9 MAY 1991: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO DAVID LORING
I will ask you where were you born and when?
DL: I was born in Oxford in England during the Second World War.
Did you grow up around there?
DL: No I actually grew up in London, the Old Kent Road, the cheapest place on the Monopoly Board.
I went to school at Abbingdon, Berkshire. We were evacuated from Eastbourne.
DL: Right. I was evacuated into Lancashire during the War.
Where did you go to school?
DL: I went to school at Eldington Road Primary School and then to Brockley County Grammar School, so I am a Grammar School product. I think that is what they called me.
Did you like school?
DL: Some of it yes. In hindsight it was an easy time compared to working.
All these teachers around have got to say yes. I hated school.
DL: I never hated it.
What did you like about school?
DL: I liked the Geography, History and Economics side of things.
What did you dislike?
DL: Maths. Hopeless at maths. Art I thought was a total waste of time. That was about it.
What sort of influence do you think you got from your parents?
DL: Well mother was a very competent-minded lady. She belonged to the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society, which was affiliated with the Co-operative Wholesale Society. She actually went to a number of co-operative courses at a very well-known Co-operative College in Leicestershire, I think it was. So I guess I grew up with co-operatives around me. I got that from my mother. My father was a carpenter by trade and a great do-it-yourself person. I have got that from my father as well, I love do-it-yourself stuff.
What was your first job?
DL: I worked for an insurance company, mainly on the punch card and EDP side. That was Sun-Life in London. I worked there for seven years before I emigrated to Australia. I only had the one job, which lasted seven years, then came to Australia in 1965.
When you came here what job did you find?
DL: I started work for the Prudential Insurance Company, it was the only job I knew so I went to a few insurance companies. I ended up working in the EDP department there and became a computer programmer.
So were you interested in computers, insurance or both?
DL: Probably both, but I enjoy computers. They were fairly new in 1965, 1966 when I first came to Australia. The opportunity came up to go to IBM to have an aptitude test to see if you could become a programmer, see if you were a logical thinker. I made it quite easily because all the other guys that went along thought it was a waste of time and purposely failed the test. So it didn’t take a genius, I got in quite easily because the others flunked it. So I never looked back then. I spent the next three years as a computer programmer.
That is interesting that somebody who didn’t like maths ends up in computers.
DL: Yes. I often wonder where the similarity between maths and logic is at times. I think I am a fairly logical thinker, but not terribly good at maths, not at school anyway.
I must admit I was always impatient with logic myself.
DL: We never really had any grounding in logic at school. It wasn’t a subject, I guess, like it is today.
It was a subject when I was a kid.
DL: I can’t remember it being taught as Logic. I guess the most logical thing I found was Economics. Whilst it was inexact there were certain paths and alternatives which led you in certain directions which seemed logical to me. Logic I think is in the eye of the beholder quite frankly.
So when you left the insurance company, was it to another computer job?
DL: No. I left to go and work in Papua-New Guinea as a Credit Union Development Officer. Whilst I was at Prudential we established the first credit union in an insurance company in New South Wales, in fact in Australia. I ended up as the Secretary of the credit union and I found I was enjoying credit union work far better than the insurance and computer work. So when a job came up in Papua-New Guinea it seemed like an ideal opportunity to continue in credit unions, give insurance a miss, and go overseas in the one hit. So that is what I did.
Did you like it?
DL: Thoroughly enjoyed it. I spent two and a half years in Papua-New Guinea developing credit unions in industrial sites. The brewery, the bakery, the university, airlines, ABC, Burnsfield Steamship and so on.
Who were you being employed by?
DL: Strangely enough the Reserve Bank of Australia. I was being employed by the opposition to sell a product that really was in competition with them. It was all part of the monetisation of the Territory of Papua-New Guinea.
You mean they were deliberately going out to sell them money?
DL: Yes, they were selling the concept of savings and loans in an effort to monetise the Territory. They were sort of trying to get big on the barter system and get people used to using money. The best way we could see of doing it was co-operative savings and loans societies.
I didn’t realise.
DL: Yes it is quite strange. All of the people up there were ex-bank employees or, like myself, insurance employees.
It is amazing. I would never have thought that they set out to do that. I would have thought it would have been a bad thing. Do you think it was a good thing?
DL: I think it was a good thing, because I think from their point of view it was far easier to sell a co-operative savings and loans than it was to sell a profit-motivated bank. If we could come up with a system which was in keeping with the village wage of life, and it certainly was, everybody pooling their resources together, living off the same land, killing the food and sharing it between them, it wasn’t that much different when you take it into a financial sphere. They could see the results of their labours. If they saved hard enough they were able to lend money to each other to buy taxis, trucks, open a trade store, build better house and things like that. So it fitted in very well. It sounds strange on the face of it, but logically I think it was a good idea. I am back to logic again, you see.
