Can you remember when you first heard about the Institute of Credit Union Directors (ICUD)?
BP: I think it would have been at an ANSWCU Annual General Meeting. Someone said to me, ‘Are you going to the ICUD meeting?’, which was always held before it. I had never heard of it much. I think there could have been something floated through our general manager’s office, but it was usually filed in the bin in those days because we weren’t part of the movement. But it would have been when we got into the ANSWCU thing, about that time, which would have been late 1985, the ANSWCU meeting of 1985.
You had been a credit union director for quite a while by that time. Had you had any training?
BP: No. Ten years I had been a director. Shocking isn’t it. But I didn’t need training for a lot of the procedures you do, for being at meetings. Let’s face it a director’s life is mostly meetings and because of my trade union background I spent my whole life going to meetings. The actual concept of what a director’s responsibilities were was a seat of the pants job.
You hadn’t been to the Chapters at all?
BP: No. We were sort of hidden away from all that sort of stuff. The only thing really, as a director, I was involved in was the Police Federation of Credit Unions, which was a fairly closed shop sort of thing. We used to meet annually and learn a lot from each other. It was a pity because I am sure we could have profited by being involved in some of these other organisations.
Who did you first meet from the organisation?
BP: Now you have triggered something. Bruce Robertson was an ANSWCU director. Now when they wanted us to join ANSWCU they invited our whole board to go out to Burwood as part of a PR exercise to show us what ANSWCU did. I remember Bruce saying to myself and a couple of other directors, ‘Look as well as the benefits of joining ANSWCU have you thought of joining the Institute of Credit Union Directors?’ We had never heard of it. That would have been about that time, the end of 1985 at the ANSWCU Annual General Meeting, because that was the first one we went to I think. So it was from Bruce Robertson.
You had met Bruce Robertson before?
BP: No. Because we weren’t part of the mainstream of credit unions we didn’t really come across any other directors other than our little clique.
You hadn’t met the Birches?
BP: No.
Or any of the others? What about Renata de Ville?
BP: No, none of them. As I say I am only a newcomer to this field. Swept in like a knight in shining armour.
How did you first become involved in the actual running of ICUD?
BP: Well I went to a couple of meetings and they were gab fests and I wasn’t that impressed actually. I was the only director of our credit union who ever went. At that stage I was a little bit unhappy with the way our own board was going, the way it was being run, with all due respect to my colleagues on the board. So I initially went to the 1986 Bathurst seminar at Mitchell College. The keynote speaker was Brian Johnson. I came away from that quite impressed with the direction we should be going in. I prepared a detailed report for my board, because they had paid for me to go up there. I prepared a detailed report for them about the benefits of having gone to it. Joan Birch, who was then still working full-time from wherever she used to work, something came up and she rang me about something, keeping her little flock of directors happy, people who had joined. She asked me if she could have a copy of my report and she was extremely impressed with it. She tells me that is when she decided that I was going to be the guy to get up there, into ICUD on the committee, and do something. Looking back that was the sort of lynch pin for my career in ICUD.
John Gormley became president in that year, and Ted Mackness had been president before that.
BP: Actually John was the president when we had the Mitchell College thing. My first recollection of going there was getting up on the Sunday morning and we all had a hangover. Gormley standing up there haranguing us, it was in a lecture style thing for students. Everyone was there holding their sore head and John was raving. That was my first real exposure to John. I think Bob Owen handed over to him.
There was Ted Mackness in the middle there.
BP: My understanding is that he didn’t impress many people. He was so impressive that I have never heard of him.
I have seen his picture in the magazine, but I didn’t know either. I know his wife. She ran the ?????? Credit Union for years.
BP: I mean to get to be President of ICUD, he was really a very low-profile director.
John Gormley as president, did he read your report?
BP: I don’t know.
I will have to ask him. I am seeing him on Friday.
BP: He probably didn’t read my report. He only did two years didn’t he?
Do you know why he was asked to come in, or how he came in?
BP: It is only hearsay, but I understand it was because of the ineffectiveness of the other guy. Bruce Robbo had done his bit and he was pretty tied up with ANSWCU and they needed someone. Of course Bruce was getting towards the end of his career anyway and they needed someone so John Gormley accepted the invitation.
He sat for two years I think.
BP: He said he would do it for two years to help out. John obviously started to take it in a different direction.
What direction did he take it in?
