5 SEPTEMBER 1989: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JACK BANNISTER
Where were you born and when?
JB: I was born in Redfern in 1920, 13 December.
What do you remember of Redfern in those days?
JB: Nothing because I moved from it when I was about three months old and went to Leichhardt and that is where I lived.
What do you remember of Leichhardt?
JB: I remember quite a lot about that. In fact there were two residencies that I lived in, 39 Starling Street and then 1 Leeds Avenue. It was quite good. The reason we moved from Starling Street was on account of the house not being big enough to cope with my sister and myself. So we moved to a bigger place in Leeds Avenue.
Where did you go to school?
JB: I went to school at St Viaga’s and then I went to Balmain Brothers. I finished there in 1936 and got a job with the Council.
What did you like or dislike about school?
JB: Well school I think, in retrospect, was quite good. I think Balmain particularly was exceptional. It was a Brothers school and a Brother that taught us was a representative of the All Blacks, Brother Macrossan. He subsequently left the Order and I wouldn’t have a clue what has happened to him. There was another bloke there who used to teach us woodwork and art, he died some time ago down the south coast somewhere, he was quite good too. He was excellent. There were some funny incidents that happened.
Can you relate one of them, or any of them?
JB: Well one with Brother MaCrossan, they used to call him a funny name and I just can’t recall what it was now, Chips or some name like that. Anyway a woman came up to the door one day to see him and she said, “Can I see Brother Chips?” Of course this created quite a bit of fun in the place. The Brother that was there said, “I happen to be Brother Chips.” It was very interesting there. We did the Intermediate Certificate there and we did it in two years. This was the policy of the school, instead of doing three years you did two years. It necessitated extra work during the day time, Monday to Friday, and then we went to school also on Saturday morning from 9.00 to 12.00.
No Saturday morning movies for you?
JB: No way. I can’t ever remember going to a Saturday morning movie to be quite honest. Saturday afternoon maybe, 2.00 o’clock. You would stay at the school and play handball and one thing or another and you mightn’t get home to 4.00 o’clock. Then you had to do all the exercises that you had for homework Saturday night and Sunday. But it was very interesting and very good indeed I think the education system that existed in those days.
Yet you all left after the Intermediate?
JB: Well that was more or less the policy in those days. The education system was designed, the higher education system at any rate, to cope with only a certain number who got in. Remember in 1936 when I started work this was just the end of the big Depression that we had in the late 1920s and early 1930s, I think it was the advent of the War that sort of killed the Depression itself. I would say that when I started work you were lucky to get a job and when I got a job on the Council I accepted it with open arms.
So what subjects did you like at school?
JB: Woodwork and art. English wasn’t bad. I got ‘A’ in the examinations for those. Woodwork and art I had a natural aptitude for, particular woodwork. Even now I am not too bad on wielding planes and saws and things like that. I have built quite a few things over the years that I think have been quite good.
Such as what?
JB: Well at school we built flower stands, trays, in-lay trays, and various things like that.
Keen on sport when you were young?
JB: Yes, played football at school. That wasn’t too bad.
Was that league?
JB: Yes. Tom McMahon was our coach, the man who used to be the referee. He was good in those days as the coach of the school. I played all the time that I was at Balmain and I enjoyed it. I played for twelve months, eighteen months, after I left school but I gave it away because in those days if you got injured that was the finish of you. You didn’t get any recompense at work for sporting injuries and consequently I thought it might be better to give it away, which I did.
The influences on you when you were a child, what particularly did you get from your father and mother and teachers?
JB: Well I think from my father and mother was mainly the ability to be honest. At school I would say that attitude was perpetuated and to do what you wanted to do. It was a bit difficult in the 1930s, it was easier than what it is now as far as living is concerned but it was more difficult. That might seem a bit strange, it was easier to live the life but more difficult on account of money being so short to enjoy the things we have now. I think that possibly everything that I learnt in those years has stood me in good stead now.
What did you father do for a living?
JB: He was the Yard Controller at Central Railway. He had one of the top jobs in the Railway Department.
Did he always work at the Railways?
JB: Yes he did. As long as I can remember. I think he started there before the 1920s and was involved in a strike that took place in about 1918, during the First World War.
The great strike. Was he a Lilywhite? Did he speak about that?
JB: Not much.
Was he for or against the strike?
JB: Well he was in it, let’s put it that way, so obviously he must have been for it. Whether that was through sheer necessity or just an evolution of ideas I don’t know.
He didn’t speak about the business that went on later?
JB: Not really. He didn’t speak too extensively on anything that happened in the railway other than what was happening at the present time. It wasn’t bad though. I went down there a couple of times, particularly on holiday weekends and gee everything opens and shuts then. The Commissioner was down there at one stage, and my father always boasted about this, he came down and said, “It is very important work you have got here Mr Bannister.” My father said, “Yes Mr Commissioner, there is no bloody way you would be able to do it.” I don’t know what the Commissioner thought or did after that. It was probably a true remark but probably better not said.
Was he known for that sort of thing, saying the wrong thing when he didn’t need to?
JB: No, not really. I think that the conditions he was working under were acute at the time. This bloke happened to be in at a wrong time and that was it.
He asked for it and he got it. Right when you joined the City Council what job did you do first?
JB: Well I was a messenger to start off with. After that I graduated to a clerk’s job in the Treasury. I served my apprenticeship in the Treasury and then went from their to Audit, back to Treasury and finished up in Audit again. I think I was in the Audit for fifteen or sixteen years to the finish, I was second-in-charge in the Audit Department.
Your work there at the City Council was interrupted by the War was it?
JB: Yes it was. In 1939, when War broke out, there wasn’t much on. Funnily enough I had been listening to the radio over the last couple of nights and everybody thought the War was going to finish in a matter of days. You would see plenty of people in civilian clothes but very few in uniform in the news clippings. Eventually I was called up in the Army and from the Army I rectified my own position and I joined the Air Force. I did initial training here in Sydney and then up the country where I did elementary flying. From there I went overseas to Canada and then from there to the United Kingdom. I was in the United States for some time, but we went after Canada to England where I stayed for about twelve months. Then I went out to India and that is where I did all my operational flying, in India. I was there for about fourteen or fifteen months. All told I was away for just on four years. I had an opportunity when I came back of working for Qantas, but I had been away for four years and I had had it. I thought what was the use of going flying again. There were two people who were with me in India and one bloke got a job on Qantas and they sent him to New Guinea and he was dead in three weeks, just crashed and that was it. So I thought that could have been me, so I stayed out of it. I have regretted it I suppose, particularly when you see what is happening to the pilots of the present day in Qantas, all the international flights. They are getting good money but they are not satisfied, so I don’t know what the score is.
When you were in the Air Force you were mentioned in Despatches on one occasion, I believe, when you brought a plane back.
JB: Yes I was. It happened in India. I am not too sure of the details of it to be honest, but I was mentioned in Despatches for something I had done in India. I think it was bringing an aircraft back for about eight hundred mile on one engine. It happened in the Bay of Bengal and we were coming from Ceylon at the time. When we got to the island where we were going the engine packed up. We couldn’t have got back to Ceylon, it was too far, so we went up to Rangoon. It was all monsoonal and from 30,000 feet, where we used to fly, we couldn’t hold the aircraft. We brought it down on the deck and flew under the monsoon until we got Rangoon. Anyway we got to Rangoon and bingo that was it. We got back to Calcutta, where we were stationed. It was a Mosquito plane. They flew us back to Ceylon where we picked up the trends of ordinary flying. This was part and parcel for the course.
In flying in action at that time from India, what was your target?
JB: We were doing photographic reconnaissance. We went everywhere. From Calcutta we were flying to places in Burma and from down south, from the island down south, we were doing the islands in the Bay of Bengal, which were far easier. We were also doing Sumatra, which was 2,000 miles over the sea. We left there hoping to reach Sumatra, which everybody did fortunately, but it only gave you about fifteen minutes operational time there so you couldn’t muck around. It was in and out, do what you had to do and come back home. That was eight hours, four hours each way. It was enjoyable.
Were these Mosquitos built in Australia, the ones that you flew?
JB: No. They were all English jobs.
So what plywood were they actually made of?
JB: Well I don’t really know.
A lot of the Australian ones, I know the coachwood industry in Australia was used to a great extent.
JB: It could have been. What they were actually built out of in England I wouldn’t have a clue. I understand that the ones built in England were far superior to the ones they built out here. Whether that was the wood or the glue, I don’t know.
What planes did you learn to fly other than Mosquitos?
JB: Well we started off on Tiger Moths and from Tigers we went on to Spitfires when we got to England. We converted straight from Spitfires on to Mossies, and this was unheard of. Funnily enough there were three of us, one bloke who lives in Hobart, he is dead now, another bloke in Melbourne, he is still alive and I saw him only last year, and myself. We had been at a place called Benson waiting to go on to ops and there was nothing doing at that particular point in time, so we went in and saw the Adjutant and said, “Look what about some leave?” “Gee,” he said, “just the three blokes I want to see. We have got three possies up in Dyce for you. Do you want to go back there?” We said, “Don’t know, how long do you want?” He said he wanted to know immediately so we asked him to give us two minutes. So we went outside and decided to go back, so the three of us went back. We stayed together for about three years the three of us. When we went back to Dyce we were the first three to go solo on the Mosquitos, only by virtue of the fact that we had speed up our sleeve with the Spitfires, where as people coming off slower aircraft took a bit longer.
Did you fly Spitfires operationally at all?
JB: On one occasion only, that was a sort of a training run at Benson in England where we were to be posted. That was on a photograph reconnaissance. We had plenty of incidents on Spitfires over there. When I did the Spitfire training initially we were up in Dyce in Scotland and we had to go out east of where we were, over the North Sea. Out I went and there was cloud so I went up in the cloud and still couldn’t find anything so we let down and I finished up over Scapa Flow and they were going to shoot me down. Any way they sent aircraft up to intercept me but I managed to let down over the sea, three or four hundred mile out to sea. Funnily enough I didn’t see anything, but when I got back the Adjutant sort of roasted the daylights out of me for being up there. I told him I was in cloud from the moment I had left until I got down on the sea. He told me not to do it again and I got away with that.
I suppose we had better get back to the credit union. When you got back to Sydney and you were demobilised, you went back to the City Council again?
JB: Yes. I had a bit of time in leave, that was in 1945. I didn’t start work again with the City Council until some time in early 1946.
Were you married at that time?
JB: No I didn’t get married until about 1949. In 1946 I was carefree and happy, you know. I just met up with the blokes that I had known in the City Council prior to joining the Air Force and we just took up doing all the things we wanted to do.
Which were?
JB: Working and drinking, I suppose. That wasn’t bad.
What section did you work in then?
JB: When I went back I was in the Treasury. I got a job some time later up in Audit, then I got another job in Treasury and finally I got the 2IC job up in Audit. I started off in the third job in Audit, but I subsequently got the 2IC job up there and I occupied that for about six or seven years I suppose.
So when did credit unions come into your life?
JB: They came in I suppose with Dermot Ryan.
When did you meet him?
JB: I have known Dermot for over fifty years. He joined the Council just after I did. Through an association of people and ideas and what have you we sort of joined up. He went out into the outer areas and he did an educational degree which fitted him as a gardener. I stayed on the internal side and did accounting.
He did horticulture did he?
JB: Yes he was a good horticulturalist too. Eventually he came back into the Council and this is when we started to join up. In the early stages all the mob used to get together after work and they would go over to Adams, or sometimes the pub just across the road, by mainly it was Adams.
Is that the Town Hall Hotel, the one that is pulled down now?