What years were you up in Papua-New Guinea?
DL: I was there from 1969, 1970 through to 1973.
Did Ron Preston and people like that from the Sydney Credit Union come up at that time, or had they already been up?
DL: I think they came up later, I am not too sure. We had a couple of Victorian people come up to have a look at a few problems up there. One of them stayed up there for two years. We had an English volunteer abroad come up and run a credit union too, we assisted him in that. We had very close links with the Australian movement in those days.
Were there any links between Fiji and Father Ganey over there?
DL: Not whilst I was up there. I believe Father Ganey had gone to Papua-New Guinea before I got up there, he had been up there probably in the mid-1960s. I didn’t get there until 1969.
So exactly what did you do as a Development Officer when you arrived there? Did you have a place to work out of or did you have to set something up?
DL: I worked out of the Reserve Bank building, so I was actually working within the bank using their secretarial services. My major job was to introduce credit unions into industrial areas, much the same way as it was being done in New South Wales, going to companies and organisation and seeing if they would be interested in what was a staff benefit. Again it fitted in pretty well because when I was there they were localising all the jobs so they wanted to get local people skilled in looking after money, in running businesses and so on and one way they felt we could assist them was by setting up a credit union. We had a Board of Directors who were running a mini-business, had a Treasurer, Secretary and so on. So it fitted in extremely well and it made my job a lot easier this localisation.
Had you met Stan Arneil in Australia?
DL: Yes I had seen Stan in action and I think I had been introduced to him once or twice. I knew a little bit about him and I met him up there. A strange thing, I had tea with him and the chap from Victoria and unbeknown to me both of them were fighting like cats and dogs in Australia over insurance and several other things. We knew none of this in Papua-New Guinea and invited both of them to tea. They both turned up and they sat on opposite sides of the table and I guess, in hindsight though we didn’t realise it at the time, they did most of their talking through the other two people at the table. We didn’t really notice they weren’t talking too much to each other until the end of the evening. After a few grogs I think they relaxed anyway.
Who was the person from Victoria can you remember?
DL: Graham Benson.
No wonder.
DL: Yes, you can just imagine the vibes going across that table. Fortunately it was in the open air and I think that helped. It was a restaurant in Lae.
I haven’t met either of those people face-to-face, but I have talked to them both extensively on the phone.
DL: You would know the depth of feeling of both of them around about that time.
Mind you it could have been worse, it could have been Ken Miller or Dermot Ryan.
DL: Yes it could have been those two. In fact I remember telling Dermot Ryan I had had tea with Stan Arneil and Graham Benson and he thought I was joking at the time.
So you were fairly successful out there in starting credit unions?
DL: Yes, talking a bit from memory now, I think I set up fourteen credit unions in about eighteen months. Unfortunately we had the problem up there that faced all industries in that there was pretty much a heavy turn-over of staff within the companies and the Boards of Directors became somewhat inefficient. In the end we decided rather than having fourteen of them up there, with fourteen small problems, we would merge them into one larger credit union and have one big problem which we felt would be more manageable. We didn’t have a name for it and we came down to Sydney and told them what we were doing, I came back on leave one year and I said this was what I was doing. Three blokes around the table who I was talking to just sat there with their mouths open and said that was what they were considering doing with some of the problem credit unions in Sydney. I said, “Now and again it is nice for somebody overseas to tell you what to do.” So we did it. Of the fourteen I think about ten of them merged into the one big credit union and for the first twelve months it was very successful. We were able to pick a very good Treasurer, very good Secretary and out of the eight to ten credit unions we picked a Board of nine people who were very good. Unfortunately we then chose a Manager who, on the face of it, looked very capable but I think the pressure got to him and he ended up running it very poorly. In effect he took some money out of the organisation, left his wife, stole a car, you name it it all happened. The whole thing was placed in receivership by the Registry of Credit Unions up there. So the end result of that particular exercise was a failure. But I think we had proved a point, if we could have kept one good Board together we would have had a very successful credit union. It was very large, we are talking $1 million in those days.
Was there any problems with amalgamating different credit unions with different people with different languages?
DL: Not really. Most people in Port Moresby spoke English, so English was I guess the common language. Most of them also spoke Motto , which is the Papuan language and the others spoke Pidgin. Most Motto speakers could speak Pidgin because it is very easy. The Pidgin people couldn’t speak Motto. We didn’t really have language problems, but we had a few problems where people from different areas didn’t get on with each other, like Chimeras never get on with Gonwaylers, we had a few problems there.
You did try and merge one with different languages did you?
DL: We really didn’t perceive them as being different in language. We saw them as being part of Moresby, therefore as part of the metropolis. It is like saying would be worried about Queenslanders working in Sydney mixing with Victorians, it didn’t arise they were all part of New South Wales organisations.