BP: I think he wanted to make it a higher profile organisation. John is a very forceful personality, even though I don’t always agree with his attitude to the management of credit unions. He tends to be a bit more anti-manager than I am. Anyway he is very forceful in the role of directors and their responsibilities which is, I suppose, a good thing. A good presenter. We still use him to this day. He is an excellent presenter for groups of credit union directors. So John was the president. They had two-hour seminars at Bathurst. I think about that time was when Elton Wray become the president and I might have stood and got elected as an alternate director. Joan asked me to stand, or someone approached me. I went to a few of their turnouts and had a few beers, met a few directors. I even took along a couple of my own directors, who realised there were other things in the world besides the Police Credit Union Federation. None of us had ever been to any Chapter meetings or anything like that. Anyway, I am sure it was Joan and a couple of other directors, it might have been Robbo, talked me into standing as a proxy, or alternate, or whatever it was called. I did that and was elected for a couple of years. Eventually I got elected as a full member of the committee. In fact, when we had our 1988 Canberra Convention I think I was on the ICUD Committee then, and have been on it ever since.
How did it change during the early periods? I mean, for instance, during the period John Gormley was president how did it change then? When Elton Wray was president how did it change during that period?
BP: I think the biggest change was when they got away from the meetings in the British Ex-Services Club. I am not too sure when that started, but they used to have the meetings in the British Ex-Services Club and they were to a pattern. They are still criticised to this day by lots of people who used to go to them that they were really like a social club meeting. I suppose you would have a guest speaker, if you were lucky, a few beers and a bit of fairly poor food and really accomplish nothing. The annual meeting was held at the Leagues Club each year. I think they eventually got forced out by a double booking, or something. This was a good move because they then tried a couple of other places. Since they got out of that mould, and I don’t know whether it was John Gormley who was responsible, or Elton Wray, or a combined effort of the committee, they realised that the membership was dropping. Even though there was a huge number of directors the membership was dropping so they obviously were not satisfying a need.
Here we were preaching at the annual meetings about a director’s effectiveness, and yet they weren’t being effective as the organisation leading the credit union movement.
Had they got into examining ratios and things like that?
BP: I don’t think so, not at that stage.
Do you remember when they did?
BP: No, I am afraid I can’t.
You see I don’t know, because I wasn’t around, but I believe that was started way back at the beginning when ICUD was started by Professor Meredith up at Armidale.
BP: Probably was, but they sort of stood still, that was the trouble. They had some good ideas and they just stood still and the world went by them. Changes started to occur. Project Renewal started about 1988, 1989, or something. The winds of change were blowing and everyone realised that everything had to change if we were to survive. Being totally funded by membership subscriptions, there was no other way they could make any money, they needed to do something else if they were going to be a viable organisation.
So who made that decision? Who pushed that way?
BP: It was a combined decision. I would have to give some credit to Ron, particularly as the treasurer. Ron has got his faults as far as being a committee member and pedantic and talking like wet cement. He and I deal with each other by fax machine now. ??????? I will fax back the answer. That way it saves us all time.
He has been in it for years. He was in it from the start of the Chapters.
BP: Ron is one of those guys who has got a burning, he is a credit union person. In fact he has got a bit of tunnel vision because the whole world revolves around his own credit union, ICUD and ICUDA(AICUD) and that sort of thing. You couldn’t have a more dedicated guy, but he has his detractors. He was actually driving people away from the organisation because the meetings used to take so long. Poor Elton Wray was the chairman and he couldn’t handle him at all. The treasurer’s report would take half the night.
What about Elton Wray?
BP: Elton was the supreme public servant. Great fellow. Very much a gentleman. One of the real old school, a Canterbury High man. I know that because I went to his send off and made a speech on behalf of ICUD only a month ago. A real gentleman. Didn’t like to upset anyone. I don’t know how long I was his deputy president, probably about three years I think. But he did suffer from the problem that he wasn’t a director any longer. It started to come through when we did a couple of surveys. You would go to meetings and people would ask if Elton Wray was still a director and you would have to say no, he wasn’t a director of his credit union. They would then say, ‘Well how can he be the chairman of a professional directors’ organisation when he is not a director?’ He realised that. He did the job, did it to get the change of direction in place. I think one of the last suggestions from John Gormley, or one of the last things he initiated, was that we should have an office for Joan, to try and get it out of their house because of having the problem of having a treasurer and secretary sleeping together.
