11 FEBRUARY 1992: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO ALAN DASH
I will ask you Mr Dash, where were you born and when?
AD: I was born here in Melbourne, my mother came down from the Strathbogie, in the country because the birth was expected to be difficult. If I look like Ned Kelly there is a slight resemblance because I came from that part of the country.
You grew up around there?
AD: Yes I grew up there, my father was a farmer. I grew up there and went to Euroa High School, then down to Teacher Training here in Melbourne.
What sort of influence from your parents, can you identify it?
AD: I think they were the typical Protestant ethic of the day. Typical middle-class with all those values that were typical of the late 1940s, early 1950s. Nothing exceptional. You went to church, went to Sunday School.
Political influence?
AD: No, not really. Of course Bob Menzies was in full flight and no-one ever expected it to change, I guess. It was unforeseeable. No great political influence.
When you went to school where did you go to school?
AD: I went Euroa High School. I guess I was fortunate because my older brothers and sisters didn’t have that privilege because there were no buses from the hills down to the town. It was a brand new high school and for the first time education was available right through to matriculation, which was unheard of in those towns. You would have to go to boarding school or something like that and coming from a poor farm I wouldn’t never have been able to have it. I guess we were slightly more enlightened and more money was pumped into education in those days.
Your likes and dislikes at school?
AD: I don’t know about dislikes. I enjoyed learning, I enjoyed school, I enjoyed all of those things.
What made you want to become a teacher do you think?
AD: Well that is always a difficult question, what would one do? Of course coming off a small farm with an elder brother it was probably clear to me that that wasn’t open. By the time you have milked cows every morning for years as a kid you had no great desire to do that later on. I guess it was a matter of three or four professions one thought one could do and flying on from being a Sunday School teacher, when probably they couldn’t get anybody else, that sort of moved me into teaching.
You went straight to Teachers’ College did you?
AD: Yes. I went to the Melbourne University and graduated in card playing and mountain climbing and important subjects. I had to show some academic rehabilitation but then settled down and completed my teacher training and then went teaching.
You have told me what you liked at university.
AD: Yes, I enjoyed the lifestyle and the freedom. We were on reasonable studentships, we got $20 a fortnight to spend and our board and accommodation paid by the Ministry, which made us the richest students on campus. Of course I used to work in the shearing sheds and the orchards during my holidays so I was even richer. I had an old FC car, station wagon, and of course we would pack nine or ten students in it and away we would go.
So where did you get appointed to first, a school?
AD: During my time at Teachers’ College, I met my wife there. We both asked where we could go and we decided the western suburbs which were undesirable, they were seen as less attractive. Like Sydney, with which you would be familiar. They had got all the ethnics and all that sort of thing, nobody wanted to go there, so we said we would go there. She came from the bush and so did I and our intention was to stay one year and go bush and we are still there, I don’t think we will ever move, we love it.
So what was your introduction to credit unions?
AD: I became involved with the Teachers’ Union at that stage and I first met a chap called Peter Leonard Keneske, who was aspiring to be Treasurer of the Victorian Teachers’ Union in those days. He had been interstate and seen Queensland Teachers’ and also I believe New South Wales Teachers’ operating and thought this was a good idea. He mentioned it to myself at a Union meeting of some sort and explained the philosophy of credit unions and that appealed immensely, mainly because I had had a brutal experience with our State Bank in Victoria. Perhaps brutal is a strong word. We wanted to buy our house and I wanted to know how much they would lend me for land and they wouldn’t tell me. They said, “Find your house and come and tell us and then we will decide whether we will lend you the money.” Now that to me seemed crazy. I would have liked them to say, “Well you can spend up to $12,000, we will lend you that, go and find a house.” I had that experience and we did buy a house, by the way, for $14,000 of which we had a couple of thousand deposit and the bank did lend us the rest. But that was a real difficult experience. I thought there had to be a better way and this philosophy of credit unions appealed to me. So I became one of the founders, or one of the initial subscribers, forty-odd of us some twenty years ago sometime this year, who founded the VTU Credit Union. That is how I got involved with credit unions. From there I met Ian Larsson at a Chapter meeting who said they were interested in getting Directors, they had a few casual vacancies, in 1977. I was interested because our liquidity support was wholly with the VCCA and one of my colleagues Alex Rosenberg, who was involved with Binkmore and other credit unions of the time, was always questioning the security of it. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to put my name forward and the net result I and Eileen West joined on exactly the same day as Michael Hildebrand became General Manager in this room. Mannix sent a note, “Please come early and we will have a couple of casual drinks before the Board meeting.” Eileen and myself turned up but nobody else did, they forgot to send the invitation to the other Directors. That was my introduction to the VCCA.
Efficiency.
AD: Something like that.
Perhaps before we dive into the VCCA you can explain to me a little about the various Teachers’ Credit Unions in Victoria. I really haven’t got any idea about how this came about. We had similar situations in New South Wales, they have never managed to amalgamate the Private Teachers’ and the Public School Teachers’ there.
