BACK
Interview with Bill West of Northern Territory Credit Union 1 November 1991
1 NOVEMBER 1991: NT1: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL WEST
I will ask you Mr West, where were you born and when?
BW: Brisbane, 1932.
Whereabouts in Brisbane?
BW: Chelmer, 96 Arch Street, where I lived until I was married.
Did you grow up around there?
BW: Oh I lived there until I was twenty-eight. Then I got married and moved a couple of years later to Darwin.
You went to school up there?
BW: Local school. Graceful State, then I went into Brisbane State High.
What sort of influence did you get from your parents do you think?
BW: Influence?
Did you have a religious influence, political influence? How did you get on with your father, what did he do?
BW: Dad was an insurance agent. He was a qualified fitter and turner in his earlier days. I remember him as an insurance agent. Quite a good family relationship. Two sisters and myself. We all stayed home until we got married.
Was there any religious influence?
BW: Slight in the early days. I used to remember attending Sunday School and all that sort of thing. But that lapsed until I got married.
School. Did you like or dislike school? Is there anything that you were particularly good at?
BW: Couldn’t wait to get out. I ended up my first job as a telegram boy, Brisbane Post Office.
Did you learn the morse code?
BW: No. Couldn’t handle it so I became a clerk.
When you joined there what year was that do you think?
BW: 1947, 8 December 1947.
Did you have to do your National Service after that?
BW: No I missed out on National Service, I was a year too early or a year too late, or something. I can’t remember, but I didn’t do National Service.
What was the GPO in Brisbane like when you first started work there? I mean do you remember the Telegraph Room and such like?
BW: I remember it. Nothing modern. It was a real old building, the old GPO. But it was a great place to work.
Where was the Telegraph Room?
BW: The Telegraph Room was up on the first floor of the building next to the Post Office. I can’t remember the name of the building.
Did you pick up the telegrams from the Telegraph Room or did you have a special office to pick them up?
BW: No, we had a special dispatch place downstairs.
Were you on bicycles?
BW: Yes, on bicycles.
Did you have areas?
BW: No, during normal hours it was just around the radius of the GPO. Then outside of normal hours you would go anywhere. Porterage paid telegrams you could go quite some distances.
How many of you were there working as telegram boys when you were there?
BW: Dozens. I can’t remember how many. I would imagine about fifty.
Did you join the union?
BW: Yes, I was a member of the Amalgamated Postal Workers’ Union.
You stayed there until you became a clerk?
BW: I became a clerk after about eighteen months. I used to do mainly night work and studied during the day. The Postal Institute used to run courses for the clerical exams. I passed that and became a clerk in the personnel side.
Did you stay with the same union?
BW: No. I can’t recall when I went over to ACOA, but it was soon after I became a clerk. I can’t really remember. There certainly wasn’t any activity until after I went to Darwin.
Did you become involved with the running of the union at all while you were in Brisbane?
BW: Not in Brisbane, no.
But you did in Darwin?
BW: Did in Darwin.
Were you the Secretary there in Darwin?
BW: I suppose I was just a collector, for some years. Then after about six or seven years I became involved in the Branch and became Branch Trustee. I was Branch Trustee until about 1972. Then I became the Branch Secretary.
During that time were there any upheavals or anything special happening while you were moving up in the union to Secretary?
BW: Always leave and leave fares disputes. As a matter of fact the first day I was in Darwin I went and attended a meeting in respect of that. But we still had leave and leave fares disputes. Are still having them now actually over the attempts to cut down benefits for leave and leave fares to remote areas.
Did you want to go to Darwin in the first instance or did you just get sent?
BW: I wanted to go. I applied for jobs in Hobart and the Northern Territory, as well as other places. Northern Territory came up first so we took that and moved up there.
When you first took an interest in the union, who was the Secretary then? Do you remember? Who was President?
BW: Reg Willard was the Secretary of the union and the President was Ray Lanyon. Ray is here in Canberra now, he is retired. Reg Willard is a chap I have been trying to chase up for some years to find, but I just can’t locate him.
He was involved with the union first, before a credit union?