They talked credit unions at night, did they?
BP: Joan almost resigned a couple of times over it, she just couldn’t stand it. Ron never let up. They never had anything else to talk about. They would come home from a meeting and he would be hammering her all the way home. The next morning they would get up and he would be hammering her over breakfast. It was the best thing that was ever done, and it was done by John Gormley, setting up an office. It was actually implemented by Elton Wray and some good guys on the committee, like Ron Kelly and some of those fellows, Col Muir, helped set up the office. Strangely enough, and I have got to say this, I am into my third term as president and I have never been to the office. I have got no real desire to go there because Joan has got her job to do, she is the secretary and I am the president, and it is a straight secretary’s job.
She runs the fax machine.
BP: I have been out there a few times for meetings but I have never got around to going into the office. It is too bloody far away for a start.
I have got to go there next Monday.
BP: It is a long way from here, and all the way home again if you have a couple of grogs or something.
You can get on the train here and it goes straight to Blacktown you know.
BP: I don’t live here. I live over in Manly near the beach. There is no railway to Warringah still.
You could get the jet cat to the quay.
BP: When I am retired things might be different. My wife and I will have a day out. Take a cut lunch, go to visit Joan, see the office, do the business there and have a day out.
When your period came, how did you come to be president? Did you put yourself up, or did someone suggest you?
BP: Elton really encouraged me. He was looking for someone, the same as I am now. Any good chairman plans succession. He and Joan said, ‘Look Bob Page is the bloke who is going to be the next president.’ I am a different sort of guy to any of the other ones they have had. It is good to have a complete change every now and then. Because of my obvious high profile in the credit union movement and my job and the sort of person I am, always involved in public meetings and that sort of thing, I was different again from Elton. Poor Elton really had no sense of humour. His famous jokes, and I even had a shot at him when I went to his send off, that someone would say, ‘Elton you are so dry and very public service. Yes Minister style.’ He ended up as a very senior public servant in the Land Titles Office. Elton said he would crack a joke and his wife said, ‘Look Elton you know a good joke.’ He would try to spice up his presentation at the annual meeting with a joke, but it always went flat. Poor Elton, he just didn’t have it. Great bloke, but… Very straight and honest. Straight as a ramrod really, but no sense of humour. To be able to survive in that business you have got to be able to laugh at yourself and laugh at everyone else and give them the finger if it is suitable.
Your period now, when you have been president, have you made any great changes?
BP: I think we have made some huge changes. Good heavens I will have to think about them because there have been so many changes that it is hard to know where to start I guess. As the State President of ICUD I have established an extremely good working relationship with the State President of AICUM, that is Neville Parsons. He and I are both on the Membership Council. As a Membership Councillor at the district meetings I chair, even though I am from a city credit union. I chair the Mid-North Coast and Inland Credit Union, so twice a year I go up and look after those credit unions along with Neville. We have a joint ICUD/AICUM meeting the night before with a dinner and guest speakers. We get fifty people come along. It is a great idea. It is really the sort of thing that is being pushed in other parts of Australia as a good way for country directors and managers to get together. That is one thing I innovated, I guess, with that. In the director education field, together with Elton because it is not all my doing, I have had a fair bit of liaison with Tony McNamarra on the director development courses. I think the first one would have been in Elton’s last year. I think he went to a couple as the President of ICUD. But he was starting to really feel the problem of not being involved as a director. Everything he got was second hand and that was pretty hard for him. So the other change that I innovated was that we carry out a survey of the membership, the first one properly done by an independent person. As a result of that survey a whole range of changes have been made to the way we operate. We have got away from the standard four city meetings and two country meetings a year. They are all now run on an ‘as needed’ basis. We use project management so that we pay people like John Gormley, or Bill Smith, or anyone you like to name, to run a seminar for us. We have now got the joint Queensland/New South Wales ICUD seminars. Tony McNamarra’s travelling circus. He has run the director development course, the same one he does here, including his presenters, in Tasmania and Western Australia and, I think, even in South Australia. Those directors from the Territory and other states have come and attended our course. In fact what we did, and this was Ron Birch’s suggestion, we even offered the Victorian ICUD the opportunity of sending one of their committee members up to attend one of our courses at no charge, all they had to do was fly him up there, to see how we operate.
Who was that?
