, or the League. I can remember him being there. I’m not sure, I can’t remember whether he actually spoke at the meeting, or the formation meeting, or spoke to the potential Directors beforehand, before it was formed. But it was around about the time of the formation, very early in the piece. I can remember talking to Kevin because he lived at Roseville in those days and we occasionally travelled on the train together back from meetings. He was enthused as much as Stan Arneil, but in a different way. He was a different type of person altogether. But he was looking at it, even Stan was looking at it, from a religious view too. I was never religious to that extent.
Do you remember Harold Hall?
RD: Yes, I remember Harold.
Dee Why Anglicans.
RD: Yes. I can’t remember much about him. He was a particularly nice fellow.
He was on the Board when you were on.
RD: Yes he was on the Board.
Dom Marivelo, do you remember him? Dominic. The Earlwood Credit Union. He was on the Board when you were on.
RD: The Earlwood Credit Union, that was another parish credit union wasn’t it?
Originally it was yes. And of course Tom Blood, did you ever meet him.
RD: Yes, that is a name I can recall. I forget what they are like.
He is the Maritime Services Boards, he is still around. He lives down at Wollongong. Of the others, there is Don Harvey, you remember him of course.
RD: Yes I remember Don, Sydney Water Board. Tom Kelly I remember.
Tom Kelly, yes. He is the President of the Historical Association now. He is the leading light of this project of which I am doing most of the recording, although he is doing some of it. He recorded a few people. I suppose you wouldn’t have met George McCready, he was from the country areas, he was Macquarie Credit Union, he was a bit later. How about Owen Jones at Sydney Credit Union, do you remember him?
RD: Not of hand. I remember the name but I don’t remember the person.
Ken Miller?
RD: These names sound familiar, but no, looking down the list.
They are all a bit later, looking at that list, they are all the people who were the International Directors who went overseas, therefore. Tom Kelly, what did you remember of him apart from the fact that he was a Director, he was also a Vice-President later?
RD: He was a very quiet fellow, if I remember rightly. Very strong views.
About what?
RD: What was right and what was wrong and where credit unions should be going. But he was never a sort of forceful, dynamic speaker like Stan Arneil. He didn’t get up and thump the table if things went against him. He would work very quietly towards his end.
Do you remember what his end was?
RD: I just got the impression that he fell foul of the rest of the Board there for a while.
He was standing up for the Co-operative Bank. He wanted the credit unions to get into a Co-operative Bank from South Australia.
RD: I didn’t know that, but I suppose he had good reasons.
It was actually voted down by the meeting and the Board and he was still continuing to advocate it. Looking at the photographs, that is Graham Benson, the bloke from Victoria.
RD: I remember Graham, yes.
Jack Ross, do you remember him, from Queensland?
RD: Father Ganey, Carlos.
Do you remember Ron Preston from the Sydney Credit Union. Malcolm Samuels? Do you remember who that lady is on the side there?
RD: No. I can remember the girls but I can’t remember their names, except Colleen, because I got her the job here, by sheer accident one day.
Well perhaps since you seem to remember not so much of the Association, what about other things. You mentioned earlier on that you thought that the movement has gone wrong a bit. How do you think it should be going?
RD: I feel that at the moment it is lacking in the educational side of it. We tried very much to show people the differences between credit union loans and bank loans etc., how to manage their own finances. Also on the scale that most of the credit unions are operating, the ones that I know now, the size of them, they can’t get back to the basics like we did. In my credit union, the Alphabeticals, I can remember another fellow and myself actually going down to a fellow’s house, one of the bills that he presented us with was for excess water rates and he told us that all the taps in the house were dripping. We asked couldn’t he fix them but he didn’t know how to, so we went down to the house and fixed the dripping taps. On another occasion, I was working with the ABC Credit Union, there was a fellow came to see us and he was in tremendous strife, he owed money all round the place, a lot of money to Grace Brothers. Finally I teed everything up and spoke to all his creditors and they all agreed to accept some money and a small monthly amount, except that Grace Brothers said they were prepared to do it but they had a summons out against him and they wanted to know where he was. They were not prepared to enter into any arrangement until they had actually served the summons. I said, ‘I won’t be party to that unless you agree not to proceed on the summons, unless he defaults.’ So they agreed to that. I told the fellow, he was a bit unhappy about it. The summons was served and then he abused me up hill and down dale. Finally I was able to assure him that they weren’t going to proceed. Anyway some many months later he invited Stan Arneil and myself to his wife’s birthday party. We were a bit reluctant to go but we thought, oh well had been looking after this fellow for so long, so we went to the party. There were forty-odd people there, it was a slap up party and the pièce de résistance for the evening was he brought out a fur coat that he gave to his wife. Both Stan and I were taken aback and I was talking to him later and I said, ‘Where did you get that?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘after I paid Grace Brothers off they sent me a note that my credit was good again.’ We reckoned that was a failure in educating him. It wasn’t a very expensive fur coat but whether he could have afforded it at that time.
Yes, it is an example of how not to do it. But of course you can see that it is perfectly true that is the way it goes. Do you feel that the credit union movement at the moment is getting people more and more, just like other credit organisations, into debt?
RD: There seems to be an emphasis on loans and the ready availability of loans. Some of the rules that they have. I can only talk to you about the couple of credit unions I am associated with, but I have fairly close knowledge and I am still a member of a credit union. But I find some of the rules are far stricter than we envisaged in the first place, with no indication of the person’s ability to repay the loan. This is one of the first things we used to talk to them about, actually go and talk to the people. They would say they could repay $50 a week and we would say, ‘We don’t think you can afford more than $30.’ Nowadays it is if you want a $1,000 the payments are, bang, that much. A lot of people I know who have joined the one credit union that I belong to are treating it just as another finance company only the rates are better. They have no idea about helping other people. In those early days of the ABC Credit Union we used to go around and knock on doors. If somebody wanted a loan and we didn’t have the money in the bank, we would go and knock on doors and say, ‘We’ve got a fellow in strife, he needs money, how about putting a couple of hundred dollars in the credit union.’ This is how it built up. They would do it because we were helping somebody and they knew they were helping somebody. Now too many people are looking at how much they can get out of it and how much it is going to cost them to get a loan. They’re investors or they’re borrowers. It is a situation we are in and I can’t see how we can really overcome that without a strong educational program. Whether people are going to take any notice of that is the other thing too.
And what about the other end of things, the running of the credit union? You were involved with running a credit union, the ABC one with Stan Arneil, how were you on accounting? Were you into computerisation at that stage of the proceedings?
RD: Colleen would be able to tell you that, she was the Office Manager.
We are coming towards the end of this tape. Has there been anything that I haven’t asked you which I should have asked you?
RD: No. There is something I could ask you, you may know more about it now. What are credit unions doing regarding educating school kids? We used to talk a lot about educational kits to be placed in schools.
Well they did it until they were not allowed to by the Government. However, they are starting again, now. But for a long while the Government wouldn’t allow them to get into schools.
RD: Which Government?
The Askin Government first and then they didn’t worry about it during the Wran Government, I don’t know why and now they are starting again to get back into the schools. It was the Askin Government that stopped them.
RD: Right. You’ve got to educate the kids.
They are putting money into it as well, television advertising at the moment. Well I will say thank you very much Bob Davis.
End Tape 1b: 3560 Words: 1 hour 20 minutes.