Did you establish any credit unions up in the Highlands or anywhere like that, village-based?
DL: No. I only looked after the Port Moresby region. I set up one in a village and was looking after a number of small savings clubs. Just by way of explanation, before you set up a savings and loans society in Papua-New Guinea in a village you set up a savings club for a period of twelve months. They had to prove to themselves, and to you, they could save. Once they had done that successfully for twelve months, saved a pool of money without taking too much out, you then gave them the authority to start making loans to each other. So from a savings club they then went to a savings and loans society. I established two savings clubs and made them savings and loans society. A couple of savings clubs never made it, they didn’t have the wherewithal to run a savings and loans society so we didn’t register them.
That was the test?
DL: That was the test. In many ways I think it would have been a damn good idea down in Sydney to have set up a few savings clubs before making them credit unions.
Whose idea was it to do that?
DL: I am not sure. I believe that came from the initial guidelines set down by the Reserve Bank in conjunction with the Papua-New Guinea people.
Have you any idea who was behind the Reserve Bank’s sending you up there to start credit unions, the principle of it? Do you remember who it might have been?
DL: No. I know one of the leading lights before I went up there was a chap called John Phillips from the Reserve Bank. He was very keen, very pro-credit unions, or savings and loans societies. I think he had a hand in it. The chap who is now President of the Reserve Bank, Sir Henry Torobert, he is knighted, was very keen on savings and loans too.
The policy must have originated down here. Do you think it was anything to do with Nugget Coombs?
DL: Possibly, but it was before my time. When I went up there in 1969, 1970, people had been up there for four to five years prior to me. I wasn’t one of the first. I was the first Development Officer within the metropolitan regions up there. I worked a little bit in Lae. Actually did a feasibility study on the Bougainville Copper Mine Credit Union, which as you know has a bit of a chequered history or the copper mine has. I did a feasibility study on that. I also went over to Lae and assisted them to set up a couple of credit unions within Lae which were village-based.
The ones that had been set up before you got there, had they been village-based?
DL: With two or three exceptions, yes. The largest one, and it is still the largest, was called the PSA, Public Service Association Savings and Loans Society. That was in one hell of a mess when we got up there. I was responsible for putting it on to a computer system, so it seems I couldn’t get away from computers. I left computers at Prudential in Sydney and got stuck straight into computers up there. We put that on to a computer system and we employed people and I actually ran it, in conjunction with another guy, for three months before they got other people up there. That was a hell of a time.
So why did you come back?
DL: I had achieved my objectives, or the objectives dealt me. I had achieved them in about two and a quarter years and I could see nowhere else to go in Papua-New Guinea as far as credit unions were concerned. There was no more scope in Port Moresby for setting up credit unions. There were certainly none in Lae. The Bougainville Copper Mine Credit Union was going. There was really no further development. The villages around Port Moresby, I think the potential had been tapped to some extent there. So without sort of moving up into the Highlands, where people were already up there doing what I was doing, there was nowhere for me to go. So I thought it was about time I came down to Australia and worked in credit unions down here.
Did you?
DL: Yes, I got a job at the Association, it was called the League in those days, in 1973 in Burwood.
Who was Manager there at that time?
DL: Les Robinson was the Manager in those days. I had known Les. I had known a few of the guys in the League because they had set up the credit union of which I was Secretary, Prudential. I had been on a couple of credit union courses as part of my training before I went to Papua-New Guinea.
Where were these courses?
DL: Terrigal in the Florida Hotel.
Was this before an AFCUL meeting?
DL: No they were being run most weekends, actually, summer and winter at the Florida Hotel in Terrigal. Stephen Birt was running them, Ollie Rozmeta, a few people like that.
When did you start to run them?
DL: I started running them in about 1974, 1975. I joined Ollie and I joined Stephen Birt and another couple of people whose names have long gone. I would go up there for the weekend and become one of the presenters.
What did you specialise in?
DL: Concept and philosophy was mine. I always enjoyed that one. It enabled me to talk to new Directors and perhaps instil into those people the real meaning of credit unions which I still have in me today.
Which you got from your mother.
DL: Yes probably did.
Co-operative principles.
DL: Co-operative principles, yes. I can still remember the divvy that the co-op paid. Were divvies paid in co-ops in Australia?
The co-op in Australia was fairly well entrenched in Wollongong and Newcastle, but unfortunately they failed to move with the times and they haven’t really survived.
DL: I think the same story happened in England too.
North of England is still going.
DL: Yes I think the North is okay, but in London I couldn’t find the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society store any more. Whether they have changed their names and I wouldn’t recognise them I don’t know but I looked for two of them and they didn’t exist.
Well in the Midlands of England they are still doing well. In Nottingham for instance, the David Jones of Nottingham is the Co-op. They competed well.
DL: Yes they tended to become a bit dinosaurish, they didn’t move with the times.