AD: In Victoria many years ago we had one Teachers’ Union, the Victorian Teachers’ Union. It had branches that were made up of Primary Men, Primary Women, Primary Principals. Of course these were the much larger section, or most numbers, in the Union so when it came to annual conferences they had an effective voice, they could out-vote anything. Then of course they had the Primary Technical Assistants and so on. In the 1970s from a push from Melbourne High School, the Victorian Secondary Teachers’ Association, which was basically the secondary people, broke away and formed their own union because they felt they weren’t achieving their targets. So they had this breakaway union which became the VSTA. A little later on there was hope, so I am told, that they might have got back together, but in those days one of the technical people, George Lees was I believe the person, was to become President, but because a world ????? conference of teachers was to be held, they decided to use their block vote and vote the Primary person back in so the TTVU people walked out and formed the Technical Teachers’ Union. Now the unions went their various ways for a period of time and in 1972 the VTU, after much lobbying because a lot of people said you only need the Commonwealth Bank and a lot of manoeuvring within the Union structures, it was decided to form the VTU Credit Union. Interestingly enough the Minutes of the Union of the day say that the VTU Credit Union was established with the aim of making it available to all members of the teaching fraternity. In other words the concept was to start it for VTU members initially and expand. So that resolution was passed and on one rainy wet September the VTU Credit Union had its inaugural meeting and we set up from there. Meantime, the VTU was not talking to the VSTA or the TTUV and they independently set up their own credit union, which was to be Ed Credit. They established in 1972 also with their own Charter and proceeded on their path. The Unions, the VTU and the parent unions would never talk together, so that tended to occur in the same thing. Now there were moves in some of the sections amongst the VTU, what the residue was is that as time sort of went on we became militant. The primary teachers had their first stop work and the old guard who objected to that felt this wasn’t good enough and they weren’t going to be involved, not their cup of tea, so they then formed a breakaway union from the Victorian Teachers Union, the Victorian Association of Teachers, VAT. Included amongst that was Leon Magree and his brother who was an officer here and had been involved in a credit union, so they set up yet another credit union. Now there was an Affiliated Teachers’ Union that was around, and I am not sure of the history of that. That was around before my time so I really don’t know. Anyway the net result was we ended up with three teachers’ credit unions, all because we are not good at communicating and reaching consensus as teachers.
So what about Ed Credit. Maurice Seevier was from that was he? Which credit union was he from?
AD: Maurice Seevier was from Ed Credit. He joined the VCCA Board here back when we had some of our turbulent days when we got into difficult financial circumstances and we wanted to change the image of the Board and the Manager left. That is where he came in and he was with Ed Credit. Now interestingly enough we have an Association of Australian Teachers’ Credit Unions, which involves New South Wales. Ken Miller was the bastion there and Harold Marsh was up in Queensland and we felt this was not good enough so we sponsored them in 1974 into that Association because somehow we got there first and their constitution didn’t quite allow it. So Ed Credit is part of the Association and we are. We have always had, and I suppose it is sexist, a gentlemen’s agreement with them that they would look after the secondary and technical school sector and we would concentrate on the rest of the education market. There have been, in the past, vague talking or aims to amalgamate, but we always seem to run into stumbling blocks for all sorts of strange reasons. Computer systems, seven Directors and two Managers on both Boards. All sorts of philosophy and of course not in the least the unions in the background. That has always been our stumbling block and it is still one of those things that I hope in the future we will cross and one day we will have one significant teachers’ credit union.
In New South Wales they have been trying to amalgamate with Private Teachers’ for a number of years and was the Union, the Federation, that stopped them.
AD: Well that’s true and that is Ed Credit’s position today. Our position is we have a totally open bond so we do service all the independent schools as well. Because Ed Credit is in that New South Wales-style, the Union is saying, “Hey it is a Union credit union,” that is one of the obstacles towards amalgamation and is probably the most serious one.
That amalgamation is on in New South Wales if it is going to happen now, but I think the Private School Teachers’ are doing all right, thank you very much, and they are not keen any more. I think it is definitely on again now, because the Federation would be agreeable.
AD: I can’t comment on that.
Well as far as the VCCA is concerned, when you came on the Board how did that come about?
AD: I was filling a casual vacancy created at the time. The Board in those days was to have twelve persons and they had a couple of vacancies and they called for expressions of interest. I had indicated at a Chapter meeting that I was interested and Eileen West and I joined on the one day.
You mentioned the Chapters, your involvement with that? Were you on any of the Development Committees there?
AD: No, I was just an attendee. I was doing some extra study at that time and being a Director of my own credit union, fairly young with a family starting to grow up. Actually, when I look back, I often wonder why my wife put up with it. No I was just an attendee at the Chapter meetings. In those days the Chapters were very, very strong and a useful tool here in the metropolitan area. Of course numerically we had a lot more credit unions too. It was the South-Eastern Chapter meeting out at Burwood, where it actually happened. I indicated to Ian, who was Chairman of the day, that I was interested.
As far as the Board, what was going on at the time when you first started? You mentioned there that Mike Hildebrand was Manager at that time.