BP: He is from the Mobile Petrol. I can’t remember his name. We were a bit disappointed, because as far as we have learnt, and this was only three months ago, I don’t think he has yet given a written report to his board. We did speak to another one of their board members. You know the Victorians are about 50/50 split, not only the credit unions 50/50 so is the ICUD board. Half of them are in the affiliated movement and half aren’t.
Ian Larsson isn’t.
BP: No. It is extremely difficult for the total operation now to have in Victoria a significant group of directors who say they don’t want to be involved and they are standing still. I mean the modules and things were kicked off by us in New South Wales and they use them, but they don’t see director training as anything other than what they are doing now, and they are really standing still.
Now what about Queensland, when did you join up with them?
BP: Can’t tell you.
How did that come about?
BP: Only because we had some seminars at Ballina and places like that. A couple of their directors came across. There was some interest shown. Then Ken Campbell became their new president. He was the last chairman of the league before the league was disbanded. He became president of the Queensland ICUD and he is quite happy for us to do it, in fact. I am just trying to think. The first national credit union thing actually got some interest in the other states and it has developed from those. How many of those have there been. There was one run by us in 1988. Then in 1990 was the first directors’ development course. Then we had the first AICUD convention. Elton Wray and a guy from Victoria. I think the Victorians were the ones who wanted to start a national body. We said we would go along with it and Elton Wray ended up the second president of AICUD.
Who was the first?
BP: Helmutt Windsler from the Victorian Police Credit Co-operative. These things have got to be triggered off haven’t they. I went to the first Bathurst seminar and came back and sang the praises of it here and started to get our guys interested. Then when I attended the next Police Federation of Credit Unions meeting they were there. I said, ‘You guys should be coming to one of these.’ So a car load of them drove up from Victoria, four of them came up. They were so impressed they went back and started an Institute of Credit Union Directors in Victoria on the basis of having been exposed to ours. That is when I became a proxy director. I was still only just an attendee sort of thing. They went really flat out. Helmutt Windsler is one of those go-ahead guys. They co-operated with us on the modules and got it all off the ground. Then there was the World Council of Credit Unions which had their meeting in Melbourne in 1988, so they were there. They had a stand, an AICUD stand, because AICUD had got off the ground. Then Helmutt, because he was Chief Superintendent of the Victorian Police, got the opportunity of a job change so he moved on. He said he didn’t want to be president any more so Elton Wray took it over. Because we were having this restructure on our own committee. Elton was having all this trouble running the meetings because Ron did tend to dominate in the debate. You just couldn’t keep him down. He is a great bloke but he is just hard to control. You have just got to tell him to shut up and Elton was too much of a gentleman to say, ‘Ron shut up.’ Ron comes along occasionally and I say, ‘Ron that is enough. You have had your say so shut up.’ He shuts up. That is all he wants. Ron is a great bloke and he understands he has had his say.
Does he ever ask for extra time?
BP: Oh yes. But I say, ‘Listen Ron, if you are going to get up and speak you have got three minutes. At the end of three minutes I will be walking over to get the microphone.’ You have got to be ruthless with him because he is such a detailed minded person. He would be a great psychological study for someone. If you asked him now how long I had been here he could probably tell you. Then he would tell you move by move what happened. Who did this, who did that. You should be talking to him about me rather than me because he will know it all. He will know exactly when it all happened and why. Detailed minded. Anyway Elton took over the job. He discussed it with a few of us and decided that they really needed someone to be an effective secretary/treasurer of it, so he offered Ron the job. Ron was getting off the committee. You see Ron is a non-elected member of the committee, he is an appointed treasurer of ICUD New South Wales.
Who appointed him?
BP: We appointed him. He is appointed each year, rather than use up a valuable committee member, we haven’t got that many workers. Ron doesn’t have to come to all the meetings, and that is the significant thing, Ron agreed still to be the treasurer. He has been like this for three or four years now I think. He is the ICUD Treasurer but he is a non-executive treasurer. In other words he is not elected, he is appointed by the board. He is now the secretary/treasurer of AICUD, that is his baby now. He runs that very well.
But still this interview is not about AICUD so much, is it?
I don’t know. You name the game.