JB: No Adams Hotel. The one opposite the Town Hall was just down from Gresham’s, it is still there. They use it, but not to the same extent. Dermot got talking about credit unions and I understand that he had a good background and education in credit unions by being with the Lidcombe Credit Union Movement. He talked and talked and talked to try and get through to us to put it on, to join a credit union, create a credit union. His idea was to create a credit union within the Council. Eventually, and I suppose it was reluctantly too, we agreed to do it. In having a look at the old Minutes that are here in this particular organisation there were a lot of meetings that took place, and I had forgotten all about these, prior to the people from the Association coming down to address what I took to be the initial meeting. Following on that the credit union was founded.
Can you remember a meeting at a dinner at Adams Hotel at all?
JB: That was at the end of the first year of operations. Each year we had a dinner somewhere, but for the first two or three years they were held in Adams Hotel.
Well some of them seem to remember a dinner that was held before the inaugural meetings at the Town Hall.
JB: Not to my knowledge there wasn’t. The meetings that took place were at the end of the first twelve months. To my way of thinking that was the first meeting that we had. That was in Adams Hotel and there is a good photograph around somewhere of that meeting. Dermot has got it I know. Meetings took place in Adams Hotel for a number of years and then we moved elsewhere. We are doing it now at the RSL Club at Paddington. That picture is the original thing that happened in Adams Hotel.
This is the photograph in the 1984 Annual Report, the 21st Annual Report, 1984.
JB: That was the Board of Directors in 1964, the original Board of Directors.
And the Supervisory Committee. Somebody has identified them for me. You can recognise quite a lot of them.
JB: Dermot Ryan is in that?
Yes, you are in front of him right at the front there.
JB: I can’t recall what I had in my hand, a notice of some description.
Probably your first registration or something like that.
JB: I don’t really know what it is to be quite honest. I don’t know if anybody else in that photograph might be able to give you some idea of what it is. That is the current Board.
You were Chairman at that time, whereas Jack Coyne is the Chairman now. We still have a query about the meetings before the inaugural meetings. The inaugural meetings as in the Minutes were at the Town Hall weren’t they. There were two inaugural meetings where they had people speak about credit unions and invite people to join, there were Directors already there, but nothing was decided. There was no business?
JB: In the Minutes, the actual Minutes themselves, there was nothing decided. Not as a result of that big meeting we had with the Association.
Just a whole lot of people joined. The credit union must have been in existence, therefore that can hardly be an inaugural meeting.
JB: Well it was the inaugural meeting because the people from the Association came down and addressed us as to why we should join the credit union.
You already had Directors then.
JB: My thinking is the Directors came after that initial meeting. Now it could have been that the recording of it might have got a little in front of that meeting.
How were the Directors chosen?
JB: They were chosen by the people who were vitally interested and connected with the organisation of the credit union right from the word go. When, after talking with Dermot for some considerable time, we got a group of people who were interested in saying, “Yes we will go with you and get it off the ground,” of that number of people certain people were selected.
By whom?
JB: Dermot I would say, mainly.
So it was really an Executive decision?
JB: Well there was no Executive at the time, because it hadn’t been appointed.
My point is that Dermot was the Executive.
JB: Well could well have been.
This is the general consensus anyway.
JB: Well this is twenty-six years ago and to remember all the details of what happened twenty-six years ago is almost impossible. My interpretation of what happened could be completely different to somebody else’s interpretation.
That is why I am asking everybody the same thing.
JB: Well you are going to get twenty-six different answers I would say.
Not so far.
JB: What has been the majority?
The consensus of opinion so far is that Dermot appointed everybody. He asked them and if they said yes he appointed them and that was that.
JB: Well that is interesting, I am going to see Dermot this afternoon and I will ask him. It could well have been. At that particular point in time Dermot was the only one who knew anything about credit unions, by virtue of the fact that he had been interested in them, been operating one and was a rank and file Director of an existing credit union.
You were a Director straight away were you? Who asked you to stand?
JB: Dermot I would say.
Well that is you for a start.
JB: Could well have been, but I am only surmising now. I don’t know what the conditions were at that particular point in time because it is too long ago. That was only an incidental as far as I was concerned.
What was the first meeting you remember?
JB: The first meeting I remember was the meeting with the Association, the inaugural meeting as far as I was concerned. But in reading the Minutes we find there were three or four meetings prior to that and things were getting organised. I don’t know what authority we had at that particular point in time, or what authority actually started the credit union. Whether it was in existence prior to the meeting with the Association, but my opinion is that was the inaugural meeting.
You often get a lot of meetings like that. Sometimes they call them Steering Committee meetings, or whatever, to set it up. I was trying to work out where the first one was, that is all.
JB: Well the first meeting was held, I would say, in the Town Hall itself with Dermot.
In his office?
JB: Probably yes. All the meetings in the early stages, after the thing had got off the ground, were held in Dermot’s office. He was in the Construction and Maintenance Branch at the time. I can recall that the first bit of furniture that we had there was half a four-drawer cupboard that was part and parcel of the operations of the Council. Then very early in the piece we elected to go on to a computer and this is when we went and saw the people in the computer field. I was there.
How many of you?
JB: There must have been half a dozen at some meetings. I do recall a meeting where one of the Directors of the company came out and gave a special address. I would say every Director of the credit union was there at the time probably with two or three other members. We did make visits to various computer people and as a result of that we were the first credit union.
End Tape 1A: 4157 Words: 1 hour 20 minutes
5 SEPTEMBER 1989: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JACK BANNISTER
You were talking about the computerisation meetings when somebody from IBM, I think, came along?
JB: It could have been IBM. I think that is the firm that we went with originally. In the early stages we were working overtime to try and record all the details that had happened and this was getting a bit much for us. Instead of coping with what had happened during the day that night, we weren’t. We were slowly but surely going back a little back a bit further and we realised that something had to be done. So we started to look for a computer to go on. After many investigations we went on to an IBM I think it was. This proved very successful until the firm came to us and said, “We are going to take this machine off the market and you will only be able to go until Christmas.” This was probably about October. Anyway we went to the firm and explained the position to them and they allowed us to keep on for, I think, another three or four months. This enabled us to get a new machine in the interim but then the trouble came with transferring what we had on the first machine on to the second machine, which was done after a bit. I would say that we were the first credit union in Australia to have recordings such as this.
Was that on punch tape?
JB: I am not certain, I think it was at that stage.
Then it was fed into their computer?
JB: That’s right. We were just a user of their computer. It was good, very good. It coped with everything that we did during the day, and everything we did during the day we would send over at night time to the computer firm and it was ready for us the next morning. It came back the next morning already on the machine.
Before you did this do you remember working back to try and reconcile the books?
JB: That’s for sure.
Did you manage to reconcile them, do you remember?
JB: Not really, I don’t think. There were a lot of ifs and buts and bits and pieces.
Do you remember how near you got, the closest?
JB: Oh I would say a penny, but that is not right. I don’t know, I can’t recall.
Somebody said $7.
JB: Could have been. We did get close on a couple of occasions. To my way of thinking it might have been a bit more than $7, but I am not prepared to say because I would only be guessing what it was. I know that we didn’t balance completely any time we took a balance out.
Did you used to allot each other a letter of the alphabet, shall we say?
JB: Yes.
Do you remember what you got allotted?
JB: We used to change. I mean if you did your letter up to date you would change on to somebody else’s.
Do you remember what letter they used to allot Dermot?
JB: I don’t know, I can’t recall. Probably it would be the shortest and that could have been X I think. He didn’t do much, he used to supervise but he didn’t do the actual work. We started in his office in recordings and after a while somebody said, “If we are going to work, we have got to eat.” So that was decided rather smartly, so somebody used to go out and buy the stuff for tea. It was generally rolls and butter and some meat to go with it. There was always an argument about somebody getting too much butter. This went on all the time, while we were in Dermot’s office, but once it started on the computer the need of having tea sort of went by the board. It proved a point too that probably some of the blokes were doing more work on the recordings and others were doing more work on the tea. It was good and everybody went home happy.
Did they go to the pub afterwards then?
JB: Yes on occasions. In a lot of instances people went straight home. You had been there for about three or four hours. I mean you would start at five and it would be nine o’clock I suppose before you finished, sometimes even later, ten-thirty I can recall. Eleven o’clock one night we were there trying to get the days’ operations up on the recording. At eleven o’clock at night you just couldn’t go to the pub so you just went home. On a lot of occasions people went home but on other occasions people went to the boozer, that is the way it goes.
Do you remember any of the early membership drives at all?
JB: Yes.
Did you go out on them?
JB: Yes I did. We tried to get the people into the areas in which they were employed. I did all the Cleansing, because I was in the Cleansing Department at that particular point in time. We used to go at lunchtime. I can recall one vivid session down in Pier Street Depot, which was a Cleansing Depot, down here in Pier Street down near the new markets. We just went down and we told the people who were there, this was their lunchtime and fortunately with the Cleansing Department 99 per cent who were in that particular Depot came to the Depot to have their lunch so you got a good smattering of people you could address. I can recall this incident as if it happened yesterday, as a matter of fact. The room was filled, we just put the case to them, answered a hell of a lot of questions but the following day there was a big influx of new members. That was general. We thought we would have about 200 members at the end of the first year, we had about 600 members at the end of the first three weeks.
Do you think in the instant loans scheme had anything to do with this?
JB: Well it could have, but the big thing was as far as the Cleansing Department was concerned, and I think this attitude was pretty prevalent with the whole of the Council, of a pay day, on a Thursday, at all the depots you would have all the people wanting their money outside the depot. As soon as a bloke got paid they would put nips in to get what was owing to them. In a matter of five or six meetings of the credit union they ceased to exist. The blokes then were looking after themselves. I can recall I had fifty-two times five shillings, which is not much money, but not one but probably thirty people came to me after the Annual Meeting, after the end of the first year, and said, “Jack that is the first money we have ever saved in our lives and that’s good.” It was good and that is what got them out of the hands of the ????? because they had money in their pocket. Initially we got five shillings off them to save. It was some years before we put the bite on them again to increase it. So at the end of the year I think they had twelve pounds ten. When you say it now, it is what $25, but in those days it was a hell of a lot of money for those blokes and the first money that a lot of them had ever saved in their life. This is when it came home to me, at the end of the first year to see blokes that I worked with saving money. I think that was the whole thing about the credit union. It enabled people not only to borrow money but to save money as well. I think that particular factor is probably, from my point of view, the best feature of the whole of the credit union. That is the way it goes.
Did you have any need of credit? Did you have any difficulty getting credit, did you need it before the credit union started?
JB: Everybody did. The banks, if you didn’t want money, would lend you as much as you wanted. But if you wanted money there was no way you could go to the bank and say you wanted a loan for $100. They just didn’t give you money. They weren’t lending out money. I think the introduction of the credit union was probably the first avenue that a lot of people had of borrowing money. In those days it was good because everybody wanted money.
Did you get help from the Town Hall generally?
JB: Yes we did, in so far as they gave us every opportunity to get the money to start off with. Also, through the good graces of the then Town Clerk, Jack Luskin, he said they wouldn’t charge us anything for it.
Is he still alive?
JB: I think he is dead. He lived out at Randwick, but I am almost certain he is dead now. There was the City Treasurer, Eric Small, who wanted to charge and he got several of the credit union people in and said this was what they proposed to do. Overtures to Mr Luskin sort of killed that on the head. This was good too, because it was something for the people in the Council. One particular aspect that it did do was that it kept the staff together. For argument’s sake, if a bloke got in trouble prior to this and he wanted some money he couldn’t get any off the banks so he just resigned and got whatever money was coming to him out of the Council. The establishment of the credit union enabled him to go to the credit union and get that loan to cover that thing, so he stayed with the Council. I would say the staff became more permanent than what it was prior to the credit union. It didn’t stop them all, but it stopped a lot of people who would want money quickly.
Any sceptics over at the Council who thought it would fail or didn’t want to be in it?
JB: Well you had a lot of people like that. It is like everything you do, you will always get somebody who will say it is not going to work.