AD: No, he was appointed Manager and he started the same day. Now just prior to that there would have been a fairly turbulent time. There were a couple of reports of involvement, one of which is the PR Report of 1977 which reviewed the Board and management relationship with the VCCA. Things got so tense they had to bring outside consultants in. Geoff Conrad, who was General Manager and who had CU 001 on his number plate; Graham Benson had CU 002 for the trivia files; parted ways with the VCCA. Now I don’t know exactly how he was removed, I would suggest he was told to pack up and go or else be sacked. I think that was the circumstances and they were in an interim management situation. I came down here and saw the Acting Interim Manager, a person called Leon Turner. I recall, knowing that I had been nominated for this casual vacancy, asking for a few documents. I asked for the Business Plan and I asked for the Budget and to my horror they had neither. That was quite a shock to the system. Here we were, what I thought was a fairly professional association who had run wonderful Summer Schools that advocated all these things and was not following its own preachings. That stunned me. But any rate that was my introduction and I joined with the Board of Directors. Now I feel, and I guess in the history of this Association there have been lots of personality differences and conflict, I always felt there was an undercurrent in the meetings from day one. I suspect, but will never know, there were members sitting on the Board who thought they should have been in the General Manager’s shoes. That created tension in the Board meetings from the word go. The tragedy of any sort of person like that, is that it tends to polarise a situation. If a person is entrenched in a particular position it eventually polarises the rest. I guess for many years in the Association I saw that process happening for one reason or another and I was always trying to avoid that and steer a very neutral road. At any rate that was my introduction to the Association. Mike Hildebrand came. There were lots of problems that had been created. He certainly had a flair. He saw the need for our first capital base, a $1 million. Some of the projects that we were running at the time, the debts, the bookkeeping here, any item that should have been written, every piece of paper was somehow brought in as an asset and written down. Some of our bookkeeping practices were pretty unacceptable I guess. A lot of those things were ratified. But of course he wanted to move mountains, or perhaps he had a champagne taste on a beer budget, I am not sure, but that ultimately when one looks back with twenty/twenty vision he had the right ideas but the implementation was too fast and too grandiose. Strangely enough a lot of our entrepreneurs later on like Mr Bond and so on, I hear he was going to court today on the news coming in, have sort of fallen down in the same sort of trap. Maybe we were pioneers there and shouldn’t have been. But that was the first sort of climate we started on with the nature of the Board meetings.
You mentioned an Interim Manager there who I believe was doing a study on a certain project called Jubilee Lake. Did you get involved with that at all?
AD: Strangely enough one of the millstones hanging around the Association was this Jubilee Lake. The concept was launched well before I joined the Board. The idea, because we had a lot of Summer Schools and training, well if we owned the thing and used it for cheaper Schools and Seminars for our own benefit and then generated extra cash income for the Association or the shareholders, or whatever, it would be a great asset to the Association. Jubilee Lake was chosen at Daylesford. There was a five year lease arrangement entered into. There were lots of conditions put on by the State Government of the time, which certainly slowed the project two to three years and probably that was the end of the beginning. At any rate, when things got a bit tough I was finally asked to become Chairman to see if I could salvage the situation. I was given the brief to see what I could do and I was given the brief to raise $500,000 capital, promises or so on, by a timeline in 1981 to launch the project, which we actually achieved and even a little bit better. So that would put a capital base into it and gain reassurance. At about that time, prior to one of the projects we as an Association went into without talking to New South Wales, although one can never be sure who said what to whom, they entered into a venture called FCS for computing and we went into Teledata in a market that could barely support one company, and I would say that here we had two competing so I guess one would have had to bite the dust.
Were you involved with Teledata as well?
AD: No, I was only here as a Director. Teledata started to get into immense troubles. So when we got down to a crisis situation, when we had more liabilities than income or reserves and so on, and we had a series of crisis meetings particularly in 1981, early in 1981 and right through that year, the Jubilee Lake Project had to find another solution. I had spoken to the Registrar, Warren Jungworth, and his Assistant Registrar Peter Rogan and I was wearing the Chairman’s hat for the Jubilee Lake Property Limited, they agreed they would give us a certain amount of time if we could find a joint venture partner or some other such thing. Now we tried a lot of places and got thousands of knock-backs, but we finally came to an agreement with a Sydney firm called Tarina Spas, who used to sell mineral water in those days.
They still do, I think. The name is still around anyway.
AD: Yes, I think it is around. The Chairman of that was Carlo Zaccarato, an Italian businessman in Sydney who started as an immigrant and did well. His henchman was George Clifford. There was one other person, whose name escapes me. We came to an agreement that we would go into a joint venture. The tragedy of it was that we, myself, Leon Turner and a person by the name of Ed Forth, flew up to Sydney, I believe Chris Tingerry would have been with us because I believe he was then Chairman of the Association; that detail I am not one hundred per cent sure about but I think he was there.
He was Chairman in 1981, 1982, according to this.