So what else were you doing at the League when you were working there?
DL: My first job with the League was to sell centralised banking to credit unions, as a specialist from the banking area. It was for the funds held by each credit union to be put into a central pool and that was operating through the ANZ Bank in those days. My job was to get out there and make sure credit unions who weren’t already in it became part and parcel of centralised banking. I also had the job of selling the insurance, we are talking here about the bond and package insurance which covers the credit union records and the loan protection insurance, which insured life. I was selling in direct competition with Stan Arneil in those days. I was selling CIC and Shield against CUNA Mutual and CUMIS.
Did you come across Clarrie Murphy in those days when he was selling CIC?
DL: Yes I met Clarrie pretty early on in those days. I am just trying to think when I first met him. I did meet Clarrie, he was one of the early people I bumped into there.
He was originally the Manager of the League.
DL: That’s right, he was too.
I think he got a bit upset when Les Robinson was over him. He went down to the opposition in Wollongong there, the Southern Association.
DL: Yes he did too. I had almost forgotten some of these things. They will probably come back to me.
He was selling CIC insurance in competition to CUNA Mutual, which was stirring the pot a bit more.
DL: I guess it got worse when I came in and was given the full-time job of doing it.
Had the split started when you joined?
DL: Yes it had started. When I first came on leave from Papua-New Guinea I was invited to attend an Annual General Meeting and that was when the excreta hit the fan really. There were people jumping up and down, points of order, people picked their bat and ball up and went home. Clarrie Steward from the ABC, Stan Arneil, Keith Bastion, I remember all those guys really getting upset about the whole thing. So I knew there was a bit of a battle. But as I had an insurance background, Les Robinson said to me, “Welcome to the League. I have got three jobs, which one would you like?” People these days would give their eye teeth for half a job, I was offered three. He said, “As you have an insurance background would you like to sell this insurance package?” I said, “It sounds like a good idea,” so I got in the car and off I went. Then I was also running the administrative side of the claims for loan protection, handling all the forms to CIC and actually setting up credit unions on centralised banking, showing them how to do bank reconciliations. Whilst I was in Papua-New Guinea, even though I am not a maths person, I decided to take an accountancy course so that if need be I could go into a credit union and at least run the books of a credit union. So I did that, so when I came back bank reconciliations were no problem and I knew my way around a set of books. I spent a couple of years doing that and then I took over the insurance side of things, working pretty closely with Harvey Dickinson then.
Was CIC a co-operative at that stage or had it become a company?
DL: It was CIC in those days when I first met them, so I think they were a company then. We always sold them as an insurance company established for rural co-operatives. That is where there is and we always sold them that way. We never sold them as a current-day co-operative, we sold them as an organisation which had come up since 1918 and worked for co-operatives. That was quite well accepted by credit unions.
An Australian organisation as opposed to an American one.
DL: I got some good receptions at many credit unions when I said I was in competition with Stan Arneil and CUNA Mutual-CUMIS, and I got some very frosty receptions too. I think you have to remember there were a lot of people who still thought the sun shone out of a particular part of Stan Arneil in those days. They never forgave the League for putting out their own insurance.
Did you go round to Broadway Credit Union?
DL: No, I was lucky there, I never went to Broadway. I think there was a hit list of probably fifty credit unions and fifteen or so untouchables and we never went near them.
Did you go near any of the members of the Southern Association?
DL: Yes I did. I went to the big one AI&S, now called City Coast. I went there and attempted to sell them insurance. They gave me a reasonable hearing.
Who did you see down there?
DL: Started talking to the lady down there who was the sort of Administrative Manager. Also Graham Holby. I got a reasonable hearing from them. I didn’t get the sale, but I got a reasonable hearing.
What about any of the Directors, did you come across any of them?
DL: No. I don’t think I presented to a Board of Directors down there I presented to the management team.
What about the Southern Association Central Group, or Newcastle Northern Group?
DL: No. I think the credit unions I met in Newcastle were all League credit unions. Very hard to convince to change their ways, I think a number of them stayed with CUNA Mutual-CUMIS. Very difficult to sell them centralised banking. Newcastle credit unions had a mind of their own and still do today.
Bill Prince is retired now. Ken Ferrere, he isn’t retired. So what did you do next?
DL: I then started looking after service centres for the League. What happened was a number of credit unions wanted branch offices around Sydney but felt that for each one of them to set up an office say in Liverpool or Bankstown for example was too expensive. So they shared the cost by opening up one office and four or five credit unions shared the cost of running it and all the members would have to go in from the three or four credit unions. The Manager there was a young chap who actually started tickling the till, so he was fired.
Was this Bankstown?