BW: Well actually Reg Willard, Ray Lanyon and myself were one of the first seven or eight signatories to become members, or start up a credit union. Reg Willard organised it under the special legislation, which was the Co-operative Act, no the Co-operative Ordinance. He organised that through the local Legislative Council to set up the first credit union, which has been the ACOA Credit Society Limited.
When did you first hear about credit unions?
BW: Then. I was on the Branch Council and that was the first I had ever heard of them. That was in 1970 actually, November 1970.
Do you know where Reg Willard got his information from?
BW: No. Sorry, Reg would have picked it up through the ACOA-sponsored credit unions. Reg was on the Federal Executive of the ACOA and ACOA, as a union, was sponsoring credit unions in each State throughout Australia, some of which still exist today.
Do you know who got them involved, the ACOA?
BW: Well Stan Imer, who was Assistant Federal Secretary of ACOA, was the person that I knew of who did most for the establishment of credit unions sponsored by ACOA.
Do you know where he is now?
BW: He lives here in Sydney, Eastwood. S E G Imer.
I will have to go and see him, won’t I.
BW: Actually he would have quite a bit of background on the early days of the establishment of credit unions. As a matter of fact he was, I am not sure if it was Chairman, but he was some executive anyway of the ACOA New South Wales Credit Union, which subsequently was taken over by ABC Credit Union and then became part of the Communications Credit Union. But ACOA New South Wales was only very small and Stan had something to do with it. He used to represent them at all the Annual Meetings.
I’ll have to get on to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stan Arneil was somewhere in the background there.
BW: I never heard of Stan Arneil until I became involved through the Northern Territory and AFCUL.
So were you one of the foundation members of the Northern Territory Credit Society? What was it called first?
BW: ACOA Co-operative Credit Society. One of the eight who signed up first. I have got receipt number seven.
Were you involved with the changing of the legislation?
BW: No, but I heard about it. As a matter of fact the guy who sponsored it through the Legislative Council is still in Darwin, Joe Fisher. I haven’t had a chance to really talk to him and get much detail out of him. But he was the guy who sponsored it or who Reg Willard approached to have the original Ordinance sponsored.
Of the ones who were that original eight, how many are still alive?
BW: We all are.
How about you getting around and recording them?
BW: Well they are all scattered throughout Australia.
Well if you can let me know, or try and write them down afterwards, right. Can you name them now?
BW: Geoff Gray was one. He was our Foundation Chairman.
Where is he?
BW: He is Mandurah, just south of Perth. He is retired now. Ray Lanyon was the other one. Reg Willard, myself. I can’t remember the others off-hand, but they will come to mind in a minute.
Are there anywhere on record that I could find, do you think? In case they don’t come to mind.
BW: We have still got the original Minute Book.
So when you get back can you mail into the Historical Co-operative a photocopy of the first Minutes then?
BW: Quite easily done. Sorry, we haven’t got the first Minutes, but we have got the second Minutes. But we have got all the detail. There is one set of Minutes of one meeting missing. It is either the first or second. But we have got all the others.
Might I suggest, have you got access to a microfilm camera at all?
BW: Probably could. In the public service we ought to be able to find on somewhere.
The query is could you get your Minutes microfilmed. So that if anything happened to the one copy, they would still be around.
BW: I suppose we could, yes.
Right once the Act was passed did you have a formation meeting?
BW: Yes.
Where?
BW: CML Building, Smith Street, Darwin.
Is it still there?
BW: The CML Building is. That used to be the office of ACOA. But ACOA has moved a few times since then.
Now thinking about premises of the credit union. You had your formation meeting in the CML Building, where was the credit union run from, from that period on to now?
BW: CML Building we started off.
What year was that?
BW: November 1970. We used to run it on a volunteer basis, the Directors. The ACOA then moved to Cashman’s Building, Smith Street, Darwin and we ran it up there on the same basis. It was from there that I took on the job of full-time Secretary of ACOA, that was April 1972, no it might have been 1973, and on the same day we appointed our first Manager He started the same day as I started full-time for the union.
What was his name?
BW: Peter Moore.
Is he still around?
BW: I understand he is. The last I heard he was in Salisbury, South Australia. He moved to a credit union there. But that was the last I heard of him and I haven’t heard any more about him. He was Manager of some employee anyway of the credit union there. It was a community credit union by the way.