AD: It was in that period. I believe he as with us when we flew to Sydney on that day to make a contractual arrangement to go into joint partnership. We arrived in the afternoon and the meeting was scheduled for about four-thirty if I remember. They had a foyer outside the Board Room and it was in uproar and at that stage they agreed to discontinue. Now we were stunned. We really felt we had something full on. Two days later it broke in the press that Tarina Spa had radium in its mineral water and they had to withdraw it all and it cost them well in excess in those days, according to the newspaper clippings, 400,000 bottles and in a financial year 10,000,000 bottles and it cost them an arm and a leg. Because of that the joint venture fell through and that was the death knell of Jubilee Lake. We wound it up at that stage in an orderly manner. The Association accepted a moral obligation to pay any bills and of course the share capital in that venture was then lost.
How did this affect the VCCA’s finances?
AD: Well it in itself was only pretty small, but there were all sorts of other problems. Teledata wasn’t going as well as it should. There were costs related to a thing called the CUE Card, the developmental cost of that had been put in and then it had failed to go on.
Who developed that?
AD: Michael Hildebrand in conjunction with Price Waterhouse. It was an attempt to get into plastic by VCCA and they were going to flog it to the rest of the movement. Again this is where Victoria was doing its own thing and not talking.
At what stage was it developed? Was the Redicard in the process of being developed at that time, or was it ahead of that?
AD: It was ahead of the Redicard.
Was it behind the Queensland Teachers’ or not?
AD: Queensland Teachers’ pioneered the ATMs in Australia.
But those were off-line?
AD: They were off-line. The Redicard was being developed in New South Wales and a few credit unions here in Victoria, including Piccol, I am not sure about SEC, but certainly VTU we had an ATM. A couple of others had ATMs and we had a shared basis using the Redicard. The CUE Card was seen as a competition to those and then this is about the time that everything was terminated and Mr Hildebrand packed his bags. We then had a series of crisis meetings with our members. Half the Board agreed to voluntarily go so we could change our image. Chris Tingerry approached David Dinning and that is when the changes occurred, back in 1981.
Now when half the Board voluntarily agreed to go, exactly when was this agreed? What sort of meeting was it?
AD: Oh it was pretty torrid. I have got a few notes in here somewhere. I am sure I could tell you quite a lot from it. There were five resignations, or notifications. We lined up some replacements to try and get the image thing.
Who lined the replacements up?
AD: The residue of the Board, I guess.
Who were?
AD: The people who agreed to go were Fitzgerald, replaced by Maurice Seevier, Rob Davey by Roy Smith from Shepparton on 18 April. Gavin Farnsworth replaced Mr Drummond, who hadn’t been with us very much at all, on 18 April. He hadn’t been to very many Board meetings. Lloyd Cameron from Bendigo on 24 April to replace Franks, and Ken Maurice Sefton from Collins on 18 April to replace Eileen West. At that stage Ian Larssen agreed to stand down in the interests of the Association as Chairman. Chris Tingerry, who was a Manager and seemed to have a lot more time than the rest of us, agreed to take on the role of Chairman with Laurie Watts still staying as Deputy Chair. Then followed a series of meetings with the movement giving them the facts. At the same time assistance from the New South Wales League and the South Australian League, and the Queensland League in principle, and AFCUL were asked to come in and have a look to make sure that we did have the facts to present to the membership. It was a pretty bleak picture we painted. The newspapers of the day talked about $1.6 million in debts. We put into place a recovery process and we didn’t want any of this to get into the media because we were in bulk trouble if it did. Somehow we achieved that, I am not sure how.
Did you approach the media to do that?
AD: The Registrar had an influence here. I am sure he did.
Who was it at that time?
AD: Warren Jungworth and Peter Rogan. They saw the seriousness of it. David Jefferson, who was the Herald reporter who was Chairman still of the Southern Association, who strongly believed it should have folded and started again and perhaps healed some of the wounds of the past when they broke away from their Association many years ago, remained very silent on the matter. He certainly had been approached and he gave us time to look at it. He didn’t want to be seen as the person that brought it undone by bad media coverage.
The people who were brought in from New South Wales and South Australia can you remember them? Also there was the matter of whether any financial assistance was actually received from South Australia or New South Wales?
AD: No there was never any finances coming across the border. That is the first thing. Any of the borders. But I guess there was one of those line of credits, or one of those de facto arrangements which you would never know of until it was tried and it created the illusion we were a lot stronger than probably we were. They really only provided some guidance and directions in an evaluation of just how bad the situation was. It was actually the large credit unions here who underwrote the situation and said they would provide finance in the order of $2.3 million in the way of subordinated deposits. Now the subordinated deposit was a concept that certainly Reg Elliott had an involvement with later on. I am not sure whether it was his idea or not. I believe it was. He would have been in New South Wales then.
I have seen it turn up in Queensland fairly early. I really don’t know which was the first. It is not uncommon in banking is it?
AD: No. But Reg Elliott was certainly talking about it in those terms. Terry McMannus was another person. Garth Furness. They were certainly suggesting that was the way to go. Needless to say, with the change of Board, plus the fact that we had made it pretty clean, that recovery was put into process. It was a five year plan and I am proud to say, and I say it to this day, actually the five year plan was brought in and achieved under the new Board and with David Dinning as General Manager in much less time than that five years, such was the recovery. I was trying to find the magnitude of the debt, but that doesn’t really matter we can dig those out of the Minutes if you ever want them. It was in the order of $2 million in round figures, which was a fortune then.