DL: Yes, he was looking after Bankstown. I am trying to think of his name, Graham somebody. He was given the bullet and on the Monday morning Les Robinson called me in and said, “I’ve got another job for you, you are now looking after Bankstown, Miranda and Liverpool.” I think there were only the three. I looked after them for some two and a half, three years, opened up Parramatta, Burwood, Chatswood. I ended up with six or seven in the end. I was dealing with Helen McIntyre, Harry Jacobus, Ray Cooper, John McIntyre, David Dinning at Communication, over the years. Then a decision was taken after about two and a half years to close them because they weren’t profitable or the credit unions themselves were finding it a bit hard to afford them. So I then one day had the job of driving round to everyone to tell them they were out of a job. It was not the most pleasant day I have ever had but fortunately I found every one of the girls a job with one exception and she decided to retire anyway. So I felt a bit better about that and I sold off all the stock too.
So what next?
DL: I was then offered the job of helping the Stabilisation Team as they were called. They were looking after the credit unions that were having problems. The Blacktown Community, Blue Mountains Community, Campbelltown, hospital credit unions. There were probably six or eight credit unions already in trouble. They had been formed in the hey-day years of 1972, 1973, then inflation came in and they were really struggling. So a team of people went in and did various jobs like Loans Officers, Collection Officers, Marketing, all sorts of things and I was involved in that.
With Geoff Cambridge?
DL: With Geoff Cambridge and Pat Taylor.
Anybody else?
DL: Keith Mannix, he joined the team. Young Steve who is now in America with FCS. Sorry, one of the Managers of FCS went to America and is selling FCS to American credit unions and I believe at this stage there are about forty or fifty credit unions on the FCS system over there. The FCS system is better than anything else they have in the United States, far superior. Jack Phillips was another one, he is no longer with the movement. So there were a team of us working for what we called stabilised credit unions.
That is very interesting. Any particular credit unions you can remember problems with?
DL: Yes I started work at Pennant Hills Credit Union, which went into Central Mutual which is now part of Metropolitan Credit Union. From there I went to Blacktown Community Credit Union with a chap called Ben Ingram, he was the Marketing guy, again working for the Stabilisation Team. I went up to the Blue Mountains and was helping Keith Mannix up there when we put Red Cross Credit Union into Central Mutual. That was a strange one, we put half into Central Mutual, the city people, and the Boddington Hospital we put into the Blue Mountains Credit Union. I was responsible for doing a bit of running around and marketing up there. I even walked down the street dressed as a bell ringer for a big promotion they had going up in the Blue Mountains.
End Tape 1A: 5062 Words: 1 hour 40 minutes
9 MAY 1991: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO DAVID LORING
You have done most everything from the sound of it at the League, what else did you do?
DL: I discovered the biggest fraud that ever happened in credit unions at that time, by accident and got my arse kicked very badly for doing a very poor inspection job but I am not an accountant, as I said before. After working with the Stabilisation Team I then joined the Field Officers Team and one of our jobs was to go and check on credit unions, quick look at their balance sheet and a quick look to make sure they were keeping to the rules, just making sure everything was right. One day I went out to a credit union called HDH, Hawker-de Havilland, and I did a trial balance and found that it didn’t balance, but was given a very plausible explanation by the Manager. As it turned out he was defrauding the credit union and I think it finally came out to just of half a million dollars and I failed to pick it. I am pleased I am not an accountant. I went to Campbelltown Credit Union and worked out there. Was Development Officer and ended up as Loans Officer and Manager out there. Had a bit of a bad time with HDH and one or two other things and right at the end of my career with the Association I spent the last year working very closely with Kevin Murray at AFCUL, who came after Dermot Ryan, setting up the CIC Value Pack Insurance. Then went on a grand tour for fifteen months of the States with Kevin Murray and Harvey Dickinson where we sold the CIC Value Pack concept to seventy-eight credit unions in one year. We sold the Board and the management and ran the training courses for the staff. It was probably the most intensive exercise that the Association has ever undertaken and personally one of the most rewarding. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Clocked up a lot of miles in Fokkers and in the car, but had a real sense of satisfaction at the end of the twelve months.
Kevin Murray was that after AFCUL and before he went to Punchbowl?
DL: Yes it was.
Have you any idea why he won’t talk about his experiences at AFCUL at the end there? He doesn’t want to talk about it, he has told me that.
DL: I always had the impression, and I am not denigrating Kevin at all, that to some extent he was out of his depth with AFCUL. AFCUL had been a fairly low-key organisation. Dermot Ryan was working in AFCUL and doing a lot of things with politicians, which was his forte. AFCUL then suddenly realised that it had to be pretty much a high flying financial organisation on an Australia-wide basis and that is not Kevin Murray’s forte, and it wasn’t Dermot’s either. Dermot would have been the first to recognise that. I think for the last twelve or eighteen months Kevin was probably feeling out of his depth which is probably why he doesn’t want to talk about it. That’s my opinion.