Where did your office go from there?
BW: Well the union was expanding, the credit union was expanding. So the credit union eventually moved to premises in Nuckey Street, Darwin at the rear of a travel agent’s premises and remained there until the cyclone. That was Christmas 1974.
Where did it go after that?
BW: They were wiped out down there, or the premises were, and they then moved back with me where I was full-time Secretary of ACOA in Cashman’s Building, Smith Street.
While you mentioned the cyclone, I will ask you now about the cyclone. I know there is a lot of history before that, but since you just mentioned it we might as well get it down. Where were you when the cyclone struck? Were you well-prepared for it?
BW: No. Didn’t think much of it until the power lines started to go down and the power dropped out. I was home with the family and that is where we stayed until the end of the cyclone.
Did your house survive?
BW: Half of it. Substantial damage to all bar the three bedrooms. We lost our kitchen completely, the wall of the lounge. Most of the roof covering that area was gone. But the three bedrooms were intact.
Was anybody hurt?
BW: Not of our family. None of the associates through the union or the credit union?
What happened at the credit union?
BW: Just water damage actually. The records were intact. I was chasing around on Christmas Day looking for the Manager and couldn’t find him. I eventually tracked him down. The Manager by then was Noel Condon, Peter Moore had left, as the Manager. I tracked Noel down and we shifted all the gear up and started to run from the old ACOA office again, where we still had communication facilities. I still had a telex and telephones. We ran from there. We were short of space but we managed to lease some on the same floor in Cashman’s Building for the credit union.
Were your records computerised when the cyclone struck?
BW: No, we were on the NCR 3000 Ledger Machine, one Ledger Machine.
Did that belong to the credit union?
BW: Yes, that was the credit union’s.
Now I should go back to the beginning. I just got you to digress when you mentioned the cyclone.
BW: Associated with the cyclone was that the Chairman was out of town, he was on leave. I think there were only about two Directors in town at the time. AFCUL came to the party. Kevin Murray was the off-sider to Dermot. Kevin made contact with me soon after the cyclone and offered the resources of AFCUL, if we needed it for the credit union. Fortunately we didn’t need it. I think it was a million dollars or something was the figure quoted that we could rely on if we needed it. Fortunately we didn’t need a penny. But the cyclone was also the demise of the parish credit union, Northern Suburbs Credit Union, which I think before the cyclone only had about seventy members. It was not a viable show at all at any time during its early history. But that was the end of that and Kevin Murray organised for us to look after the members and ensure that they all received dollar for dollar of their funds. AFCUL came to the party there.
Around about that time there was a push on to try and establish Aboriginal credit unions, or to allow Aboriginals to come into credit unions. Did that happen in the Northern Territory or not?
BW: I am trying to remember when it was. I was well and truly involved in that because of the union involvement and my relationship with the then Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Barry Dexter. Barry used to use me as a sounding board as to the viability of credit unions in the Northern Territory in the Aboriginal area. In those days what we call the full-blood Aboriginals were really bush natives and the only real involvement with them, of course, was the fact that they didn’t have money. They didn’t have the money they have these days, didn’t have access to it. The only people that needed care or encouragement to join credit unions were the part-coloured. Of course they had access to us, if they were tied in with the public service in any way. To Nelumbo if they were tied in with the Nelumbo area and the only other one was the Northern Suburbs. That was a parish one in the suburbs of Darwin. But Barry and I used to have a lot of discussions about extension of credit unions into those areas. The two Field Officers that AFCUL had at the time, they felt that they could talk with the full-bloods, but my warnings to them was that they wouldn’t be recognised. It wasn’t until later years that the part-Aboriginals became acceptable to the full-bloods and that was because educated part-Aboriginals moved in there and helped them with the establishment of their true communities away from the public servant. The public servant felt he was God to the Aboriginals in their tribal situation and it wasn’t until after the part-Aboriginals moved in there that there would have been any degree of acceptability. Nevertheless my advice to the guys was that they wouldn’t be successful in the Northern Territory, particularly if they felt, as they expressed to me, that they wanted to go out into the field.