The way that it is often put is that New South Wales was coming in and bailing you out, which doesn’t seem to be the case.
AD: There was never any money from New South Wales. We bailed ourselves out. I know that sort of pervaded. I guess, as a Director, we didn’t scotch the rumour that New South Wales wasn’t prepared to bail us out, because it was in our interests to make sure that continued, but in practice there was never any money from interstate or AFCUL which flowed directly in.
End Tape 1A: 4893 Words: 1 hour 25 minutes.
11 FEBRUARY 1992: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO ALAN DASH
We were just at the point where you actually found the amount of debt, the VCCA.
AD: Yes, it was $1.6 million, compared with a previous year profit of $225,000. That was broken in the Herald of Tuesday August 18, after our Annual General Meeting, but we had a series of crisis meetings and Special General Meetings of the Association starting from 25 February, which addressed many of the issues including Teledata and so on. In April of course we had the Board changes which flowed on from there. We then went into the five year recovery plan, which was approved at that August General Meeting and I indicated earlier that we actually achieved that quicker than expected, which was one of our great successes.
Well you have covered that subject now I think, fairly well. The only thing that I was thinking of at that time, you mentioned Eileen West was one of the people who resigned at that stage.
AD: Yes she joined the Board on the same day as me, and she resigned at that stage.
Did you work together again during your time on the Board?
AD: We certainly worked together on the Board and Eileen and I have met professionally from time to time since then. Eileen was the first woman Director on the Association and this Association, quite candidly, has had a very low number of women right through; unlike my own Board where we have always had two or three women on our Board. The VCCA was far more male-dominated. Eileen was one of those very quiet achievers. A person who is extremely humble, if I might use that expression. It is not often that I use that word, but she was very humble and thought issues through very well and when she did speak she spoke very, very well. Eileen was certainly one of those strong influences through our crisis period.
She is unwilling to be recorded. She found that the time at the end there was so traumatic that she doesn’t want to talk about it.
AD: I can understand that. It was extremely stressful to us all. You know we mightn’t have had an association the very next day. I guess we all felt responsible that we hadn’t perhaps detected the signs that we should have. We perhaps should have reached some consensus on certain management reports that were flowing through and perhaps taken different directions. One of the things that sort of sticks in my mind is that it was very hard and we met frequently and regularly. In fact the diary indicates we were extremely busy in that period, meeting and talking and trying to work our way through. Then there was all the leg-work outside the meetings to maintain confidence. We had to move around and speak to people and reassure them that she wasn’t going to go. Credit unions like VTU, which is one of the larger ones in the State, yes we did have all our money in the VCCA and all our liquids were there.
That was in the Central was it?
AD: In the Central, yes, just to give that reassurance. Some of the people who were Directors around the Board, some of their credit unions didn’t have all their money in the VCCA. Of course people were quick to pick that up too, which never helped our cause. Any rate, we had to go through that and Eileen certainly found that immensely draining and yet she was a brick right through it. But for her it was, in fact for us all, one of those experiences one would ever want to go through again. I guess that has helped me, as a Director, ever since then to be a lot more wary and perhaps far more critical in terms of thinking and planning than I would have been. Twenty/twenty vision, looking back, and in those days I was still only in my very early thirties I was probably the youngest Director on the Association; one of the youngest ever when joined at twenty-nine; so it was a mammoth learning curve for me. I went through experiences a lot of people in business even today have never been through.
What Committees were you on, on the Board? For instance was the Stabilisation Committee over by that time?
AD: The Stabilisation Committee got wound up in the wake of Communications Credit Union in New South Wales going broke with over a $1 million problem. Our Registrar in those days would have brought in one and a half pages and set up the first Reserve Fund in Australia, actually, run by a government. With that being established the reason for the Stabilisation Fund was gone. I wasn’t on that. My other involvements, and we were all given certain tasks to carry out, was a couple of Chapters that I had to regularly attend. One was the Western Chapter and we used to meet at Lismore in the middle of the Western District which covered sort of Ballarat and all of those. I was given those portfolios. The Co-operative Federation of Victoria was the other major portfolio, which was the conglomerate similar to the Co-operative Federation of New South Wales, which is a conglomerate of all co-operatives. I was the representative of the credit union industry on that for many, many years. As well as Jubilee Lake in that period. Those were the main working committees that I was involved with.
Was Eileen West on either of those with you?
AD: Hang on I had better be careful about Jubilee Lake, but to the best of my knowledge no she wasn’t.
Just that you spoke about her and I wondered what you had been working on together.
AD: Well we certainly worked on the recovery programs together. Other than that, other than being a regular attender at some of the seminars and presentations, not very much.
So what else were you on?
AD: That was enough to keep anybody going, I think you will find, beside the Board meetings. We would get one hundred and twenty pages of documents, pour in, and then we would have the monthly Board meeting which required a huge amount of homework. The Committee structure was quite as strong as perhaps it ought to have been. I was involved in AFCUL too, I left that out. I was a delegate to AFCUL a few times.
Yes I have you down here as a delegate to AFCUL between 1979 and 1982. I only got that out of the Annual Meeting Report.