Can you think of anybody high up? Can you remember if Gunner was sceptical?
JB: Well he never said anything to me. He might have said something to Dermot, I don’t know.
Do you remember him having a bet with Dermot at all?
JB: No I don’t. He might have, he was a good better. He would probably bet on anything and particularly if he thought he would win, the Gunner.
Was he Treasurer at that time?
JB: No. The Treasurer was Eric Small.
So what was the Gunner?
JB: The Gunner was the Industrial Officer.
What was his second name?
JB: I will come back to it, I will remember and tell you. He was a pretty straight-shooting bloke. Dermot at that particular point in time was a member of the Union and he had direct dealings with him. This is how the Gunner and Dermot sort of got together in having a little bet. I think the Gunner came round eventually and as far as I know he was a member. As far as I know he is still alive. I think he lives over the bridge there.
I might put him down for a visit.
JB: He would have a lot of things to say about the Council and about the members.
He might remember different things with Dermot.
JB: He could well do that. He had a very retentive memory.
There are several other people outside who I have thought of as well who might come into it. Sid Einfeld, he might.
JB: He wouldn’t know probably as much as the Gunner. Geoff Grayson was his name, Geoff Grayson. They were all in it and whilst they had some knowledge of the Council and some of the inmates, they didn’t have the wide ranging knowledge that Grayson would have.
Sid Einfeld was the Minister of Co-operatives for seven years wasn’t he?
JB: He was too.
Then there was Steppa Stevens.
JB: Yes. I am not too certain if they would know much about the City Council. They would know probably a lot about the organisation generally, but as far as individual credit unions I wouldn’t think so.
I was thinking of negotiations that might have taken place or whatever.
JB: Yes. All the time we were in close harmony with those people and interviewed them a number of times. They would have their point of view with regard to our operation, yes.
I asked you how it came about you became a Director, can you think of why any other officers were picked?
JB: Well I suppose we were all in the same boat. We were all closely associated with Dermot and Dermot picked the blokes that he felt could influence the various Departments of the Council. That is what we had to do. We had to get into the Council itself. The best way was to pick somebody in the Department who was able to talk to all the blokes and had a bit of kudos in the place and a little bit of standing. I think that all the people he went to originally had all those things.
So you were a Director right from the start, what other jobs did you do in the credit union?
JB: I have been on numerous committees. Finance.
What was the purpose of the Finance Committee?
JB: That was to ensure that everything was done in the right manner. It was also necessary to ensure that the people were approaching the credit union in the right manner, particularly people who wanted loans. There was a certain procedure to be adopted and it was our job to instil into the people who wanted loans to adopt this procedure.
Was that started right from the start, the Finance Committee?
JB: I would say it would have been.
So the instant loan procedure that happened in the beginning can you describe that?
JB: Well the instant loans weren’t very high in value but this was a secondary consideration. It wasn’t the initial consideration, but after a while we found that we had a lot of people wanting loans so we had to decide what would be the best way to do it, so we decided to put on instant loans. An instant loan might have been only ten pound initially, but if a bloke came up and said he wanted an instant loan of ten pound and you had good reasons for getting the money back out of him, you would give it to him. This saved interviewing the bloke, which was normally done for bigger loans. This slowed down the time factor in letting out the loans and also gave the bloke a loan when he wanted it. We have got them now instant loans.
Didn’t they in the beginning use it as a ploy to get people into the credit union?
JB: I never looked at it in that light. I think there were enough people in right from the word go to cope with as far as the numbers were concerned. I think it was a means of getting them easier loans.
A means of cutting red tape as well?
JB: Yes. It was a means of cutting down on the normal procedure for getting a loan. It works quite well and you will find other organisations have now got the same idea as us.
I think I might have misunderstood in some ways because several people explained it to me that they were saying, five shillings down, five shillings a week and fifteen pounds loan. They were members once they put their money down.
JB: They could have been members who had joined in the early stages and didn’t want a loan at that particular point in time, but came along later on, once the instant loans became well-known to the people in the organisation.
When was the first overdraft? Do you remember an overdraft in the early days?
JB: The first year of operations I would say. We kicked off with an overdraft right from the word go.
Do you remember where the overdraft was, where was the bank?
JB: The bank was in George Street, 477 I think it was. The Rural Bank.
Did Dermot know somebody there, or did you all know somebody over there?
JB: I suppose after a period of time we knew them all. They were good. The Rural Bank was the first bank to introduce loans to everybody. That was some little time after we started. We took up the Rural Bank as our banking agents and I think they appreciated it because there was a lot of money going into the account there. That account existed until such time as the Association started their own banking system and we reluctantly transferred from the Rural Bank to the Association’s bank. The Rural Bank itself was a group of very dedicated people. They were members and our interests were their interests. They went out of their way to cultivate everything they possible could from our point of view.
When did they become eligible to become members, the Rural Bank Officers?
JB: Some time after they were the bankers, but it wasn’t that much afterwards. There was a big falsification in the Rural Bank over there. It happened at lunchtime. A bloke walked into the bank with a dustcoat on purporting to come from the credit union. He presented a cheque for say five thousand pounds, I am not too sure what the amount was now but it was a big amount of money. He wanted cash for it. Up until this stage there weren’t too many cheques that had been cashed at the counter, particularly one of five thousand that wouldn’t have been cashed. Anyway this bloke took it over at lunchtime and the bloke behind the counter, allegedly, took it to the Manager’s offsider. The Manager was away at the time on holidays. The offsider wasn’t there, he was out at lunch. To cut a long story short the teller could get no clearance for the cheque and he gave the bloke five thousand pounds. Eventually they found the man who had presented the cheque and they brought him in to the credit union and lined all the Directors up. There was a man doing Council prosecutions at the time and he was due down at Central Court at ten o’clock and this was nine o’clock in the morning, he happened to say to the detective, “I’ve got to go. I’m due down at Central Court at ten o’clock. This bloke you’ve got will be there a lot quicker.” To cut a long story short this man inspected everybody but he couldn’t identify anybody, obviously it wasn’t one of our own blokes. They reimbursed us with the five thousand, or two thousand, whatever the case may be, but it was a big amount of money in those days.
I heard three thousand.
JB: It could have been two, three or five.
Several people have told me that story. You were one of the ones lined up were you?
JB: I tell you what it was pretty frightening. If he had picked me, I don’t know what I would have done.
What other committees were you on?
JB: Just about everything they have had in the credit union I would say. Loan Committee, Finance Committee. They were the main two I was on. There have been other committees that people have been appointed to for certain periods of time. They don’t work as effectively now as they did in those days.
The Loans Committee can you remember the first hearing of a loan application you were involved in?
JB: Loan application could have been my own.
You wouldn’t do that yourself would you?
JB: No, that would go to somebody else. With a loan application in those days the people concerned that were dealing with the particular loan would examine the loan and try and work out themselves what the bloke meant by it. Then if there was any doubt in their mind that he might have been not quite fair dinkum they would get him in and would ask him what was the strength of the loan application, what did he want it for. Generally speaking, the people that came in were that adamant about getting the loan and the reason for the loan there were very few loans not granted. I think some of them were genuinely sheer necessity things. I think that is what the credit union did, particularly in the City Council, when people put in for loans, particularly in the early stages, they wanted the money to do something with it. I think it encouraged them to borrow wisely and spend their money wisely.
So you only got a few cases then?
JB: There weren’t too many generally. There were quite a few that interviewed, but there weren’t too many that were knocked back. In fact, I could say you could probably count them on one hand in the early stages because everybody needed the money. They were genuine in the way they came up and approached the subject.
Can you remember any that were knocked back?
JB: Not really. I would have to give that a lot of thought as to whether there were or weren’t. See there is a lot of water under the bridge between then and now. They are the sort of things that you don’t remember in my opinion, to rephrase it they are the sort of things you tend to put out of your mind first. You sort of lot at the other things that happened that affected you or the funny incidents. They are the sort of things that stick.
Can you think of any funny incidents then?
JB: Not at the moment, I would have to give it a bit more thought.
Dermot can’t talk. We might get him to write it.
JB: I don’t know how I am going to talk to him today when I go out there, but he will get me at it.
I would come out and see him myself but he might think I am pestering him.
JB: Well at this point in time he has been instructed to slow down as much as he possibly can. His son rang me, he lives near me, asking me to go over about this meeting that is coming up down south.
Can you remember the early Directors’ meetings?
JB: Directors’ meetings, some have been very funny. Some have been not so funny. Some haven’t been too good at all. Funny ones have occurred where people have taken a wrong thing about something that has crept up and expressed opinions that are completely different or completely wrong. Always you have got blokes here, and you have had blokes on the Board, that if something crops up that amuses them they will say something about it. Tommy Duggan for instance has got a good repertoire as far as that is concerned, he is very quick. Over the years he has made some very sound observations about some of the remarks that have been passed at Board meetings. I would say in the early stages Board meetings lasted about an hour. Now we started at 5.45 and it might be 7.30, 8.00 sometimes. It depends on what the subject is. That would be a standard for all the Board meetings. As the Chairman you would close yourself with the Manager and discuss the paper and that is still done at the present time. Any of the problems that you might have found in the Business Paper you would iron it out and it was just a matter of a quick explanation to the Board when you came to that particular item. That is happening now too. A lot of the things that look wrong, or look as if they might be a point of argument, the Manager will just explain it to the members and that is done with.
End Tape 1B: 4106 Words: 1 hour 25 minutes
5 SEPTEMBER 1989: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JACK BANNISTER
The different Board meetings and the different way the Board meetings have been Chaired over the years. In the first instance Dermot Ryan, how would he differ from you, for instance, and now from Jack Coyne?
JB: Well in the early stages I would say that Dermot ran the meeting. I would say this was necessary because he was virtually the only one that knew anything about the credit union movement. As the members of the Board got more used to the organisation the format of the Chairman changed. When Dermot vacated the Chair and I took over as Chairman the things that he had sort of put to the Board with his thoughts behind it to pass it, I didn’t. In some instances I did, but in the main anything that had a little bit of contention about it I gave the members of the Board the opportunity of saying whether they were for or against it. This I think was good. It may have altered a little bit now. Jack leaves a lot to the Board but generally speaking they have got a submission that comes from the Executive that is put to the Board to carry.
The Executive consists of?
JB: The Chairman, the Vice-Chairman, the Manager, and the Assistant Manager in some instances. Anything that comes from them, generally speaking, is automatically carried. We had it when I was the Chairman, probably not to the same extent because we gave the other members of the Board the opportunity of saying ye or nay to the particular question that we put up. Always in submitting a motion I would outline the reasons for it and then put it forward for discussion by the Board. This happens to a large extent now, but a lot of questions are just carried.
Dermot was known as a faster runner of meetings wasn’t he?
JB: Yes. But I think as he progressed in the role of the Chairmanship it slowed down because he realised that the people around the Board table were learning almost as much as he knew. Therefore, the things that he wanted to get through initially because they were the right things became common knowledge to everyone around the Board table and therefore they spoke either for or against the particular motions as they were put up.
Was there any factionalism in the Board at all?
JB: I don’t ever recall that question arising, that of factionalism. There were differences of opinion and people, sometimes, didn’t agree entirely with the Chairman. That happened as far as I was concerned too and still happens now. There was no out and out antagonism with the Board after the meeting was over. I go home, for argument’s sake, with one of the Board members and anything that happens at the Board meeting is never discussed going home. That is good, that is the way it should be.
Normally there has been no opposition to the Directors. I mean when they stand for election, or if they don’t stand, there has only been one occasion when you had another person nominating.
JB: That’s right, only one in the twenty-six years to my knowledge.
Do you know what that was over?
JB: It was just because a bloke wanted to get on the Board.
Was he after getting anybody particular off?