What about the Torres Strait Islander. There were two Field Officers, the two Teds wasn’t it? I remember Ted Field and Ted Wymara
BW: They are the two. Ted Field and Ted Wymara. I think they were involved in the Boomerang Credit Union and that was the style of thing that would happen if they tried to move in to the communities, only to a worse extent, in the Northern Territory.
There was only one that was truly run by Aboriginal people, as far as I know, and that is Cherbourg. It was started by two Aboriginal ladies and what is more it was run by them quite successfully for a number of years, except that it just didn’t go anywhere.
BW: The thing about Cherbourg was that they were really an educated Aboriginal community. Whereas in the Northern Territory we haven’t had that.
But they were also under the control of the Act you know.
BW: That’s right, under the Native Affairs Act in Queensland, yes. In my union activities I cut across quite a deal of the interrelationships and the imposition of government will in various areas, both Commonwealth and State.
Perhaps you could cover a bit of that. I mean for instance was there a definite push to try and impose, shall we say, to start credit unions for the Aboriginals in the Northern Territory or didn’t it actually happen?
BW: It didn’t actually happen simply because Barry Dexter was using me as a sounding board. We had quite a good relationship through the union activity. Bear in mind that his Department was mainly based in the Northern Territory in those days. Most of his public servants were in Darwin. They were my members and we had other problems that I was dealing with Barry Dexter on a day-to-day basis. He had an adviser in Darwin, I am trying to remember his name, Peter Blake. Peter was trying to get information from our credit union, but of course Barry Dexter was using me to test out the theories that Peter Blake was coming up with. Now he was coming up with a lot of muddled stuff, but they never really got going hopefully simply because I was advising against it.
What was your advice at the time? Did you think that in time it might be possible or did you think that it wouldn’t be a goer at all?
BW: I think it would be a goer. In those days I didn’t ever think it would be a goer, if they remained male Aboriginals under the white influence. I didn’t think it would ever become a goer. But now I have completely turned around and I believe it can be quite successful provided it is carefully monitored. Now we as a credit union, because we are now a community credit union, we have a lot of dealings with Aboriginal people.
Do you have a lot of Aboriginal members do you?
BW: Yes we would have a lot of Aboriginal members and a lot of the community ones. They are called RAMs, Remote Area Members. Now that tag is really a degrading tag, but that is how it is known to the Board and the staff of the credit union. Because they are the ones that they have to watch insofar as security is concerned on loans. We have had so many vehicles written off by just driving them straight into the sea or into the creek and leaving them there, simply because some don’t have the appreciation of the value of money. Some of them are extremely rich with royalties from you know mining. They have access to tremendous amounts of money, but it needs special treatment. The remote area members need a lot of special treatment. I don’t believe we as a credit union devote enough time to that. We are more after the quick dollar to keep our margins down. Certainly under the old philosophy of the credit union movement you would devote more time to those people and I believe eventually you would be very successful in using them to their own advantage. Some of them have so much money to invest and that in itself would be of extreme benefit to the credit union movement.
All right. Now back to the early days. No wait a minute we are nearly at the end of this tape so perhaps we could carry on for a little bit longer on this tape. Exactly how do you access your RAMs, your remote area members? How do you get access for them? How do they get money from the credit union, how do they put it in?
BW: A lot of them are employed in the various activities. Educational assistance in schools out there in the remote areas. They work for the councils out there. It comes in by pay-roll deduction. They have access through our agency network, which isn’t all that good in the remote areas by the way.
Local shops is it, or what?
BW: Local newsagents. But as I say it is not of much benefit to them. They are using Darwin office in particular. They are using Alice Springs office. Not so much in Katherine and Tenant Creek, where we have got branches. But every time they come to town they are always in at the office withdrawing money, seeking loans and all that sort of thing. They certainly go in for motor vehicles, and outboards and boats.
Do they use them for hunting? Or just general leisure purposes?
BW: General leisure purposes. Well they do a lot of things in the boats and outboards that they used to have to do by canoe or swim or something. But certainly they use them for fishing, but I would say mainly recreation purposes and to get from point A to point B.
Well when you are in the outback you need something, otherwise you don’t go far.
End Tape 1A: 3755 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes.
1 NOVEMBER 1991: NT1: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL WEST
I will ask you about the early days again. We just only started on the start of the credit union when we moved on to a number of other things that you mentioned at the time. So the foundation meeting, do you remember who was Chair first? What did you do first?