AD: That would be about right. That included the World Conference in 1979, in Sydney. That was a great milestone for Australia as was the second one down here in 1988.
Were you involved in both of them?
AD: Yes I was involved in the initial preparation of some of the material for the submission here, bearing in mind it was, as a Board, it was a very close decision. It went 4:5 not to do it, and then the membership at an Annual Meeting said they wanted the conference and was the best thing that happened. It gave perhaps a unity of purpose right through the movement for a period of time and it was very, very desirable. That was the 1988 one.
It also gave Melbourne a bit of a focus whereas everything was going on in Sydney at the time.
AD: Yes there is always that perception that New South Wales is sort of the dominant player.
I suppose it was inevitable wasn’t it?
AD: Yes, but even in the credit union industry. But then again you have larger numbers of credit unions and a lot more of them spread up and down that east coast there. Merely on the numerical basis it should have that extra influence and that was probably one of our weaknesses that our movement here wasn’t as big as New South Wales. When there was diversity, anyone who sort of spat the dummy, or disagreed, or for some reason parted company with the movement, that impact was far greater and perhaps didn’t maintain the sense of balance or proprietary that there ought to have been. All our periods down here were always interesting. Much argument and certain grandstanders and point scorers who seemed to be there for the sake of point scoring. Yet we somehow got through.
One thing I always say about the Victorians, if New South Wales wants to claim anything that they did better than Victoria then they came two credit unions that went down the drain there and members lost money, whereas there were none in Victoria.
AD: But we were lucky. The Registrar put that legislation in and deficit budgets didn’t quite matter. Margins were very coarse in those days and fortunately, through a series of amalgamations in more recent times, we have been able to keep our image reasonably clean. But that has been more good luck than good management. Although the Stabilisation Fund in the early days was certainly a very powerful tool in providing reassurance.
How did you go about planning the two World Council meetings in 1979 and 1988? I mean were you involved in both of them?
AD: I attended the one in 1979 so I only saw what happened, I was not involved in the planning. That had been done in New South Wales.
I believe there was planning done down here as well.
AD: There was a little bit, but I wasn’t involved in it. Graham Benson and some of the others, the more senior fathers, in inverted commas I will use that expression. Graham Benson was a bit evangelical at times.
Well he was Secretary of the World Council.
AD: Yes he was at that time, had a great deal to do with it, but I personally had nothing. With the 1988 Conference we were given the brief to prepare material, which we did. We then prepared the way for that, Those submissions went forward to the World Council with the help of the Victorian Tourism Authority here, which provided a wonderful amount of data on how much better Melbourne’s weather is to Sydney and all of those critical factors.
You can say that again after the last three days.
AD: Certainly. So we put that together in a submission which was duly accepted. Now Graham Benson put together a team to do some of the lobbying and from his experience as World Council Secretary and so on, he carried a lot of that. At the London Conference we went over there to be seen and push a good cause, because we were then going to host and it was fait accompli we were going to be the next nation and we gave away teddy bears, etc. Graham and some of the retired managers, a little group, handled that extremely well. It led on to the magnificent success here which was something of which we should be proud.
Now during your time on the Board you were a Director under how many Chairmen, two or three? How did they differ do you think?
AD: There was Ian Larssen first of all. Then came Chris Tingerry and then Richard Crosbie. Ian was a volunteer. He was well-founded, very strong on policy, he was very keen to get some of those things working. I think he had a very tough time of it because he had certain Directors who were out there, whose major aim in life was to score points off certain other Directors and the General Manager of the day. It was pretty turbulent the whole time that Ian was there. Ian tried to pacify and keep the harmony going and I think to a large extent he did. He was very strong in seeing the Chapters work well. He was very strong on doing things extremely right. Chris Tingerry took over from him when we had that spill, when we needed to change our image. He was seen as a young pragmatist, a young man who was going places. I guess from day one there were people out there in the movement having shots of him because his credit union’s balance sheet wasn’t all that straight. No one likes a tall poppy, we tend to lop them off down here. That is one of those syndromes that are around. Chris did his extreme best. He motored down from Beechworth to Melbourne perhaps twice a week and did an immense amount of work for the movement I would say. I think one of the factors why his marriage broke down was that he was involved in during that time was due to the fact that he was down here fighting fires and providing the direction that the Board wanted under a new image.
Do you know where he is now?
AD: No, as a matter of fact I don’t. I have lost track of him.
So have we at the Historical Co-operative. He was a member, but his letters are being returned ‘Not Known’.
AD: No, I lost track of Chris. The last time I knew him he was in the Beechworth-Myrtleford area, I think he was living in Myrtleford. He certainly was a very strong pragmatist. He tended to have, I guess and I don’t know whether it is his background or not, the ends justify the means sort of syndrome. He was a go-getter and set out to achieve our targets. Then Richard Crosbie came. Richard came in certainly as a Senior Lecturer from Footscray, a very good speaker. He came in and certainly provided perhaps the direction and the strength on the Board that we needed. My notes show that I served on the Board with forty different people as Directors, thirty plus at any rate, different Directors and it is certainly an incredible list there during that time. Richard tended to provide that stability that you can start to see creeping in this list from when he appeared on the scene. He was a very strong personality.