BP: Well you asked me what the changes have been. I think in my tenure is what we have got is we have got the committee away from being a hands-on committee. If we ran a seminar of anything everyone would do everything from writing out the name tags and handing them out. The only thing they didn’t do was make the presentations. Sometimes they did some of that too. So now we run them professionally. We have contracts. If we employ someone we employ them as a consultant on a signed contract. It is run properly. The committee these days are doing what a board or committee should do. The same as they should be doing with their own credit union. The manager manages and they direct. That is what the ICUD Committee now does. Our most recent innovation, and I only met with him here in this office yesterday, was appointing Ken Pickering. We are putting him on, on a twelve months trial, as a retained consultant/executive officer sort of thing to help take some of the load off Joan. Joan has found herself increasingly over the years being more than just a secretary, I mean doing just secretarial work, membership rolls and that sort of stuff and correspondence. She has found herself negotiating with sponsors and all that sort of stuff. I am not talking about hiring you to do that. If we say we want an oral history done and someone says Richard Raxworthy so we say the secretary will contact him and get him to do the job, find out his fees. But Joan has actually negotiated with CUNA Mutual as a sponsor and she shouldn’t be doing it. For one reason she is not a director, and I don’t think she ever has been, and secondly she is just a part-time secretary. So she started to complain a little bit about the fact that the work load was getting too much for her. So we have now put Ken on, on a trial basis. Ken Pickering will undertake some of that work. I see it as a clear dichotomy between what the president is supposed to do, what the secretary does and what the executive officer-type person will do. Three different functions.
So what about the future?
BP: Well the future is think nationally act locally. That is the future for the Institutes of Credit Union Directors in Australia, now that they have gone national in CUSCAL. There will soon be uniform credit legislation. There is hardly any differentiation really, to use a credit union term, between credit unions from state to state. In fact when you have got overlapping regions so that some of the New South Wales credit unions are actually in the South Australian region and in the Victorian region things have changed a great deal. ICUD New South Wales, and AICUD nationally, to which I just got elected president this week, has got to adopt a higher profile as far as directors’ rights and directors’ responsibilities and things are concerned. It has got to be done on a national basis rather than a state basis because it affects everyone equally. The other major player in the game is the fact that if you looked at the last environmental scan, and I don’t know if you saw it or not, but if you look at the bar charts indicating where all the directors are, where all the credit unions are, and the credit union movement itself, there is almost 50 per cent in New South Wales. So even though it sounds good to say we have got an ICUD Tasmania that has got seventy directors total possibly, and Western Australia is much the same, their potential is not very big. I think they are looking to us. Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia obviously don’t have a paid secretary. I think Victoria has got Trevor Lowe, who is employed on a very limited basis, I think he might just get an honorarium. South Australia has got a honorary secretary. So for a professional organisation New South Wales is the only one geared up to do it.

End Tape 1a: 4874 Words: 1 hour 20 minutes
There is one thing we were talking about when we got to the end of the last tape, that you want to put on this tape.
BP: Yes when we talked about what changes have taken place. The most significant change that has taken place was as a result of Project Renewal and the new structure, the total responsibility for director training in Australia is now in the hands of the various Institutes of Credit Union Directors. Towards the end of the transition process, when they were preparing the first draft of the core services for CUSCAL, there was a meeting called in Sydney of representatives of ANSWCU and CUSCAL and AICUM and any other players in the training of credit union people game. Following that meeting it was reported back to our ICUD Board by Elton Wray. I think Elton Wray and Ron Birch might have attended. It was reported back what the proposal was and it was up to us to make a decision whether we were going to accept this poisoned chalice. So the job was given to me as a result of my own inquiries. From what they had reported and what I had learnt from a couple of overseas visits. Discussing the matter with Race Matthews, who had come back and reported on the director training in Canada. I also had the opportunity of visiting Madison, speaking to training people there. Also the advantage, I suppose, of being a member of CUES. All of those things made me, I suppose, the ideal guy to prepare this position paper. I prepared the position paper which recommended to ICUD that we accept the challenge, that we would take over director training. What I didn’t realise of course, unfortunately, and what we didn’t realise as a group, was that when the core services thing went round the first series of district meetings the Western Australian and South Australian regional meetings complained about director training, or training of any kind, being a core service. They wanted it removed. When it got to the National Board I understand a board member, who should have known better, from New South Wales supported them and said that training really wasn’t a matter for core service that it should be on a user-pays basis. This was after we had accepted it and said we were going to do it. So there was no chance of us getting any funding from CUSCAL. This does create a problem for us and that is why we now have to rely very heavily on total user-pays and on sponsorship. I interviewed Vern Harvey, the new executive officer, last week down in Tasmania about it and pointed it out to him. I have hammered Reg Elliott about it for the last twelve months. What they have successfully done is prevented directors from a lot of small credit unions, who really bloody need it, from attending our courses. They can’t afford the $1,000:00. They might get a token one to come but that is all. So by removing it from core services they have successfully stopped them from getting the benefits. Anyway, we have now had a further meeting at CUSCAL last week, called by Keith Mannix, the regional manager along with Ron representing AICUD and, at that stage, me representing New South Wales, Graham Humphreys and some people from CUSCAL, Marie McDermott and Fran whatever her name is. I think we might be able to swing them around a bit to offering some sort of assistance to directors of small credit unions. To me that is an extremely important aspect of it. I think what we produce now is accepted by most people as being good and is at an acceptable level. Particularly the four levels that have been introduced since I have been president. A structured series of courses so that you start with a director orientation course and end up with an advanced, or super advanced or something. That is the way to go. Now it is no good at all having those sorts of structured courses if the smaller credit unions, who need it badly particularly hands-on directors, can’t afford to go there.