Do you know if there was any falling out between him and Dermot after Dermot was forced out of the job there? Shall we say retired with a little help.
DL: I really don’t know. I wasn’t moving in those sort of circles I guess. I never heard of anything to be honest with you.
I suppose we had better now turn to the subject in hand, which is the Teachers’ Credit Union. Before that you were managing another credit union that eventually got amalgamated into Metropolitan weren’t you?
DL: Yes. I ended up as Manager of Progressive Credit Union. Progressive was a re-name of the Goodyear Mutual Credit Union. I joined there as Assistant Manager in 1980 from the Association. Then within eighteen months the Manager retired and I became the Manager of Progressive Credit Union. I lasted there for sixteen months until we merged, voluntarily, with Central Mutual and with Northside Savings. I became the Assistant General Manager, Marketing, for that credit union with John McIntyre.
How did you go with that?
DL: I lasted seven years and then decided that I would prefer to work somewhere else. I decided that seven years was long enough, thank you very much. I then came to Teachers’. My wife actually found the job for me in a Saturday’s paper. I had never heard that the job was available. So I applied and was interviewed by Stephen Birt, John Prescott and Ian Lee, the Personnel Manager, and was told at that interview they would make a decision by the Friday, I think that was a Tuesday. They phoned me the next day and offered me the job. I was very pleased to join the team. I had always looked on Teachers’ as being a true credit union, very much a fixed common bond rather than a great big community bond of loads of little groups in one.
Have you changed your mind since you have taken in teachers from the Northern Territory and Lord Howe?
DL: Still teachers. No I still feel that this is one of the truest common bond credit unions there is.
You reckon they could have done with New South Wales Teachers’ Credit Union in Western Australia do you?
DL: No doubt about that. I couldn’t raise an argument on that one.
So when you got here, what was your first job?
DL: My first job was to get on a plane and go up to the Gold Coast. I joined on the day we went to the Association of National Teachers’ Credit Unions, ANTCU, Marketing Meeting. I went up with Jenny Everett, who was the incumbent Marketing Manager, and her husband Bruce. I spent the next three days up in Coolangatta. Had a very good time. Got to meet people from other teachers’ credit unions. Got to learn a hell of a lot about this credit union. Probably one of the best ways of learning about a credit union is to go away to a conference where you are talking teachers’ credit unions.
I should have asked somebody else I know, but do you know anything about the history of the Australian Association of Teachers’ Credit Unions?
DL: No. By the time I went to that conference they had already had about six, so I was way behind the times. One person who may know, who was at the first Marketing Conference, would be Tony Benoworth from Tasmania, Stephen Birt perhaps.
So would Col, who was in from the start of the credit union.
DL: So that was my first job, going up there. The next job of course was learning how Teachers’ Credit Union worked and needing Jenny’s help. It was difficult to learn the job because I guess in my role as Marketing Manager at Metropolitan, or Assistant General Manager, Marketing, I was doing a wider range of marketing than perhaps we do here. It was just different in this role of Marketing Manager of Teachers’ Credit Union. It is very much a narrower field of work but still very enjoyable.
As Marketing Manager here do you run the Liaison Officers, the Field Officers?
DL: No I don’t. I work pretty closely with them because I regard them as being front-line staff out in the field. They are the people who let me know what is going on. I like to hear from them and I like to let them know if things are happening so they can bring me feedback, so I work very closely with them.
What projects have your marketed since you came here? Were you on the Consumer Credit Resource Kits or anything like that?
DL: All of those kits were produced before I came here. The last kit was produced with Graham Green and the Association, that was the Youth and Credit Kit. I haven’t been involved in those. I came in at the tail end of the Talented Child a country student kit, I had one year on that. I haven’t been involved too much on those outside things. I was involved in the South Pacific School Games, I think it is called, where we sponsored that and got deeply involved there. Most of my other work has been with printed material, and in ???? and things like that, major areas. The Marketing Department really looks after all of the printed works. The Annual Report, the Member Services Guide, wall planners, diaries, give aways, Chalk Board, a monthly magazine, In Touch newsletters, Earth One newsletters, Reps newsletters and so on.
Do you know the history of Chalk Board?
DL: I have got a copy of the first one and that was put out by the original Board of Directors. In their own words I think they said, “This is a way we can tell you what is going on in your credit union.” Quite strangely it hasn’t changed. The raison d’être for Chalk Board hasn’t changed in twenty-five years, which is remarkable.
Who edited the first one, do you know?
DL: It is on the Chalk Board but I can’t remember who it was.
Wasn’t Joe Fennick was it?
DL: I am not sure. I think it was a lady who may have had something to do with it.
Paula Gardiner?
DL: No. I would have to look at it, I have got a copy.
Mrs Betty Sherman?
DL: Betty I think it was who had something to do with the first one. As I say I have got a copy on file.