David Dinning commented that he felt he was getting insufficient support from the Board under Richard Crosbie’s Chairmanship, although they personally got on.
AD: I guess this comes down to communication and what constitutes communication. My observations right through all my diaries is that we were poor communicators as a whole group. We were always fragmented. No Chairman ever provided perhaps that purpose that we wanted. We didn’t ever agree. If you can use the analogy of a bundle of sticks, you can have them laying in all different directions and they are not very strong, but tie them all together and put them across a bridge you have got a very, very strong structure. If we could all agree on that purpose we would have achieved a lot.
You know the origin of the word fascist don’t you? It is a bundle of sticks.
AD: I had never realised that. I guess it comes back to what were the people who used to serve the Senators with bundles of sticks in Rome. I guess that is where it came from. To go back to David Dinning, he came and the first target was to recover. That was a very clear target and very precise and we achieved it. Then it was the matter of direction from there on in. Now in Victoria here, and at this stage I guess the seeds of the two major associations in Victoria were starting to be sown then, some of the senior credit unions, including VTU, felt they weren’t getting the service they wanted. Our Redicards weren’t working. People would go to the NAB tellers and they were falling down. The links weren’t working and wearing a VTU hat we felt we weren’t getting the service. A lot of other credit unions felt that and that started to fragment. After that debt recovery was in we were starting to get divergent and we never really attained that unity of purpose after that. I then departed the scene in 1987, I was voted out at that Annual General Meeting.
Who took over from you? How did that happen do you know?
AD: Well in my opinion it was very simple. They were looking for perhaps a little more unity. The VTU was at this stage going its own way. We had decided we would drop Redicard, we would make a deal with the State Bank of Victoria so we could give access to our members Statewide and so on. I guess they felt that we were a bit of a dissident. I think little did they realise that once the VTU had nobody on the Board, any moral or any other force which was perhaps keeping us in the Association was then gone. My own Board was always critical of the Association and often of me when I found myself always defending the Association back at the VTU, but that is another story. Slowly those seeds led to the six largest credit unions, or six of the larger credit unions in Victoria, forming the Credit Union Association which is now operating here.
Your credit union is in it?
AD: Yes my credit union is in it. I find that a personal tragedy. I would love to see some sort of reconciliation.
Did you stay in Redicard?
AD: No we dropped that and went to the State Bank. Incidentally some of the other credit unions had already done that. We were far from the first. Anyhow that led to demise and Jubilee Lake was wound up so the voting block decided they didn’t want me, and that is democracy at work.
What happened with the State Bank Card, is that all right still?
AD: We are still using it.
You have got access to Commonwealth Bank now?
AD: We have got access to any bank in Australia. It is providing a very, very good service to our members. That is why we went. We found that we had members voting with their feet. They were going back to the banks because the Rediteller network was not working.
But the Rediteller network is now in ANZ and NAB, so if you are at the State Bank their one is working at the Commonwealth, Wespac so you are just as well off.
AD: We are far better off, in fact. I am not sure in terms of bargaining and negotiating, I don’t know where that is going to go. Naturally we are a bit keen on the Co-operative Bank, perhaps moving on to current things. The Co-operative Bank up there in Sydney which is mooted. But who knows.
I don’t think the credit union movement is very keen on it.
AD: Well we are a bit interested at this stage.
Well they are interested in getting into the payment system and I don’t know what is going to happen. I think it will happen for everybody.
AD: Well one would hope so.
Well the word goes round that it seems that it is going to happen.
AD: That was the greatest victory that Peter Timmins had to, going back, his one single achievement was to break the Bankcard monopoly and the cartels and then steer us through the Campbell Inquiry. That is his great accolade or laurel from those days at AFCUL.
You were on AFCUL at that time were you?
AD: I was never on AFCUL, I was only a delegate in those days. Incidentally in 1979 the first report from Bill Wright from Canada on a central banking facility was tabled at that AFCUL meeting and the first propositions which eventually led on to CUFSAL.
Incidentally one of the people that went out is Nigel Westerby and John Williams, did you replace one of those on the Board? They left in 1979.
AD: I may well have done. I am not sure who I replaced to be quite honest. But they were antagonistic from day one when Mike Hildebrand came.
Looks to me as you replaced one and Chris Tingerry replaced the other one.
AD: I would think that was so, but I can’t recall that precisely.
What area haven’t we covered that we should have done? What about AICUM and ICUD?
AD: Well we had three goes at trying to get an Institute of Credit Union Directors running up here. New South Wales had one running back in the World Conference time and it was very good. We did attend one of their meetings at that time.
I don’t think it was ICUD, it was the forerunner.
AD: It might have been too, but some sort of Credit Union Directors’ Association. It took a long time to get one up here. Fortunately we have and it is starting to serve us extremely well. But it was a long time coming. That may have been because the Chapters were very effective in those days. Since then they have virtually faded away with the exception of the Melbourne Chapter.
Why do you think this is so?
AD: I don’t know. Perhaps we are all very busy running our own societies.