Are you running a course for people who want to be directors but aren’t actually directors?
BP: Yes. The director orientation course. The first one was run late last year. The second one was run this year. The next one is on in September. It is open to potential directors and directors in the first year. It is a specific one-day course. It is an extension of the old ANSWCU courses, which were not very well attended. They admitted in the end they had these courses running for three or four hours on a Wednesday night but no one would go to them. We seem to be doing them more successfully. We have got a range in that area. In 1994 we will be running our course specifically for chairmen and deputy chairmen, so they can brush up their skills. An additional level of courses which is of interest is I think for people who feel they would like to stand for the Membership Council or the National Board and also to assist with the director education as facilitators and actual trainers. That will be our top tier of courses. That will give us a balanced approach to director training. Just to sort of wind up on the whole thing, I think by doing this, and we are going to attempt to establish a better relationship with the Institute of Company Directors, because there is a bit of liaison but only on a limited basis, we might be able to enlarge our sphere of influence and skills and take in directors of building societies, for example. This has already been mooted by one little group. The AFIC legislation affects them equally. Even in the field of co-operatives. I am hoping that in years to come that if we make them professional enough they can become units of some sort of tertiary course. That was Race Matthews’ whole plan, but the trouble was he was starting at the wrong end. Because he is on the council of Monash University, he wanted to start at Monash University. The grass roots have got to come from the directors up so that people can turn up in the first term of their tertiary course and say they have done these six units which are worth ‘x’ amount, and that sort of thing.
Now one other thing, you mentioned that you were a member of CUES. How did that come about?
BP: Through the manager of our credit union showing me one of the books. This was when I was chairman of the Police Credit Union. He said he was thinking of joining and what did I think of it. I said, ‘Yes why not. You join and I will join.’ So our manager is a member of CUES as a manager and I am the token member from our board actually, as a director. CUES has this director group that goes off and produces a quarterly magazine. I do find it heavily orientated towards management of credit unions rather than directors.
That is the American society?
BP: It is the American society. It is located in Madison. It is the Credit Union Executive Society of America. It has a branch which is called the Credit Union Directors Forum, which produces their magazine and runs a couple of conventions a year for directors and a range of other ones for marketing people, managers and that sort of stuff.
I notice, and it has been for a while, that credit union managers are also directors of the state bodies and there are a large amount of them on the council now.
BP: Actually we have been quite pleased that the Membership Council in this last three years; and I was elected for one year and was re-elected for another three years so I have still got another year to go; was 50/50 managers and directors. Even after the current elections which have just finished, I think it is still 51/49, or something. So it is a fairly even mix. The area where there is a shortage is I am sure on the National Board. While it is a big corporation worth billions and everything, and they are finding this a problem wrestling with values and ethics and everything, it needs some directors there. At the moment I think there is Richard Crosbie, Alan Parry and another one, might only be three out of fifteen, who are credit union directors on the National Board. Now I find that a problem. In fact I did resist. The Membership Council appoints a director and we had elections last week, the day after the convention, and they tried to push me into standing to be the Membership Council nominee for the board for three years. I had to resist it, reluctantly, but I will think about it next year.
Well thank you very much Mr Bob Page.

End Tape 1b: 1525 Words: 40 minutes.