Was it when it became New South Wales Teachers’ Credit Union? She was the second Chair.
DL: Yes it was New South Wales Teachers’ in those days. It had changed from the Hornsby as its title.
She was in the Chair when that started. As far as you are concerned do you edit it now?
DL: Yes I edit the Chalk Board. I wrote it myself for a couple of months and then I employed somebody to do that job. I had been writing newsletters for ten years so it was no problem for me. Now it is written by my Marketing Officer, Robyn Hildebrand, Robyn Smith as she is known now. She writes the whole thing and brings it back to me and we both work together and work out if it is what we should be saying or not and then it goes to print. Most of the articles in there we bounce off the departments concerned, off John Prescott or Steve Birt. It is really a composite production.
Do you bounce it off the Supervisory Committee?
DL: No not really. Quite frankly I don’t see the need to do that, because if I am bouncing it off John Prescott I am bouncing off the Board and if I am bouncing it off the Board really the Supervisory Committee thinks pretty much in terms of the way the Board does.
So what else do you do?
DL: I produce the brochure range. I think one of the things I said when I got here was what a horrible lot of brochures there were in this credit union. For a $350 million credit union their brochure range was terrible, mainly because it was at the end of an era. Most of them had been designed three or four years ago and had never been changed. It took me eighteen months before I renewed the brochures. There are reasons for that, a lot of new things were happening, a lot of changes were coming through so it seemed inappropriate to dive in and change them when the content was going to be changed dramatically. I ended up changing them in early 1990. We now have less brochures and a better range, which I think is more in keeping with our image.
What about your involvement with the Marketing Committee at the League, the Association?
DL: I have been in that committee for many years. I started on there as a sort of co-opted invitee when I was managing Progressive. That would have been in 1979, 1980. I have been in there ever since that time. I am Deputy-Chairman. I have been involved in every radio campaign, every television campaign since then. I enjoy it. It is nice to look at things from a different perspective other than just Teachers’ Credit Union because on that committee you are representing all credit unions. We as a credit union put in the most money and probably it leaks out of that total marketing campaign because most of our advertising is done in-house. Obviously what goes on TV, what goes in newspapers reinforces our members’ decisions to join us, but quite frankly on a per member basis we get very little from that campaign. But I go in there and try and think as a Manager of another credit union and it is very interesting work.
Were you involved with the Youth and Credit Campaign this year?
DL: No I wasn’t involved in that. That was done by Graham Loughlin in the Association.
What about the third one of that where they had a video with it?
DL: No that was all in-house as well.
What about the marketing of EDVEST were you involved in that?
DL: No. We write the newsletter, the In Touch newsletter, we write the brochures, we have re-styled the brochures. We market EDVEST just the same way as we market every other product in the credit union, it is just another product from that point of view, I am not belittling it all.
Have you been involved in any other product development at all?
DL: Yes we produced an Access Ability, a great title. It is supposed to be ‘Accessibility’ but we called it Access Ability which packaged together all the various means of access available to credit union members. We did that extremely well because at that time there was Sweep. Sweep was very frustrating, it was very easy to explain face-to-face but very difficult to write about and get the message across. Sweep came in in 1989, I think if I have got my facts right. It took off very slowly because I don’t think people did really understand it. When we offered it to everybody on the basis of “If you don’t want it, write back in,” only 700 members out of 18,500 said no, so I think we have successfully sold Sweep.
I thought you had 60,000 members?
DL: Some people have more than one savings account. I am responsible for internally marketing the credit union through Update, that is the internal news sheet we put out on an as required basis. One of the problems we were having, when I got here, with communications was that people were sending round memos and they didn’t know if they were going to the appropriate people. So I said to them, “I have been working with Information Update for many years at Metropolitan and all you have to get is the information. So funnel it into marketing and we will then write it and send it out to everybody. So everybody gets the same message.” Sometimes we get it wrong, but if it is wrong at least they have all got the same ‘wrong’ message and we can correct it. It works very well.
You have known Steve Birt for a good few many years now, any stories you can tell about him?
DL: Yes. Probably this one comes back to me I guess. Steve Birt and I used to run the weekend courses together up at Terrigal. I can remember driving up to Terrigal from my home, getting up there, and hanging everything up in the wardrobe only to discover all my shirts were in a little carry case back in my home. I ended up borrowing four shirts for that weekend from Steve Birt. Well Steve Birt would be about forty around the waist and in those days I was about twenty-eight, so you can just imagine what those shirts looked like on me. I guess that is a story against me rather than Steve. I do remember one story where I believe it was Steve Birt at one of our Concept Industry Courses said to the Board members of a new credit union which he had formed, called Northern Ironworkers, how to differentiate between the role of the Manager and the role of the Board. Now the Manager has the right to hire and fire. Well the three or four Directors of that credit union nearly went through the roof. In a mining community and in the mines, the only people who hire and fire are the workers, and that is the way it should be. Steve spent half an hour trying to convince them that credit unions were a bit different and failed dismally, total frustration. It is still up for debate I think. That was the only story there.