JB: Well he would of. In the year that he put in there could have been half a dozen people who were standing for the Board and he would have wanted to replace one of those. Now it was said that he brought a lot of people in to vote for him, but I don’t think the people he brought in actually voted for him. He didn’t get on and that is the only occasion where we have more than the requisite number of Board Directors.
There was an occasion when he wanted to get somebody out, well it was alleged that he wanted to get somebody out, but he didn’t get him out he got somebody else out by accident.
JB: Not to my knowledge. There has been only occasion where we have had more than the requisite number to fill the Board, fill the vacancies on the Board. This was the only occasion to my knowledge where somebody has stood and was beaten. I don’t think what you said is quite true.
The person who got ousted from the Board was Bob Hale, was it?
JB: Bob Hart, it wasn’t Bob Hale.
Got defeated in an election.
JB: I don’t recall anybody being defeated in an election.
So what actually happens is so many stand and if there is one over, so to speak, he falls of the edge.
JB: No that’s not right. Up until just recently half the Board used to stand every second year. Now they were elected for two years. Now the system is three years, so a third of the Board are elected every year. Going back to the two year bit, this is when this incident that I am referring to occurred, half of the Directors would have stood down on that particular occasion. Now there was one cove came in and he was the only additional nominee for the position. As far as I am concerned he got beaten on the night and the balance of the six, or five, Directors that stood were automatically elected to the Board.
Is he a Director now? Who was he?
JB: No, he never was. He was a bloke from the Parks Department. I can see the bloke but I can’t recall his name. I might recall it later.
As far as Dermot is concerned, his handling of Annual Meetings, some people have said that it was very fast and that in fact he used to go for a record?
JB: That’s been on. Funnily enough Annual Meetings have been slowly but surely coming down in time. That has been brought about mainly because there is a function after it. Now in the early stages the function used to be at the Town Hall, in the basement, where you would have probably sandwiches and cans of beer and you would have blokes from the Town Hall to organise it. We have graduated from that particular point of view and now it is a well laid-on meal with drinks in one of the clubs. The present club is the Paddington-Woollahra RSL Club and that’s not bad. We used to have it at South Sydney and we had it there for years and years and they gave us the best of treatment, but unfortunately the club got too small for the numbers and we had to look round for a bigger venue. We found at this Paddington-Woollahra RSL we occupy the whole of the floor and that would seat about 400 people. I think from memory there has been two there and this year will be the third. It is not bad. Obviously all the early things about the credit union were just sort of second-rate because there is something bigger and better coming on later on. It is not a means of the Board trying to do something to the meeting to get it over and done with. I think it is a means of just saying to the members this is something that we are trying to give them. The Annual Meeting will start at 7.30 and probably will go an hour, which is not bad for an Annual Meeting. I would say the longest has been one and a half hours and that has been when some contentious matter as been on for adjustment, like say something to do the rules where we are changing the rules.
What would you think was the fastest Annual Meeting there has been?
JB: Half an hour.
Was that the one that was referred to as “Von Ryan’s Express”?
JB: Could well have been.
Do you know who coined the phrase, I know it comes from a film?
JB: I wouldn’t have a clue who coined the phrase but it was something in relation to Dermot, might have been Jack Coyne, I don’t know.
Nobody claims it.
JB: I wouldn’t have a clue. Might have been Tommy Duggan.
He doesn’t claim it either.
JB: Well they would be the blokes who would think of those sort of things. You would have to be well alert, I would say, to come up with an expression like that. They would be two who would be well alert, particularly Tommy Duggan I would say. I can’t recall who said it, but it was said no doubt about it.
Did anyone actually put a stopwatch on the meetings then?
JB: Not really. In those days the meeting would start as close to 7.30 as it possibly could, or whatever the starting time was. I would say the meeting would go almost an hour and that is just normal business. You get people talking, and that’s good from the members’ point of view in my opinion. People who have got something to do with the organisation it just tells them what they do with certain aspects of the credit union.
Did you have any dealings with the Supervisory Committee? I know if you are a Board member you can’t be on the Supervisory Committee can you. Do you remember the early appointment of the Supervisory Committees, were they straight away?
JB: Yes they were appointed right from the word go. They weren’t obligatory, Supervisory Committees, but from the Board’s point of view it was good in so far as you had somebody looking every week at the things that were done day-by-day. Now the Auditor appreciated what was being done by this Committee too. When we got into the new system that Kendall’s had produced, where they built up a scheme of auditing and locked it into the machine our blokes couldn’t get into it. We saw that the purpose of the Committee that we had appointed was becoming useless, so it just fell by the wayside.
Who was on the first Supervisory Committee, can you remember?
JB: Yes. There was one Chairman, he was Chairman for a long time, Bobby, his surname eludes me at the moment. He was in with Owen Jones in the back room at the back of the Town Hall. He would be in that photograph.
Well I should be able to tell you in actual fact because someone has read to me the names of the people. Stan Anderson?
JB: That’s the bloke, Stan Anderson was the Chairman of the Supervisory Committee. He resigned and Kerrin Tongs took over. Kerrin was the last one because we gave it away because of this thing of the Auditors. You couldn’t get into the program so there was no point in doing it.
The Auditor was Frank Richards in the first place wasn’t it?
JB: Yes.
Do you remember him having any arguments with Dermot?
JB: Yes. I am not too certain who was in the fight, but there was one occasion when they were down at City Tatts and somebody fought from City Tatts to the Town Hall and the police pulled up and were going to pinch both of them. Roy Tulloch was with them and he was the bloke who convinced the police they were only doing it because they were friends and they got out of it.
Do you know what the argument was over?
JB: I wouldn’t have a clue. Arguments in those days could have been over anything, probably nothing to do with the credit union. They might have been arguing about the football or something like that. They were the sort of arguments that you would always get into, particularly after a few beers. It was about 1.30 in the morning so they had been at City Tatts a fair while, so the argument could have been about anything.
Wasn’t anything about showing a loss at the end of the year, or something like that?
JB: I can’t recall what it was about now.
You mentioned Roy Tulloch then, what do you remember of Roy?
JB: Well he was a member of the staff and was the Loans Officer. Now over a period of time he got that good in just talking to the people about loans that we appointed him to a special position in the credit union, it is not there now. Roy was very good as far as loans were concerned, as far as telling the people what they wanted to know about it. I know when I was leaving, or just about ready to leave the Council, I went to see Roy and told him what I was going to get and what could I do. He went through religiously and gave me a set of rough notes with everything that we had discussed on it and said these were my options. Unfortunately at that particular point in time they didn’t have the things they have now, where they can roll them over in twelve months. I am sorry that wasn’t there in those days because my financial affairs now would have been a lot better than what they are, but that is the way it goes.
So he was a good Loans Counsellor?
JB: He was. He was a good bloke on the staff of the credit union. Reliable and honest, very honest. I think that is essential in credit unions.
What about getting on with the members?
JB: Excellent. I don’t recall anybody saying a bad word about Roy. I think he was just the right bloke in the right place and it worked well.
What about Owen Jones, do you remember when he first became Manager, why and how?
JB: Yes, because he was the bloke for the job. In the early stages I don’t think there was anybody in the whole of the movement in all New South Wales who would have surpassed Owen in what he did. Unfortunately I was the one who sacked him.
What was that over?
JB: Mainly drinking. It was drawn to my attention that he had opened an account for his own personal use, which wasn’t in his name. That was the final thing that sort of decided me to get rid of him. I suppose in retrospect I have lost more sleep over that sacking than any other particular thing that has ever happened in my life. He was a personal friend of mine, Owen. I could see the way he was going and I think if we had let it continue things could have got a lot worse. He is dead now, unfortunately. He was a tremendous bloke and I would say had no peer as far as the management of a credit union was concerned, but the drink just got him. I suppose I can count myself lucky that it didn’t get me, but that was what it was all about. He was on the League Board, spent two or three years on the League Board, and was well in with the hierarchy of the Association. I think Owen contributed a lot not only to our own organisation but to the League Board as well. It is a pity in a way that you see blokes, or you lose blokes like that.
How much do you think the problems he had with drink were down to his work at the credit union, the long hours and that sort of thing?
JB: Well it might have been because he had the opportunity of leaving the job, yet I suppose that situation applied when he was working. I think with the credit union he had the opportunity of talking to a lot of people and generally speaking the talks were in hotels. I don’t know, but I am inclined to think Owen might have been an AA. Even though nobody has said that to me the way he used to drink would lead me to believe he could have been an AA. I always remember he and his wife came in to see me and we went to City Tatts and Marie begged me to put him back on. I said, “No, I can’t. The Board has decided and I reluctantly issued the order to sack him but in retrospect I can’t go back on it now.” Any way he did all right afterwards. He did other jobs. I think he had a milk carter’s job for a while. Then all of a sudden he died, and he has been dead for many years now.
Do you remember Maurie Daley coming in? When did you first meet him?
JB: Maurie was in the City Council. I knew Maurie before he went to New Guinea. He was with the Council and then he left and went to New Guinea and took up a job there with a mining company. When he came back he joined the credit union as the Assistant Manager. He raised the question of Owen’s drinking problem with me, I was the Chairman at the time. Whether this was an ulterior motive or not I don’t know, but he raised the question and I looked into it and I followed it then rather closely. I was the Chairman at the time and I thought if something was going to happen I had to know what was going on. This was the reason I did it. Maurice at that particular point of time was the 2IC, Assistant Manager. When Owen was fired he took over the Managership. So that is the way he sort of progressed through the credit union.
He has coped well?
JB: He hasn’t done too badly. I think he has done well, quite frankly. He has looked after his position and sometimes when you see him you think he might need a little bit more work to do, I don’t know.
During his time there have been some problems too, not with what he did but with something an employee did, I understand?
JB: There have been a couple of problems with employees.
Was that during your Chairmanship?
JB: No it has been in recent years. I think this has been brought about by the change of work forces that we have got at the present time. It has been brought about by people being able to move from job to job. Whether that situation will still apply in view of what has gone on just recently I am not too certain.
I was talking about when the Sydney Credit Union was put under direction. Was that during your Chairmanship?
JB: No. It was under Jack Coyne’s. But I object to that. I think that was the greatest injustice that was done to this credit union for the simple fact that the reason why they put it under direction has now been eliminated from the hierarchy of the mob that put us under direction. It cost us a lot of money. The bloke who was here cost us $2,000 a week and he was here for weeks and weeks, coupled with what we had to do with our organisation. The only thing that differed from any other credit union is they maintained the Board, they were frightened to sack the Board. I think there had been too many kicks from somebody. In retrospect now, I reckon they were wrong. I reckon they did the wrong thing. It all happened over a bloke we had in the organisation, without mentioning any names, putting in wrong returns to the Board with outstanding loans. What he was doing was if a bloke had an outstanding loan he wouldn’t put it up because he had re-assessed it. In actual fact the re-assessment wasn’t true at all, the loan was, in accordance with the Act, under duress or in the realms of the thing maybe being a bad debt. This was due to the actions of one bloke. I think it would have been difficult for any Director to find out. They put us under direction, came inside with an inspection and told us they were going to put us under direction. We fought them hammer and tong and asked them to tell us what it was and we would rectify it. But they said no, they were going to put us under direction, which they did do. That was for twelve or eighteen months.
The problem was found out before by the credit union wasn’t it?
JB: It was, in so far as this bloke went on leave. Maurice, in doing his return for the next Board meeting couldn’t find on the last month’s accounts the name of one man he knew was a bad loan. So he went looking into it and found this man had left him off. We then started to alter the situation and rectify it. That was reported to the Board meeting prior to the Board being placed under direction.
In actual fact you told them what had happened?
JB: We didn’t tell anybody, we were just rectifying the situation ourselves.
They must have heard somehow?
JB: Well when they asked we told them what had happened and they just put us under direction. I think it was a means, quite frankly, of trying to slow this credit union down. In retrospect now, the situation if it was happening the same way wouldn’t put this credit union under direction. That was one of the things that happened to us that I think was quite illegal.