BW: I would say that it was chaired by Ray Lanyon, who was the local branch President of ACOA at the time. Knowing the way the we’d work up there it would be rather informal.
What do you mean rather informal?
BW: Wouldn’t be very well structured, as you know meetings are. Simply because we had all come from the Branch Council of ACOA. We were starting it out, although it would cover all public servants who were members of their respective unions, all the original Directors or inaugural meeting members were ACOA members.
So when it was set up under the Act I presume who was going to oversee it? Was there a Registrar of Co-operatives? Who was going to oversee the credit union?
BW: To be quite honest I can’t remember. I don’t think there was anything. I suppose there was a Registrar of Credit Unions. There would have been an NT public servant, or a Commonwealth public servant in those days, part of the Attorney-General’s Department. When the next Act came about, when it became a Credit Union Act most certainly we were under a Registrar of Credit Unions who came out of that area, or what was subsequently the NT Government equivalent of the old Attorney-General’s Department.
How did you actually get the advice? Your rules and constitution and such like, you used the Commonwealth model ones did you?
BW: Actually we used the ACOA Western Australian ones because we got a lot of help from the then Secretary of ACOA Credit Society in Perth. He subsequently debunked with half a million dollars I think. But most certainly he advised us in the early stages and we used a lot of Western Australian documentation. Bearing in mind that our first Chairman was Geoff Gray, who had come from Western Australia and had a lot of contacts down there. We just used to use Western Australian forms and change the title.
Who put the first money in? Did you put the first money in, well I suppose you must have as you are the first members? What is your membership number?
BW: Number seven. I would have been up higher only I think we had eight members at the inaugural meeting and W came down pretty low.
Alphabetical order, yes. The books were started at the inaugural meeting were they, the foundation meeting?
BW: I can remember two of the people present had to duck down Smith Street and buy a receipt book from the local newsagent so that they could issue those receipts for the $10 we paid as shareholders at that meeting. Geoff Gray has reminded me on many occasions when we have an argument about whether you were in the first meeting that was held, he claims he went down to the newsagent downstairs. That is not true because it has been proved that we had our meeting in the CML Building which was a little distant from the newsagent. But I certainly remember them going out to buy that first receipt book.
So where did the books go from there? They could only go up couldn’t they?
BW: That’s right. We had a very energetic guy, Ray Kinoffski, he was the first Secretary-Director of the credit union. Ray was very keen. As a matter of fact the last I heard of him he came down to Canberra on a transfer. I haven’t heard of him at all since. Ray was very keen and he took over. He was lumbered with the job of Minute taker, Secretary, Accountant, the whole works.
So what did you do?
BW: I think I just stood by and just tried to find out what was going on. As I said earlier, that was my first involvement with a credit union.
So where did you get any further information from. Did you go to a School or did the others tell you what to do?
BW: The others were just as dumb as I was. As I said we got a lot of help from the Western Australian sister credit society. Reg Willard, who was the Secretary of the union, but didn’t become involved in the Directorship of the credit union, had been attending the Annual Meetings of ACOA-sponsored credit unions, which for the purpose of saving costs were usually held after an ACOA Federal Executive meeting where expenses were all paid as ACOA Federal Executive Council. So they just attended the credit union meeting straight afterwards. They used to have those meetings every year and Reg would certainly have been able to pick up a lot of information from there. I can remember after we had been going for a couple of weeks we made contact with Dermot Ryan and asked Dermot if we could join the New South Wales Credit Union League to get the information. That was how we eventually became a member credit union of AFCUL, because legally we couldn’t join a State body and the only way to cater for our needs and for the company was to take us in as a member credit union. We are still a member credit union of AFCUL.
Can you attend the World Council as a member for the Northern Territory? Was that before World Council started?
BW: No World Council was on the go about that time, from recollection.
So you never got to CUNA in America to represent the Northern Territory?
BW: No, we are all part of the AFCUL movement. Geoff Gray and I shared the representation to AFCUL in the early years. Then subsequently Geoff went himself quite regularly. Every year Geoff would go. But in the early years I went, or I went as Deputy. The first one I attended was in 1973 I think, April 1973, in Adelaide. We were voting members and lobbied very much.