I went to a seminar to assist with the Historical Co-operative and they went back very enthusiastic and didn’t hire me. In fact I think they got somebody they could get for nothing, a local school teacher.
DL: I have found with my experience with Directors the hardest people to talk to and convince to do things were local council credit unions, or perhaps on a par, bus depot Directors. They had minds of their own. Bus depot credit unions had to be seen to be believed. It was a wonder that they worked but they did very successfully too. Council credit unions were a very strange kettle of fish. Very fixed ideas, different to anybody else’s, you couldn’t convince them that what they were doing was wrong.
So what else are you involved with? The various good works, the community involvement that the Teachers’ Credit Union has, Stewart House and all the various things, do you have anything to do with them?
DL: I certainly do. With Stewart House we prepare their Annual Report for them and that involves a fair bit of time. We generally go out and take photographs and meet the kids and put it all together for them. We design posters for them each year. Probably this year we will be assisting them with a quarterly newsletter. I find Stewart House very interesting because I believe in what they are doing, I think they are a totally committed organisation and I think the people there are just terrific people. The teachers who go out for three or four months for their turn I think they deserve to be congratulated. I enjoy that side of things. Probably the other outside organisation I have the most to do with, I am involved with the Federation as far as their Annual Conference is concerned. I went out last year and paid out the money ???? I still like member-contact. I still try to go to as many representative meetings as I can. I find it is very stimulating talking to those people. If I am marketing to them, as I am with the Reps newsletter, which again Robyn Smith writes and I edit, I like to talk to them and find out what makes them tick. I always enjoy those evenings. Never miss an opportunity to stand up and talk to them. I think I am a frustrated teacher somewhere down the track. I always enjoy standing up in front of people and talking.
Well what haven’t we covered?
DL: I think we have probably covered everything, except to say that the work with Teachers’ is very much different to any other place I have ever worked. It is definitely a different culture. The credit union is run on a different basis to most other credit unions I have seen or worked with myself. All the members of the Board are involved, they make decisions in certain areas that Boards in other areas don’t make in other credit unions. That is not a criticism, that is an outside comment if you like. It took me about eighteen months to two years to learn the culture of the place and of teachers too. I worked in Teachers’ Credit Union for three days in 1980 when Teachers’ first sold ???? paper. I came out here as 2IC with another guy from the Association and helped Teachers’ fill out proposal forms for insurance. ??????????????????? were far better than filling them out than Teachers’ ever were. So I sort of got to know a little bit about Teachers’ then. I think I have learnt to be a bit more tolerant to teachers, because I understand what makes them tick. I wouldn’t be a teacher for quids. I think it would be the worst job, it doesn’t matter if you got sixteen or twenty weeks off a year, I still wouldn’t stand up in front of a classroom of kids.
Did you ever try for the Drunk of the Year Award?
DL: No. In fact I am a dismal failure in that area. One of my staff was runner-up two years in a row. I haven’t been able to convince him to go over the edge and win it. I think when I get drunk I tend to crawl into a corner and die rather than stay.
Where do you think this Drunk of the Year started from?
DL: I would say Ken Miller would have had to have had some say in the early days of Drunk of the Year. Outside of this credit union, we are known as the most sociable and drunken credit union in New South Wales. We do have this reputation but most of it is jokingly, but I think some people think of us as a load of drunkards whenever they see us with a drink in a hand. I had heard this was a very sociable, social credit union.
You don’t think any of this could have come from Sydney City Credit Union via John Prescott?
DL: That could be, because it would obviously have come through Dermot Ryan to Ken Miller when they were on AFCUL together and the World Council. John Prescott would have been about, Maurie Daley, Jack Bannister, people like that.
Are you the repository of photographs and tape-recordings and things like that?
DL: Photographs. I wouldn’t have many tape-recordings at all. The only tape-recordings I think we have are sort of American propaganda.
Lester ???? recently retired from the Board, didn’t they have a farewell from him? Who recorded it?
DL: Nobody. Nobody took any photographs either.
Well next time you will have to get out there.
DL: I must admit that I didn’t give it a thought. I guess we can always get Lester back.
Events like that, a farewell like that, needs recording. It is not very complicated you know as long as you have got a microphone and a recording machine. If your ears can hear it so can a microphone.
DL: That’s true.
Anything else we haven’t covered? We have covered a lot of ground.
DL: Yes we certainly have, I go back twenty-two years now, I have been around the industry a long time.
Thank you very much Mr David Loring.
End Tape 1B: 3,900 minutes: 1 hour 20 minutes