Who was put in? Was he from AFCUL, or where was he from?
JB: I can’t think of his name, although I know him very well. I can’t think where he was from other than he was an associate of the Directors of the Institute who bunged us on.
End Tape 2A: 3664 Words: 1 hour 10 minutes
5 SEPTEMBER 1989: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JACK BANNISTER
Right from the start the credit union you, Dermot and various others started, what were the significant changes as they came through do you think?
JB: Well name changes to start off. That was brought about by a series of things that happened. We took in other people and the most recent change to Sydney Credit Union was brought about when we decided that the Council of the City of Sydney was only a minor part of the whole of the operations of the credit union. Several people put up names and Sydney Credit Union was one of them. We submitted them to the Registrar and he agreed to Sydney Credit Union. We had other names that included Sydney but they had other bits and pieces in them. Just Sydney Credit Union was the one that we felt was the best from our point of view and the one that he approved. We were a bit concerned that Sydney by itself might have been a bit too much for him, but he approved of it and that is good. Now I don’t think we will ever change the name again. Sydney is indicative of the City of Sydney and if we can cover the whole of Sydney, this is what we will do.
Is there some movement to drop the bond area, make it open?
JB: Yes there is some movement at the moment to make it an open bond.
What is your view on that?
JB: I am inclined to think that the bond situation is the best, in so far as you get a given operation operating within a given bond area. Now the bond areas are big enough now, in my opinion, to maintain at least one big credit union within a bond area. This has been brought about by the amalgamation of a lot of little credit unions that couldn’t go any further and they joined bigger ones, who in turn joined bigger ones again and so it went on. At the moment we have got over 16,000 members. Well the original credit union would have been about 4,000 and with the chopping down of the City Council it would probably have reduced to 2,000. I think the bond situation is good in so far as it restricts the credit union to a given area. There is another thought that says, “Let’s wipe the bond altogether. Let them go anywhere they like.” That may not be bad if you are like some of the building societies, they are getting members in from all over the place. But from a credit union point of view I think at the present time at any rate it might be better to maintain a bond situation and not let it get out of hand.
What do you suggest should be done if things start to contract? At the present moment there is some doubt as to whether the financial situation of the country might go towards recession.
JB: That is highly problematical. There maybe some thought that this may be the case, but I think quite frankly the powers that be in government ought to have enough common sense to be able to stop it happening. I think if the credit unions adopt that attitude and just proceed along the same lines as they are at the present time they are going to be all right.
If they have to contract, should they contract on to their original bond where they get the payroll deductions, or will that happen automatically anyway?
JB: Well payroll deductions are only one small portion of the whole of the credit union movement. A lot of them are over the counter payments where people sort of come in, pay their account, pay in their weekly wage or whatever it may be, and then go away and leave it and come back the next week and so it goes on. I think probably the payroll deductions is by far the best way to run anything, particularly a credit union. If we lose payroll deductions I think this is where we might get a lot of bad debts. I think what the credit union should maintain as far as possible is payroll deductions.
So what was the next move after the expansion of the credit union into other areas, taking in other credit unions? That happened to some extent by accident and to some extent by design, what else was the big change that happened in your credit union?
JB: Well the biggest change that has happened, from the credit union’s point of view, is possibly the buildings that we have occupied, the reasons why we occupied them in the first place and the reasons why we got out. Initially we had a room in the Town Hall itself. That was when we were just the Town Hall credit union. Then necessity said that we had to get out of there so we bought a building just across the road. We occupied it for some considerable time and bought the building next door and finally the building next door to that again. Initially we had in mind getting a bigger building and revamping the inside, which we did on two occasions for two of the premises that were over there and this helped us, but then got too small. In looking at the situations we could apply the building to, the regulations at that particular time didn’t allow us to pull the building down like they have done now and rebuild a new one. Just after acquiring the end building there, it was decided it would be in our best interest to get out, get a bigger building and rent. The money we got paid off the buildings, gave us a bit of capital to invest and now we are sitting in this building which is on a rental basis. I think at this particular point in time it is probably the best way to go.
Your investment policy over the years as a credit union, how has that changed? For instance what did you invest the money in that you got from the building and how might that have differed from money you had invested before?
JB: All the investments at the moment are through the Association, the State Association.
They were always that way?
JB: They have been for some time, probably the last ten or fifteen years. There has been no need to invest outside the movement.
The New South Wales Association operates as a bank, does it?
JB: They have got a bank and everybody, I say that but I am not too certain how many credit unions go through their bank, but we go through their bank and I would say all the big credit unions go through their bank. The bank is the Bank of New South Wales, well it was the Bank of New South Wales. That is one aspect that they have promulgated and the bank changed from one bank to another.
From the Rural to New South Wales?
JB: No they didn’t have the Rural Bank.
State Bank as it was then?
JB: I am not sure, I would only be guessing at this point in time. It is a different bank now to what it was originally. That was only brought about by the higher charges the original bank was going to put on. I think quite frankly that is not a bad idea, having a bank through the Association. That is where all our investments have been planned and all the money has been reinvested in the movement that we know.
You say invested in the movement, but it is invested in the money market isn’t it?
JB: Well let’s put it this way, we are obliged by law to have certain reserves. Now those reserves are in the Association. Now the Association have said they are going to have this bank, so they go through that particular bank but it is all run by the Association. Now as far as the legal responsibility is concerned we are doing the right thing by investing in the Association, or investing in the bank that the Association runs.
Are you aware whether they have somebody in the bank who actually picks the investment?
JB: I am not aware of that.
You mentioned the start of computerisation, how did that change during the period of your Chairmanship over the years?
JB: Well we moved out of the original computer bureau that we were in and we bought our own.
What was that do you know?
JB: A Sequel. We are in the process now of changing from that machine to a new machine, that is an American machine, and there are seven companies going on to this machine. As far as we are aware it will be the be all and end all of all time. It doesn’t matter what capacity we get to use it, it will cope with it. That is what we are led to believe. They have established a premises out in the western suburbs somewhere. They have appointed a Manager to run the EDP system and we will have, when it is tested, in-house facilities to just go straight on to the computer. The reason we got this is that we would have been in the process of buying a new computer because the computer downstairs is just reaching the end of its tether. The other six companies are in the same boat. Now there was no way that any one organisation would have been able to buy a computer and run it successfully because they are too dear. So when it was mooted that the seven come in to buy a computer and run it there was twelve months of investigative work went into this one. The investigation work was done by the body from the Water Board. They are in it, we are in it and five other companies are in it, of course. We think it could be the be all and end all as far as computers are concerned from now until whenever. I am hoping this will be the end of our computer problems. Whether it is is another question.
Where you involved with the Schools and training? Can you tell us about those ones?
JB: Well with Credit Union Schools there were two lots. There was a model that was run by the Association and then we ran our own, not so much as I would have liked to have seen. The ones that were run by the Association were Schools that were run for the benefit of credit union people generally. There is one that was run by the Managers’ Association, that is held down in Albury every year and goes for a week. That is attended mainly by Managers and you get other Credit Union Schools that are run by the Association, also by ICUD, that are run at weekends. They are directed mainly at Directors. I can’t see too many Managers attending Schools that would be held at the weekends, but you get plenty of Directors. I was in a School just last weekend and on the Friday night there were eighty at a dinner and on the Saturday there were seventy-six, I think it was, who attended the all-day School. Now that was good. I think the big beauty about it is this, it is not so much the things you hear spoken about at the actual seminar itself, it is the things that you talk about to the people you meet and this is where all the meat comes out in my opinion. I think the subjects that are covered are quite good, but you get a bit of a repetition. It is only by talking to the people who you meet down there do you find out what they are doing, how they do it and how it can affect your or your method of doing something. I think from this point of view this is good. The next big session will be the Annual Meeting, that is in September. The Annual Meeting of the New South Wales Credit Union League, the New South Wales Association. Then following on that there is the one up in Darwin for the national body. Then the ICUD one in Canberra in October. That is the only reason why I am not going to the one in Darwin, I prefer to go to the one in Canberra.
Do you remember the early Schools, Newport ones?
JB: Yes Newport was a beauty. I learnt more. I didn’t go to the initial one we held at Newport. We couldn’t see any reason why two or three people would have the whole week there, so what we did we allocated different people for different days, depending on what the subjects were. Instead of getting two or three people there, we got about eight or nine, which was good. Now this is where we put on the beer. It was just something that came out of the blue. This has been the format now, from our point of view, for all Schools. Sitting down and talking to people and giving them a couple of beers. I can recall at the first School at Newport, that you are talking about, where one bloke at one of the meetings in the rooms that we had posed a question. Somebody asked why he had posed that. He said he was frightened to do it at the meeting just in case everybody else knew the answer and he was the only billy goat. There wasn’t one person in the room who knew what he was talking about, so they discussed it and eventually got an answer which they thought was correct. Then they asked the next day and got other answers. Eventually that led to a series of questions that eventually came back with the right answers. Funnily enough, the right answer was very similar to what we had finished up with in the room. They are the sort of things that happen at Schools and that didn’t only happen at that School, it happens at just about every School you go to. You are getting people into the movement who are new, been in it for only a small period of time, and they want to know what is going on. Now the best way to do it is not to get up and ask at the Annual Meeting, go and ask a bloke when you are having a few beers with him. That is when he will tell you and he will ask the bloke next door and you might get four or five different answers. Then you might be in trouble trying to work out which one is right, but it gives you more to think about. Generally speaking you will get two or three people who will come up with almost the same answer.
Now were you involved much in the Chapter of Sydney Credit Unions at all?
JB: Not much. I have been to many Chapter meetings, but the City of Sydney Chapter is virtually the only Chapter that has kept going. That died off a few years ago and then resurrected and it is going quite well now.
What about the New South Wales Association?
JB: I have always attended the Annual Meetings of the League. That has been really the main contribution of any credit union, the Annual Meetings. I have always been a representative of this credit union for the last twenty-six years.
The national meetings?
JB: Yes, I have been to quite a few national ones, AFCUL. The big one that I remember from AFCUL was down in Tasmania when the Federal Treasurer announced that we would be free of tax. We had tried and we went to a court hearing in Adelaide. This is going back a long time now, long before this Federal Treasurer down in Hobart.
Which Federal Treasurer?
JB: Frank Crean.
So that would be 1972?
JB: It would be all of that. The year before there had been a court case in Adelaide. We were going to do it here in New South Wales but it was learnt that a little credit union in South Australia had already made application and they were listed to have a court hearing. We thought if they had all the same conditions that we had, we would go with them rather than start a new case. So there were about four of us went down to Adelaide to hear it, which we did do. Dermot Ryan was there, but I can’t remember the other two or three who were there. I think Jack Coyne and Maurice Daley might have been there. Anyway the final result of this was against us. There were four questions that had to be answered. Three of them were answered but the fourth one was that the thing had been registered out of time and that threw the whole thing into non-existence virtually. So then the Federal Treasurer, who had been approached quite extensively by Dermot Ryan, and to give him his due this is where his forte is, his liaison with the Labor Government of the day, made the announcement that he had exempted the credit unions from tax. That was good. Now we are still trying to maintain that situation although the present Treasurer has not made any reference to credit unions in any of the budgets that have recently been brought down. We are hoping this situation is still going to go on.
Do you think he is going to continue to ignore you?
JB: Well with credit unions there isn’t that much money that can be taxed. Well there is, but it is infinitesimal when you look at the billions of dollars that are tied up in a Federal Budget. So we are hoping this will go on and I think personally what we have got to do is shut up about it all, instead of having all the belly-aches like AFCUL just speaking-off as much as they possibly can and drawing attention to themselves. What they want to do is talk when something is happening. That was the recent Chief Executive Officer of AFCUL who did that. The one before Reg Elliott.