Dermot was starting to run into difficulties as Chief Executive at that stage of the proceedings, although it was another year or more before he finally retired? Did you get involved in any lobbying in that area?
BW: No, not really, because we’d lost our vote by then. We were no longer voting members. We had a right to be present and speak but not to vote. So we didn’t become involved in that. But Dermot was always a leading light as far as we were concerned because of the assistance he gave us in our formative months and years. We always looked to Dermot for help and guidance and we always got it.
When you got your first employee, where was the credit union then and how was it organised?
BW: Well the first actual employee, I mentioned before about the Manager, but the first actual employee was when ACOA and the credit union, neither of us had a full-time person, but we used to share a typist. The credit union used to pay a pittance to ACOA for the services provided by the typist that we had. The typist was a casual employee to start off with. That was at CML Building. When we moved up to Cashmen’s Building we had a girl full-time which we shared equally.
Can you remember their names?
BW: No, I just can’t.
So you had a girl shared equally. How were the books being run at that stage of the proceedings?
BW: Well each Director used to go in on a voluntary basis. We had a lunch-time roster and of course we used to have to do a lot after work. But Geoff Gray and I used to man that office regularly every day until I became a full-time employee, until we employed a full-time Manager. Geoff and I worked fairly close to the office and we used to go over quite regularly. When we were down at CML one of the Directors, I can’t remember his name, he worked in the Taxation Office which was the floor above and he used come down and work fairly regularly in the lunch-time. He would have his lunch down there. We would be serving the members and accepting deposits and all that sort of thing. But Geoff and I in the main did it, when we moved up to Cashmen Building, between then and when I moved in as full-time Secretary of ACOA.
How long was that?
BW: Must have been April 1973 when I moved in there. So that would have been in between say sometime in 1971 and sometime in 1973, a couple of years.
Were you running the credit union when you were Secretary of ACOA at that time?
BW: No, I was just a Director of the credit union. Because of the fact that I was new to the union full-time, and we had a new Manager appointed, I had to be very careful how I interfered or not in his activities. He was more experienced in the credit union movement than I, because he had come out of a credit union in South Australia somewhere as an employee prior to joining the Housing Commission then coming across to us as Manager. I had to be very careful working in the same office to let him find his own way, which I did. I kept out of it as much as possible. But bear in mind in those days I still had to be a signatory to all the cheques, so I still had a lot to do with the day-to-day running of the place.
He had to rush off and get your signature on everything just about?
BW: That’s right. Even when they moved up the corridor and started to grow and employ more staff members, I was still called upon as a signatory to all cheques. Bearing in mind we only paid by cheque, we didn’t have cash.
When did you start to pay cash out, do you remember?
BW: Probably the late 1970s before we started to have cash.
What about a Loan Committee?
BW: Loan Committee. Well the Board was the Loan Committee in those days. We kept a tight rein on things simply because we weren’t game to move. As a matter of fact we kept so tight a rein on things I used to worry. I can remember one of the early loans we made was for a motor-bike and the guy ran it off the cliff near the Darwin High School. We were desperately worried about how our money would be there. I think it was about $400. We used to know everybody, that was the point, we knew everybody. At least one of the Directors would know someone, everybody who applied for a loan, in the town. Bear in mind they were all public servants.
What about remote access members?
BW: There weren’t many in those days. There were none in those days, bearing in mind there were very few in employment in the public service from the Aboriginal community. They were all white people who had gone out there. As a matter of fact part-Aboriginals, in those days, were not allowed on the settlements. That was part of the Aboriginal policy. They weren’t allowed out there.
Things change. You haven’t really finished telling me about the Loans Committee. The whole Board until when? When did you start getting a Loans Committee which was only part of the Board?
BW: I think we held on to the apron strings there for a long, long time. Probably wasn’t until about 1980 or the very late 1970s before we went to Loans Committees as such. But most certainly we would never leave it in the hands of staff, never. We were very reluctant to leave it in the hands of a Committee for a long, long time.
Did anybody ever have to attend the Board meeting in order to plead their case, so to speak, or object?