Do you think it is because of the rise of ICUD and AICUM?
AD: I am sure they contributed to that profile.
The other thing that happened in New South Wales, I don’t know whether it was comparable down here, the Regional meetings took off in all directions and they seemed to replace the Chapters out in the other areas.
AD: Victoria is a much more compact State, so we tended not to have Regional meetings, you could get away with a Melbourne meeting. Usual Special Meetings and some of those were quite fascinating. We used to have some grandstanders, John Lanigan, Peter Hodgkinson was another. It was often felt that their main aim was to disrupt the meeting and ask disruptive questions. When one looks back I don’t think they ever intended to be disruptive, in fact I think they were very brilliant thinkers but somehow or another they couldn’t harness themselves to work within the rules that everybody else was working to. So that became very antagonistic. Of course in the polarisation principle game when the antagonism principle comes into play, if you upset somebody, then they tend to vote against you don’t they. So perhaps some of the contributions that they could have made were never effectively realised. Now you did ask me was there anything else I should have said. I guess there are lots and lots of details that one could look at.
Have you got any noted at all? Have you got any tagged that you might be able to lay your hands on?
AD: I will just run through the headings so that they are on record. The diaries are kept at my place and they will eventually be made available at a much later date because I still feel some of them are a bit sensitive. Most of the people are alive today and there are criticisms written here like rhubarb. They do cover Jubilee Lake and I am certainly well-versed in the history of that project. The only thing is that we never capitalised it or thought it out or did market plans, although we did do those because the Government insisted eventually. The Teledata sagas and a lot of that and why some of the decisions were made and I believe how the Board was mislead, that should come out at a later date.
By whom?
AD: I would have said the General Manager of the day and perhaps the management of Teledata itself. That is my opinion based on the reports that were given to the Board. One can table those and perhaps analyse them but of course that is starting to realm into the sensitive area. Those sorts of things could be looked at. I guess the other thing is how we tried to grapple, as amateurs, and I say that in all seriousness, with immense and diverse projects and problems. We probably called in too many consultants and didn’t make enough careful hard thought-out decisions ourselves. The other thing, of course, is the Association was seen as the universal elixir for everybody’s problems, why didn’t we do this and this and this. It reminds me of the story of the man and donkey and his son heading off and the son should be on the donkey. You can’t be all things to all people but I guess at times we try to do that. I guess that is probably for far more specific questions at some later date. Perhaps when I get a little older I might sit down and go through these diaries and make some very specific notes. When your researchers come across questions I am only to willing to share further viewpoints with you later. I am proud that I served on the Association. It is my regret that we are sort of diverse at the moment. I believe in my lifetime I will see a reunification, a healing process, and I look forward to that and I hope I will play some part in that in the future. I think credit unions have an immense part to play in Australian society and co-operatives generally. Our philosophy is great. Even with banks today, even if we have got no other role it is to get more and more like banks to keep the bastards honest out there, then we have a role to play. I think it is fantastic.
It is a pity that the new Reserve Board hasn’t gone the way of getting the various Association members together to try and get them back together. That is one of the unifying things. They have actually forcibly unified a number of them in New South Wales, although they split again. They did that by having a member from each Association on the Reserve Board so they had to talk to each other.
AD: I don’t think forced anything solves anything. History shows that in 1815, after the Congress of Vienna, that forcing countries or forcing groups of people together is going to create problems. I believe that it is the same with credit unions. I think time will heal those wounds. Once those animosities, those prejudices, those ill-feelings that were generated for whatever reason, often pretty spurious sorts of positions sometimes logic but it should never have been entrenched, once those feelings start to wane I believe commonsense will ultimately prevail. Now the art of compromise, more than one party has to compromise and none of us like to do it. I really think that is the tragedy that we have got right through the credit union movement. But one day we will get it together.
What about the time you spent with credit unions and with the VCCA and with other associations, do you regret any of this time? Has it taken toll of your married life, your family? Health?
AD: Not on my family I don’t think so. When I look at a photo and see what I was like then and the grey hairs today, I think it has certainly had its effect. I guess I had a very understanding and tolerant wife. That was critical. I think through her understanding that was a critical component.
She believed in what you were doing?
AD: Yes she is a member of a credit union, a strong supporter. She even comes to Annual Meetings and so on. She was a fairly strong supporter and saw the worth of the credit union. My son is a member of the credit union and he is the greatest critic of our credit union. You forget to cross and ‘i’ and he will tell us. But he is a fairly staunch member too, so as a family we are fairly committed to credit unions. It certainly is very, very demanding on time. I used to have a strategy, in my diaries even then, somebody would say, “We have got a meeting on Thursday.” I would say, “I am sorry I have got another commitment.” In my diary was a little note, and that was “home”. This sort of reverse psychology certainly worked and allowed us to maintain some sense of priority in relation to the rest of the family. I guess that helped a lot.
I will say then, thank you Mr Alan Dash.
AD: Thank you for the chance to talk to you, I think it has been good. No doubt in the future if somebody wants to build on this I certainly am contactable and happy to do so.
End Tape 1B: 4809 Words: 1 hour 40 minutes