Have you been on any overseas trips for the credit union?
JB: Yes I have been to America. To start off with I went firstly to Fiji.
You and who?
JB: Well there were about eleven people. It was an Australian thing that took the people from here over to their Annual Meeting. We had about a fortnight there, I think it was. We met all the credit union people over there and eventually finished up at their Annual Meeting on, I think, the Sunday. That was good. That taught us, and this was really in the early stages of our own credit union, how the credit union movement operated in other countries. Then I was connected with the Organisation Committee that ran the Annual General Meeting for AFCUL, with Maurice Riley, who is dead now, from the County Council.
No relation to Dermot?
JB: No. There was another bloke from the south coast originally, his name just eludes me, but he didn’t last long. Maurice and I batted on for a number of years, until this man from AFCUL came in, I will think of his name soon. To cut a long story short we used to go and organise the Annual General Meeting for AFCUL. We would do two visits. We would go down initially and see where it was proposed to hold it. Then we would go back and talk turkey with them and then finalise all the accounts. Then we would come back and tell AFCUL their next Annual Meetings was in Adelaide, Melbourne or wherever. We had one planned for Western Australia which the Western Australian Chairman killed right at the last minute. That was going to be a beauty. We went to Western Australia, Maurice, myself and a man from Ansett, we saw for the first time ever the General Manager of this hotel in Western Australia and everything was hunky-dory. I think it would have been about, and I could be wrong on this, $30 more than the airfare to stay a week in this hotel. We were getting a slug off the airfare and we were getting a slug off the people in the hotel. But the Chairman of the Western Australian Association at a meeting of AFCUL knocked it back. We have been to New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. Just before Maurice Ryan died we got a letter from Bert, the man in AFCUL, and he wrote to us thanking us for everything we had done but they were going to do it themselves from then on. They have done it themselves and they have got other people in to run it for them. They charge them through the nose. Now all they were up for was the cost of our airfares, because the accommodation was all for free, and we were getting airfares pretty cheap too because of Ansett. That was all they were up for. Now they are up for thousands and thousands of dollars for the organisation that runs it. I don’t know, that is the way it goes.
Other overseas trips?
JB: Then with that organisation we went to the United States. The World Council was coming out here in 1979 and Maurice and I went to see the World Council meeting in Denver three years prior, 1976 or 1977 I think. We saw how that operated, talked to the people there and got the feel of what was going on. When that was over we went up to Canada, the Annual Meeting there, from there we came back home. They were the only overseas trips that I did as far as this particular aspect was concerned.
What did you find was different in the credit unions and what was similar in the credit unions in America and Canada to Australia?
JB: Not much at all really. They operated the same way.
Had they been going for very long over there?
JB: They had been going longer but the things that we had try to overcome, they had also tried to overcome similar problems in the years gone by. But it just didn’t work out. There was no way we could bridge a gap. Just recently two of our blokes were over there to look at the situation in Canada. Prior to that Dave Lawlor and Stan Brown went over and they were having a look at seeing if they could bridge a five or six year gap that existed between us and them. They wanted to close up that gap but there was no way you could do it. That five or six years is a natural enemy that you have just got to progress through. You can’t sort of close it up. They were the official visits that I went on as far as the credit union is concerned. But I went to all the other States of Australia.
When you were training in the Air Force in Canada did you see anything of credit unions then?
JB: No, I didn’t even know the existed. When Kevin came back and told us I was surprised that I was there and didn’t sort of know anything about them. Nobody that I spoke to mentioned anything about them. I was under the impression, even when Kevin came back, that they might have been just few and far between. After we learnt, particularly in British Columbia, how long they had been going there and what clientele they had I was astounded that I hadn’t heard that they were in existence when I was there during the War.
So when did they start in Canada?
JB: Long before the War.
End Tape 2B: 4024 Words: 1 hour 15 minutes
5 SEPTEMBER 1989: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JACK BANNISTER
Can you remember the insurance controversy over CUNA Mutual as related to this credit union?
JB: Well as it related to the movement generally might be a better way of attacking it. Yes we were closely associated insofar as that we knew Dermot Ryan, who was very closely associated with this particular movement, and we knew Stan Arneil, who was also very closely associated with the movement. Now after visits to and from America Dermot tells the story that when we went to Hawaii everything apparently was all stitched up and they were going to get it back here. But it didn’t happen that way unfortunately and the end result of it happened at an Annual General Meeting held opposite the University, out on the southern side, the University of New South Wales. It happened on a Saturday morning at a meeting of the ANZ Credit Union. The Chairman of the time, Ken Miller, raised the question generally and outlined it and then Stan Arneil wasn’t allowed to address the meeting. He said he’d had plenty of time to address the meeting and he wouldn’t allow him. So to cut a long story short, Stan picked his bat up, together with the then Chairman of the credit union to which Stan belonged, and just left the meeting. That, to my knowledge at any rate, was the be all and end all of the bit that happened concerning Stan Arneil. Since then they have investigated it and they have come up with a different scheme altogether as far as the insurance is concerned and I think it is working better. One end result of all that is that the bloke that started it still is not talking to a lot of the people. I met him a few years ago now in a church at Manly Vale. I spoke to his wife and I spoke to Stan and he just completely ignored me. So from that day to this I have never spoken to him because he never speaks to me, but I speak to his wife quite regularly.
What was the issue?
JB: The issue was about insurances. It was alleged that the insurance that we were paying wasn’t the correct amount of money that was originally agreed upon. It was proved that the contributions that we were making were being delivered to the United States, tipped in the Pool there and as a result the new premiums were coming back here. No it was allegedly arranged that the Australian organisation would have a separate Pool rate so therefore any contribution would go into the Australian rate and from there would be determined a new rate for the next year. But according to everybody it was going to America and being re-arranged on the national body, or it might have been an international body, I don’t know. But that is how it all came about. It was a pity really because Stan was a powerful worker but he got things a little bit off-hand. He didn’t know how to run things. He knew how to get them organised but when you put him into running them, like he was in charge of the Shop Assistants’ Credit Union which went broke. He got out of it before it went broke, but that is another question. But I think was Stan’s failing. He had tremendous powers to do certain things but when he got there he should have knocked off but he continued along certain other lines which just led him down hill.
Do you reckon he shouldn’t have taken the job of Manager of CUNA Mutual in Australia?
JB: I have got no objections to him doing that, but the arrangement that was made when the boys went to Hawaii was completely different to what Stan wanted to do when he organised it. But he was being directed, in my opinion, by the powers-that-be in America. Now whether their directions were any different to the directions that the boys got when they were in Hawaii I don’t know. Obviously they were, because Miller at the Annual Meeting of the New South Wales Association got up and outlined the case and this is what he said, so you can only believe him.
Did you get on well with Ken Miller?
JB: Yes. He is still operating in the movement quite extensively.
Was he an academic?
JB: I don’t think so. He was the General Manager of Teachers’ Credit Union.
What is he now?
JB: He is retired.
Dermot was of the same mind as him, was he?
JB: Yes, as far as this particular subject was concerned.
Did he disagree with him on other things?
JB: Well Dermot would disagree with everybody on other things until he got it straight. That was one of his fortes I think, because he had the ability to see certain things and go anybody who thought any different to them.
Did Dermot ever change his mind when he thought he was wrong, or did he never think he was wrong?
JB: I don’t know, to be quite honest. I found him wrong just recently and he came out and said something that sort of exonerated him from doing it. One thing just recently, talking about Dermot and finding him wrong, he made a statement coming home the last time we were in Canberra, just comparatively recently, about the loss of one of our Directors. I said, “That’s not right, Dermot.” He said, “It’s bloody well right.” So we sent him a copy of the Minutes where it said Johnny Prescott resigned from the credit union this year and he had said he had resigned ten years ago. He wouldn’t have any note or anything about it.
Keeping on that vein, Dermot, for a while. Do you think he was the right man for the right place?
JB: Yes I do, for two purposes to start off with. Firstly, the purpose of the City Council Credit Union he was the only bloke, in my opinion, who would have had the ability and the nous to get it off the ground. Once he got it off the ground and he opted into other areas I would say that is all right. Now the self-same thing came with AFCUL. I reckon he was the right bloke to get that off the ground too. In my opinion those two functions that he has done has more than cemented him in the credit union movement. What he does now is another thing. There is the Australian Historical Society and believe you me there is nobody who is better adapted to doing that and to contacting the right persons. We were recently down in Canberra on this and the people he saw confused me because I wasn’t there the last time. I was crook the last time and I didn’t go with them, but they sort of harried away the last time and I met these people as a stranger whereas they knew them from one other time. I couldn’t see the connection, but after listening to them I could see the connection and why he has been there. That augers well for itself and augers well for the movement too. What is going to happen to the Australian Historical Society, and I say this advisedly, if Dermot should ever die I don’t know. But it will go on and probably somebody else like myself or somebody else will take it on.
Tom Kelly?
JB: Yes, but Tom is getting a bit like me, we are getting too old. So is Dermot. We are nearly seventy and that is the way it is going.
How old is Dermot?
JB: He is older than me and I am sixty-nine. Time is running out for us and that is the reason that we are trying to do as much as can now. People don’t realise it, they think we are just doing it for ourselves.
Over the years in the credit union the trouble from bad debts, has it increased do you think?
JB: I think that our position, and the City Council’s position or the Sydney Credit Union’s position, is the right aspect of this. With all our bad debts we write them off periodically and then put them in the hands of the debt collecting agency and it is amazing the amount that we get back. We don’t then have to provide the necessary requirements laid down by the Savings Reserve Board with regards to the amounts that we lay down to recover them, so that gets us out of that. But it also puts the debt in the hands of a professional debt collecting agency who are doing wonders in getting them back. Now we are doing them through a special organisation and also through the Association, not necessarily the same debt in both cases, but it is good and we are getting a lot back. If you see our returns you will see where we are getting collectively month in and month out anything up to $40,000 and this is good.
Do you reckon there are been any changes in the savings and loans counselling over the years? Has it changed in the credit union?
JB: Yes it has changed. When we first started to get a loan was something else again. There was no other organisation that we designed to give blokes like myself, or the other people in the City Council Credit Union anyway, a loan. Nowadays what do you do, everybody and his uncle can go and get a loan. The system has been geared to cope with this and the more loans that an organisation has got out the better it is from their point of view, even though they might have tremendous bad debts. All they seem to do is plough it out in loans. That is where it has changed. Whereas in the early stages, from our point of view, to give a loan to a bloke, and it might have been only one hundred pound, you knew you were going to do him some good and he was going to exercise that $100, or whatever it was we gave him, in the truest sense. Nowadays what do they get loans for? To buy motor cars I suppose. This is just the way things have changed. In those days it might have been paying something off his house or something to keep him going. Things have changed and instead of looking back you have got to look for the future. We have got to start looking at what is happening now and what is likely to happen in the future.
While you have just said that, what do you think is the challenge for the future of the credit union?
JB: The challenge? I think the big challenge will be to maintain the credit union.
To keeping going?
JB: To maintain it. There have been statements made that the whole economic process will be altered some time in the future. Now whether that is going to involve the credit union, and I can only assume that it will, is worthy of a lot of consideration.
But it is changing all the time isn’t it. I mean you have had to cope with competing directly with banks. You have moved into their market to some extent, the credit union movement, Sydney Credit Union amongst them, created the market whereby ordinary people could get loans, so the banks then challenged you on your own ground but you have succeeded. The credit union movement has grown over the years.
JB: Well it is starting to slow down now by virtue of numbers. Whereas, we will say ten years ago, we might have been making 1,600 members a year, say 2,000, nowadays what we lose and what we make up are virtually static. So the growth of this credit union has been reduced to an absolute minimum. This in itself applies to all credit unions so therefore this is going to have a bearing on whatever you are talking about now as far as money is concerned. I am not too certain as to what we do with regard to further financing the organisation that we have got. I don’t know to be quite honest. I think what we have got to do is be more than careful in the terms that we as a Board lay down for the people to observe.