BW: No, we never reached that stage. I can remember in the early days a very interesting story. It was after the problem with the ACOA Credit Society in Perth. Bear in mind that a lot of our members had been members of that credit union, or will still members at the time they had the trouble with the defalcation. There was a partial run on our money at the time. Anyway we had a member who made a substantial deposit of $8,000. We merrily went ahead and loaned that money out and all of a sudden that member wanted that $8,000 back. I can’t recall whether it was tied with the Western Australian defalcation deal or not. But they wanted the $8,000 to attend an auction. So we didn’t know what the heck we were going to do because we had lent it all out. So my wife and I had to get an overdraft from the bank and lend that to the credit union, on the basis that the credit union would cover our costs. But we borrowed $8,000 from the bank, because the credit union wasn’t allowed to do so in its own right in those days. My wife and I borrowed the $8,000, loaned it to the credit union and the woman was able to get her deposit of $8,000 on the Friday. She wanted it for an auction on the Saturday, or the Friday night I can’t remember which. Anyway she brought the money back on the Monday, the $8,000 and redeposited it. So my wife and I got our overdraft cleared fairly quickly and everything was happy. They were the sort of things we had to do in those days because we didn’t have the experience. We were still learning. I can remember that quite clearly because we were a bit worried about what we were going to do.
Other things that I can recall in those early days was the fact that I was the Treasurer of the United Church in North Australia. Geoff Gray was of the opposite religion, but we had a very good relationship, but he always used to rib me over this. When I was Treasurer of the United Church I put all the church’s money in the credit union because we were getting a better interest than we could get through any of the banks. They were the sort of things we used to do.
Where is Geoff now do you know?
BW: Geoff as I mentioned in at Majura.
He is retired?
BW: Yes he retired about four years ago.
Can you think of anybody in Western Australia? We haven’t really had much contact with Western Australia with this organisation, the Historical Co-operative. I wonder if there is anybody over there who might be able to record him?
BW: I don’t know about recording him. I think it needs to be done. He could fill in a lot of the gaps that I miss and probably give a different view on some of the things. Over the years we used to fight like billyo. Well we used to fight like billyo on the union side, but we were the best of mates on the credit union side. He was my Vice-President at one stage, of the union. He and I used to clash like blazes. But in the credit union movement we were the best of mates for years.
What about in a social sense?
BW: Yes, in a social sense. That’s the way we were as a Board in those days. We mixed so freely in the amount of work that we had to do on a voluntary basis, you couldn’t help but do that.
What was the range of work that you had to do on a voluntary basis?
BW: Hand recording of the ledgers.
Before you got a Manager?
BW: Oh yes. Actually we were still on hand recording when the Manager arrived and would have been there quite some time. We used to do it on these little eight by five cards. Probably the credit union has still got that box in there that we used to keep the original cards in.
How big was the box?
BW: I suppose about six inches deep and it would hold about one hundred cards I suppose.
So it was only half a shoe-box sort of thing?
BW: That’s all. When we filled that we would buy more boxes.
Wooden boxes?
BW: Yes, they were wooden boxes.
Oh, not really shoe boxes?
BW: No. Just about shoe-box size.
A shoe-box is six by four cards. I use it as an historian you see.
BW: Well it was the eight by fives we had.
Now I realise why you don’t use shoe-boxes. Nobody has got feet that big. Where did the accounting go next, after the eight by five cards, what happened next?
BW: Well we went to a National Cash Register machine. I forget which one we bought, but probably a 2000, 3000 Series. They were the ones that were in use in the Commonwealth Public Service, so they were the type we got.
Did you get a second-hand one?
BW: Yes we got a second-hand one, probably from the NCR people in Darwin.
What after that? When did you become computerised?
BW: Computerised after the cyclone. We bought a second-hand computer from Rail-Road Credit Union in South Australia, a Wang. We had that until we moved into our new office in Circe Street, Darwin, into our own building there.
Did you ever do a batch arrangement with another firm on a computer before that?
BW: No. There were no facilities for that in Darwin in those days.
When you went on the Wang computer was that on-line or not?
BW: It was an in-house computer, not on-line to anyone.
So you didn’t work immediately from the counter with cash withdrawals and payments?