How have they changed over the years, the terms that you have laid down as a Board?
JB: Well I am not referring to what we have laid down, I am just saying the general conditions. If you cast your mind back to the early stages of our credit union, as I said before when a bloke probably got a loan of one hundred pound and that might have been the maximum at that particular point in time, that was for something, generally speaking, that applied to his house, the means of getting something to live on. I think nowadays the majority of all loans, from our point of view at any rate, is for the purchase of motor cars. Now there is a different sort of strategy. One is for immediate need in a house the other one is catch-as-catch-can, get a motor car.
Don’t you think there are less people able to afford to buy houses?
JB: Yes but it didn’t necessarily say just because a person got something for his house in 1970 that he owned a house. It might have been to buy goods for the house, or whatever to keep him going. I think the situation now has gone out of that owning housing situation and the people who are getting loans now are buying other things such as cars and what have you.
Have you ever thought about the difference between us and some other countries, to some extent America but particularly Japan, we spend most of our disposable income on buying a house whereas the Japanese don’t do that, they generally speaking invest it in their own economy, stocks and shares and such things in order to provide the capital for their own economic expansion. Do you think we can learn something from that?
JB: In Australia we well might. But if you cast your mind back to time immemorial in Australia I would say the prime object of the Australian family is to own their house. Now whether that is going to change, or change rapidly, I don’t know. But I think that the present situation is that is forcing a lot of people out of that particular market who can’t afford to buy. Now therefore instead of becoming house owners they are going to become renters, but who is going to pay to build the houses in which they are going to live?
How can the credit unions play a part in the economic activity of the country as it changes? We need to invest more in the productive capacity of the country don’t we? Is there any way the credit unions can help that and profitably help it?
JB: Well say for argument’s sake you wanted to get into the housing market, you are still talking about getting into the housing market aren’t you? How are they going to have sufficient grounds or sufficient money to put down a deposit? We will say for argument’s sake you have got a client coming in and he wants to borrow $100,000 for a house, we will say $80,000 that is a reasonable amount now. Now he has got have at least 1 per cent hasn’t he, so that is $8,000 he has to have. What about all the other things that he will need to get in the house when he gets it. One thing about the present generation, not like you and I where when we bought a house we bought the house and then slowly but surely stacked it up with the furniture that went in, nowadays you see a couple and they don’t buy a house, they buy a house full of furniture and everything is right for them. Now that situation, if the present trend continues, is not going to happen. Now are they going to rent a house with that or what. I am buggered if I know, but how are we going to stop it?
I can only speak from my own point of view and the people I know. Most of the people I know are renting not owning.
JB: Well out where you live I suppose that would be the case wouldn’t it?
I am back on the rental market because I got divorced, but that was just one of those things.
JB: I will be that way shortly, back on the rental market, my house is too big you see and I want to get out of it. The whole house is 73 foot wide by 190 feet deep and it takes me two days to cut the lawns, so I am going to get out.
You will be renting a unit I suppose, or a town house?
JB: That is what I am looking for at the moment, a unit.
The prices at the moment are ridiculous.
JB: High or low?
High.
JB: Do you reckon they are going to come down?
I have a feeling that they have to.
JB: So do I. That is just like selling my house.
They never have though, come down. They ease off a little but they never really come down. They just sort of sit there for a while before they jump up again.
JB: That is true too. The person I was speaking to about selling mine has got some wonderful ideas but I don’t think they are going to work. Anyway we will see.
Now they are trying to encourage older people to take some of the equity in their house and spend it.
JB: Well that is not a bad idea anyway. Get into the banks and let the banks keep the mortgage or whatever. Why don’t you spend it? When you are dead what are you going to do?
So you are arguing away from the traditional thing now, aren’t you?
JB: Well I think the whole trend is to change the complete system we have got here in Australia. It is the ability of a person to own the house that they live in. Nowadays I reckon it is going the other way because they are getting too dear.
That’s right, it is going to be that way. We are not changing that, it is happening. We are becoming part of a world market. The middle class of the world are the market for our houses now, not just the middle class of Australia.
JB: That’s right, I couldn’t agree more.
As for the working class of Australia there are not in the market for houses I am afraid.
JB: It is like all the people coming from Hong Kong.
They are in the market for houses because they can’t get over here unless they have got money.
JB: That’s right and it is only the ones that have got money that come over and buy the places.
So we are in a world market. I think that is what has changed but I am not sure if it has changed for the better, not for our own people. We are in one world I know but it is going to be hard for the people at the bottom, harder for the people at the bottom.
JB: That’s for sure. If you get a person out of a house that could originally afford to buy that place and they rent it, it is all right while they are working but once they stop working?
You’ve got a problem haven’t you. Mind you this is the superannuation thing. I was wondering how far the credit unions could get into that?
JB: I don’t know, but it is the ‘in’ thing as far as the Government is concerned.
Obviously, because they realise there is going to be an awful lot of people who unless they make provision for themselves government will not be able to afford to support.
JB: That’s right. But what I am concerned with is that with super how much a bloke is going to get when he actually retires. Say, for argument’s sake, he doesn’t own a house up until that stage, if they are only going to give him ‘x’ amount of dollars out of his superannuation scheme he might not be able to buy a house. So he is going to be no better off than what he was before he got the super. So how do you solve it?
Well if he doesn’t put his super away he won’t be able to afford to rent the house.
JB: How far can he rent it, even with his super? ‘X’ number of years and bingo what happens then?
That is why they are trying to push it into an annuity rather than a lump sum.
JB: Well that is not a bad effort providing he gets enough initially to buy a house.
The problem as I see it is that they are not initiating anything at all, they are reacting to a set of circumstances.
JB: Tell me what is different, or what is new? Hasn’t this been the case all along? Just reacting to a new set of circumstances?
Yes, but they have also planned somehow for the future whereas I don’t feel that they are at the present moment. They are reacting to a set of circumstances that they created. They are welcoming in people with money from overseas. The people from overseas with money promptly buy something which is already built which takes it out of the market for the people that are already there.
JB: It increases the market at the same time on other houses.
Now how can the credit union react positively and profitably to these circumstances?
JB: At this particular point in time I can’t tell you.
Neither can I, but looking at a history of a credit union, or anything else, the reason I am asking you is I think the purpose of the history is not only to document the past it is also to carry it further and learn from what happened before and what is happening now to try and go further into the future.
JB: I agree with all of that, but do you think that the changing circumstances that are before us today are influencing the Board members who think along similar lines?
Yes I am sure they are.
JB: Well, therefore, that is going to change what happened yesterday to what happens tomorrow. Therefore, you can’t say, “I am going to have yesterday’s conditions tomorrow.”
Certainly not. You can’t go back.
JB: What you are doing is you getting involved in the outside world, how do you stop that?
You don’t.
JB: Well something has got to be done. I can’t see how this organisation, this credit union organisation, can change what is happening outside. They can help it, but how do they change it? How do they put it back to what it was?
They can’t do that.
JB: Well something has got to be done otherwise it is just going to get out of hand completely and the whole bloody thing is just going to crash down on us.
Not necessarily, it constantly changes. Everybody reacts to the changes that are happening. They might react in a positive way, they might react in a negative way. Some of them react in an insular way where they are only thinking about their own little world and not the larger issues maybe. People who run credit unions have a great influence. You people have had a great influence.
JB: Yes we have but I think at the present time it is slowly but surely slipping behind us, the influence that we had. The circumstances outside are changing and they are changing that rapidly that we can’t keep up with them.
You can’t understand what to do?
JB: We understand what to do but by the time we do it we are behind.
The speed of change is too rapid?
JB: That may well be the case. It all depends on the Board. Look at this way, things happen almost overnight. Now we will say, for argument’s sake, it happens the day after we have a Board meeting now the next Board meeting is not for another month. The whole structure could fall down around our ears in that time and not a thing is done about it. This is the way it could affect the economy.
Are you serious about that? I mean surely if something was falling around your ears the Manager would call a Special Meeting?
JB: We hope so but who is to tell whether he will or he won’t. It depends on what his attitude is as to whether he calls the Board in. Now I am not saying this would or wouldn’t happen in this credit union, but assume that it does we are back further than what we were the day before yesterday.
Well the climate is not necessarily right for everything. We still haven’t got anywhere as far as challenges for the future.
JB: Challenges for the future are coming up all the time, aren’t they, and what are we going to do about it?
Well we have got to identify them first haven’t we?
JB: Yes that is for sure, but who can see it. I mean a challenge yesterday mightn’t be the same challenge today or tomorrow.
I wasn’t saying it was, but I was asking what do you think the challenge is now?
JB: Well it is the way the money market is changing. It is the way that people think about the application of money. I can see people that wanted to borrow a loan we will say yesterday to build a house, today are thinking very seriously about it, tomorrow will give it a miss because they can’t afford it.
They can’t afford to save you are saying?
JB: Well that is one thing, but they can’t afford to pay the interest either. The interest is sky-rocketing and they can’t afford on the other had to pay the deposit.
I am in that boat too, and I don’t expect it to get any better.
JB: That attitude of your’s is pretty general at the moment.
My attitude is that for the first time in my life I have to make systematic savings.
JB: Right oh. Do you think that attitude would apply to a lot of other people as well?
No I don’t.
JB: It has got to, mate.
I know, but it isn’t.
JB: Why?
Because they feel they might as well spend it, it is not worth anything.
End Tape 3A: 4528 Words: 1 hour 40 minutes
5 SEPTEMBER 1989: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JACK BANNISTER
I would like to ask you about a few of the people you have been involved with over the years in Sydney Credit Union and the movement generally. The first one is Kevin Yates, when did you first meet him? I know we have mentioned him before, what was he like and what do you think he gave to the movement?
JB: Well even though I had met Kevin Yates years ago I really became involved with Kevin Yates comparatively recently when he was the Chairman of the Australian Credit Union Historical Co-operative. Unfortunately we were doing histories of people in the credit union movement at that particular point in time but Kevin died before anything could be taken down from him. This is a pity because all of the information that he had with regard to credit unions and the information that he got when he was in Canada during the latter part of the last War is all gone by the board. We can’t sort of get any of it back from him. Kevin was a tower of strength. He was a bloke you couldn’t help but like and when he spoke about anything it was well worth listening to because he had something to relate to everybody.
Somebody else who is well-known throughout the movement, Father Ganey, did you ever meet him?
JB: Yes I did. I met Father Ganey quite a number of times. I think that I might have mentioned to you earlier that we went to Fiji early in the piece, 1966, 1967, and that is when I first met Father Ganey. Now I have also met Father Ganey on his trips out here and he has always been a tower of strength and a bloke who was simple. He has probably restricted his knowledge of the movement that we are in to the people of Fiji but nevertheless had a good message to impart to the people in Australia. He was a tower of strength and I am sorry to see him go.
Of the people who were involved at the beginning of the Sydney Credit Union have you memories of Pat Hackett?
JB: Yes, used to work with Pat as a matter of fact in the City Council, in the Treasury. He came a lot after me, but Pat finished up as the Town Clerk of South Sydney which wasn’t a bad proposition in those days. He had a fiery temper, Pat. I’ll tell you one incident about Pat. He was down with Dermot, a few other blokes and myself at City Tatts. When we came out there was nobody on the footpath, it was about 11.30, 12.00 at night, and he said, “We’ll have a race.” So everybody got down on the footpath and somebody said, “Go.” All the other blokes, but Pat, stood up and Pat went for his life straight up Pitt Street and he didn’t stop until he got to Park Street. Lost his hat, his hat blew off, he always wore a hat did Pat. When he came back he said, “Why didn’t you so-and-so’s run?” We said, “We didn’t think it was a good race Pat, there were too many people in the way.” There wasn’t a soul on the footpath. That was typical of Pat, if he wanted to do anything he did it. He wasn’t a bad sort of a bloke, but he made a few faux pas I would say. One thing I remember about Pat, too. I used to run an ex-servicemen’s association in the Town Hall. This goes back years and years and for years I just used to collect the money and bank it and make a return at the end of twelve months and never have an Annual Meeting, no members in it. Pat used to do the audit. This particular day when he sent the audit return in he put in a letter that this bloke hasn’t conducted a meeting for the last ten years. So down I go to the mob down in the Department of Lands. They said to me, “Here is a letter we have got from your accountant.” I said, “Oh yes, what is that about?” They read it to me and asked, “Is that right?” I said, “Yes, that is extremely right.” They asked what the story was about it. I told them and I said, “Incidentally, you people have got have had an Annual Return every year since this organisation has been going and as far as I am concerned that is positively right.” They said they weren’t denying that, but how about getting the thing going again. So I said I would and we got it going again and I handed over to a bloke when I left and as far as I know it is still going and they are having Annual Meetings, so that is good.
What about Ron Prescott, do you remember him?
JB: Yes. Ronnie I think loved the Council too much. He wanted to work in it all the time. He was the Treasurer for the credit union initially and he then got a job in the new EDP system and I think became in charge of it eventually. He used to live and sleep in there. It was always computing and making new programs for it. Ron was with the credit union for a number of years and eventually he asked to be relieved on account of this new position that he had with the computers and he hasn’t been in for some time. A nice bloke Ron. I can recall he lived with his brother after his mother died at a place up on the south coast. I think they had a fire, somebody went to bed and left something on and burnt the place down. He has moved since then, but where he is living now I wouldn’t have a clue.
He had a number of interesting nicknames.
JB: Yes he did too.
Some people used to call him ‘God’.
JB: Well he used to think he was ‘God’ at times, he used to make that many decisions. Some of them were right and some of them were wrong.
What decisions were these?
JB: Decisions about anything, particularly when we were drinking and somebody would come up. Ron would be in there and somebody would ask him a question and he would say he would give an opinion on that. Whether he was right or wrong or not I don’t know, but they were the sort of opinions he used to give.
Another nickname he used to have was ‘The Whale’.
JB: Oh yes, ‘The Whale’. I don’t know how he got that, I think it might have only been on account of his size. He was a real big bloke about 6 foot 2 inches high and at one stage he was about twenty stone, he was a big boy.
You referred to him as ‘Moby Dick’.
JB: ‘Moby Dick’, that is what he was known as.
What about Keiron Thomas, did you work with him much on the credit union?
JB: Yes Keiron was in charge of the Internal Audit. He took over from Stan Anderson. He was the last one in it, really because a couple of years ago, as I might have mentioned earlier, when the auditors put this clamp on the accounts he couldn’t do anything. So they asked Richards whether he would release it and he said no, so Keiron thought then it would be the best thing to get out so he did. He was a nice a bloke. As a matter of fact I heard a little bit of his interview earlier on in the piece.
You said that couldn’t be right, talking about ‘larrikins’. Do you reckon the Sydney Credit Union were not larrikins in the early days, the Directors?
JB: Could well have been for some of them, but I think that the interpretation that he put on it was not quite right.
You don’t reckon you were a bunch of larrikins running down Pitt Street in the middle of the night?
JB: We could have been, but everybody does something like that and you don’t regard everybody as being a larrikin do you?
Did you ever hear of a fight that almost took place in City Tattersall’s Club one night?
JB: Yes. That is the one I spoke to you about where Roy Tulloch was present. I finished up from City Tatts to the Town Hall.
This one was supposed to be in City Tatts.
JB: This one could have started in City Tatts. It went all up Pitt Street and into the Town Hall. They were still doing it in the Town Hall. I think that was Dermot Ryan and the auditor, Frank Richards, but I am not too certain who the second one was.
Maybe it was the same fight, they had their coats off apparently, in the club.
JB: Right. Well they would have been spoken to.
They were spoken to apparently, that is the start of the story.
JB: That could well have been the start of the incident. Everybody had to wear a coat and a tie in those days over at City Tatts. Now they are slowly but surely relaxing their rules about wearing a tie but you still have to wear a coat. If you haven’t got a coat you get one from the bloke on the desk.
Do you remember a difference of opinion, do you remember when Sid Harris stood as a Director and he displaced Bob Hale at that time?
JB: Yes, but Bob Hale resigned. Nobody in the credit union has been actually deposed by somebody standing in election with them, somebody else has resigned. Bobby Hale resigned and Sidney was elected. There were a number of candidates there and Sid was elected at an Annual General Meeting.
I was told by somebody else that Sid Harris was after replacing one of the other Directors, but that Bob Hale just resigned by accident.
JB: No. Bob Hale resigned and didn’t stand. I think Sidney Harris came in but whether it was for Bob Hale, I assume you checked this thing when you mentioned Bob Hale.
Well it is a mystery, you see.
JB: Well the only way you are going to learn that is to look at the Minutes.
I think I will have to ask Sid Harris, because he was the one who came in. The person said to me Sid Harris was after replacing so-and-so, but it didn’t happen and he ended up replacing Bob Hale.
JB: All we have got to do is find out when Bob Hale resigned.
But who was the person he was aiming to replace?
JB: That was Bob Hale as far as I was concerned. See Bobby Hale resigned and didn’t stand for re-election. He wasn’t beaten at an Annual Meeting where he stood for re-election.
Well it is still a mystery. What about Jack Coyne? He replaced you as Chairman, after you resigned, retired as Chairman. Did you work with him?
JB: No. I didn’t work with him in the Council. Jack was with a different organisation than me, he was up with the City Engineers and I was either with the Treasury or the Audit. However, when I resigned and Jack was appointed he just got there by one vote. We did think it was be a fait accompli for him to get in, but if one person had changed their vote it wouldn’t have been Jack.
Who would it have been?
JB: Well I don’t know. It could have been anybody, depending which way the votes went. Brian Niven stood at that particular point in time. Brian’s attitude was that he just wanted to maintain the status quo. Now whether that had any bearing on it or not I don’t know, but Roy Tulloch was the Returning Officer for that particular election and I think it was 6:5.
I haven’t managed to get Roy Tulloch in yet. I think he is being a bit coy.
JB: Could well be, but he would be a very good person to get in because he knew a lot of people. He would have a lot to talk about.
Well he seems disinclined to come.
JB: Would you like me to ring him?
I would like that yes, try and persuade him.
JB: Remind me when we leave.
Did you have much dealings with Jack Lange?
JB: Yes. I still see Jack Lange. Jack Lange lives not very far from me to be quite honest.
He was the Solicitor for the credit union.
JB: That’s right. He has now resigned from the firm, but he goes in once a week. He is also the Solicitor for the Ex-Servicemen’s Association and also for the Historical Co-operative. That is where I see him a lot in the Historical bit. Jack’s has always been a tower of strength. I have never known Jack to make a mistake when asked to give any opinion about the credit union movement. He was the official Solicitor for AFCUL. Wait a minute, I will rephrase that, I don’t think he was the official Solicitor for AFCUL but he was the official Solicitor for the New South Wales Board. I can recall him now being at Annual General Meetings sitting up and giving opinions which happened in the early stages holus-bolus.
Do you ever remember him correcting anything Dermot Ryan said?
JB: Not really, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Well he said a couple of them, but I just wondered if you remember any?
JB: Jack Lange did? If he said them, they are right. There is no doubt about that because I have never known Jack to make a mistake in his life. They would be early in the piece if you are going back to Dermot Ryan, so you are asking me to remember a lot now. He was vitally involved with it, you know. I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I will ask Jack what they are.
Well he has got it on the tape.
JB: Well I will see if it is the same version.
What about Maurie O’Brien, you knew him for many years.
JB: Yes I did. I used to work with Maurice. He subsequently left the Council and is working with another firm at the moment. He was an active member of the credit union for some time until he left and his other activities sort of prevented him from keeping on. He, I think, is head of one of the Government Departments now.
Yes, Federal Government. What about Tom Duggan?
JB: Oh Tommy Duggan, a good mate of mine Tom. He wasn’t at the last Board meeting but that is the first time that I can ever remember Tom being away, apart from when we were over in Europe together. Tom is a tower of strength. He says a lot, which is constructive all the time, and for a Board member he is tremendous.
What about as a singer?
JB: Singer?
You don’t know him as a singer?
JB: Yes, he can sing, but he sings ditties. He is very difficulty to get started, he has got to be full of soup I think to get started. Now when he was away with us in Europe he was good because he decided to start off with that he was going off his pledge and he started to drink. It wasn’t going mad in the bus have a few ales or whiskies. Tom used to sing in the bus and he is not a bad singer.
Nobody recorded him by chance, did they?
JB: I don’t think so.
I have had difficulty recording him on that area.
JB: He only does it when he gets a bit full, and he doesn’t get too full at Board meetings, well not by the time I leave at any rate. I don’t know what happens after that.
Do you remember any of the early employees like Mavis Johnson and Kay Dennis, Kay Lawrence as she was. I still haven’t managed to get her in but she still might come.
JB: Yes. Well it is possible. I don’t know about Mavis Johnson, where she lives. She used to live at North Sydney.
Can’t find her.
JB: Well it is possible she may be dead, I don’t know. She was a good scout, Mavis. She came in from the City Engineers. I think that she had some sort of a medical problem and they wanted to get her out of the City Engineers Department, which was a bloody racket anyway. They asked if we could take her and we said yes, so they put her down to us for a day a week I think. She stayed down there five days after the first week and she was a tower of strength down there. She was a tremendous asset to the credit union. I am not too certain now as to how she left, whether she retired from the Council and left or she went back to the City Engineers. I am not too certain.
Well I suppose we should ask if you think the Sydney Credit Union has stuck by its principles right through?
JB: I think so.
What are you most proud of from when you were Chairman, do you think? You were fifteen years Chairman of the Board.
JB: I think the growth and the various other activities that we took over. I think we cemented the existing growth in those days. If there was an opportunity to get in we got in. A classic example of that would be when the County Councils were being taken over and amalgamated. There was a crowd out in the southern section of the City at Rockdale and the County Council had the opportunity of taking them all over. Now unfortunately, the County Council had an attitude that they would only take over people that belonged to County Councils. Now in this organisation there were many other pools of people associated with the County Council and they didn’t want them, so they asked us. That gave us initially the impetus into the southern area and we have gone on to bigger and better things since those days. I think that was the sort of thing, in 1970 even up until 1985, we were organising and doing. Just recently we took over the Government Printing Office. They were closed up, in our area, asked us would we take them over, so we did. That is how 99 per cent of the take overs have taken place. People have asked us to do them and we have stepped in and looked at their organisation and taken over. You can realise now that from about nearly 5,000, to now a present staff of 2,000, we have built up to approximately 16,000 members in our credit union. That is slowly but surely weeding out the ones that are static.
Well I think we have come close to the end. Do you think there is anything else I should have asked you that I haven’t?
JB: Not that I can think of, I don’t suppose. It amazed me that we have gone so long. I think the questions that you have asked have prompted me to reply. I think that the questions that you have asked obviously you have asked other people too, but they are the pertinent questions and I think that is good.
Well we try to get the pertinent ones and not too many of the impertinent ones.
JB: Well I have let myself go and whistled after things, but I think 99.9 per cent of it is the way I see it.
Right. Well in that case I will ask you to read the credit union prayer, if you would Jack.
JB: Right you are.
Lord, make us instruments of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred let us sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon,
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light,
And where there is sadness, joy.
Oh Divine Master,
Grant that we seek not so much to be consoled, as to console,
To be understood, as to understand,
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
Thank you very much Jack Bannister.
End Tape 3B: 3451 Words: 1 hour 10 minutes