BW: No, not until a later stage we did that with the Wang when we moved to our new office. We built a new office in Circe Street.
So when you first got the Wang computer how did you record the transactions at the counter? Did you record the transactions straight into the computer or did you have some other means, on the card first and then do it afterwards?
BW: I can’t remember. Bear in mind that was after it had moved out of my office.
You only had the one branch anyway.
BW: Yes we only had the one branch in those days.
Oh well they probably did it immediately on the counter then?
BW: Probably did. I can remember those NCRs were still in Cashmen’s Building there until quite late in the piece, before we moved.
I came across one a little while ago and you can still use them if you put all the forms in the right place. They are all right for somebody like me. Used the Kalamazoo by hand. It is really on an extension of the hand-written method isn’t it. You put the forms over each other. Did you have a Supervisory Committee to the credit union at any stage?
BW: Never.
Wasn’t that illegal? You wrote your own Act though didn’t you?
BW: We were the only credit union, the only viable credit union, in those days. It was a Co-operative Act. Of course there was no such thing, even when the new Credit Union Act came through, under self-government with the Northern Territory. Nothing like that.
Did you have any other sort of committees within the credit union?
BW: Not until well after the cyclone. Would have been well into the 1980s before we went into committee stages.
What committees did you start then?
BW: Staffing Committee. We had a Loans Committee as such, a loans policy mainly.
When did you delegate to the staff the right to grant loans?
BW: About 1987. We held on to it until then.
That must have been very onerous in that case. You must have had to meet several times a week to grant all the loans surely, the Board?
BW: By that stage we had Loans Committees but it was then endorsed by the Board. But we were very reluctant to pass that on. Mainly because it was the only stagers like myself who had come up through the thing where we felt we knew everybody in Darwin. We felt we could keep control of things that way. We used to spend quite a deal of time looking at loans. We used to come into the office and go through a pile of loans a foot high during the lunch hours. You would just endorse it and another Director would come in and go through the same batch and do the same thing.
When the credit union started in Darwin were there any loan sharks around the place? Were there any of the other abuses with finance companies and such like operating?
BW: The more established finance companies like Asanda and those people, they were around. But nothing outside of the better grade finance companies.
Did you consolidate anybody’s loans, people who were in trouble, when the credit union got underway?
BW: Well we used to market the fact that they could pay out their hire purchase loan and still come to us and save money. We used to market that quite strongly and quite successfully.
Did you do any loan counselling?
BW: In those days we used to do a tremendous amount of loan counselling. We didn’t have the same restraints as people have today about being registered and all that sort of thing. We used to give a tremendous amount of advice to people. Very often that was the decision of the Board when they rejected a loan, was that the person had to be counselled or even some of the loans were reduced and it was part and parcel of the scheme that they be counselled by management or by a Director.
Is there any sort of counselling service available now? How does it operate these days?
BW: These days the Loan Manager is obliged to counsel on certain loans, but not to the same extent that we used to years ago. Not to the same extent. It is a pet hobby-horse of mine actually that was what we were originally there for, to do that sort of thing, and we do not do nearly enough now simply because it costs time and time costs money.
What about your bad debts, problem loans and such like?
BW: We have always been very fortunate in our percentage of bad debts. We have had one of the lowest, by industry standards.
End Tape 1B: 3832 Words: 1 hour 25 minutes.
1 NOVEMBER 1991: NT1: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL WEST
I suppose I should ask you about a number of other things to do with the credit union movement generally perhaps. We haven’t covered the whole thing of the credit union. For instance, you mentioned that you did have a Staff Committee, which other committees did you have?
BW: I can’t really recall. The Loans Committee as such, as I said, was each Director coming in and going through all the papers for loans. In recent years we have had Property, we have only had to have Property since we established branches and agencies.
Now perhaps you could cover that? Which was the first branch?
BW: Our first branch of course, I can’t remember whether it was Casuarina or Alice Springs, I think it must have been Alice Springs. That was done for political reasons to keep in good with the NT Government. That was why we did it. We opened one in Alice Springs long before we should have, it was uneconomical, but it has proved itself over the years. We opened up one in Casuarina. Since then, of course, we have opened one in Katherine and we had one in Palmerston which is now run by the Territory Insurance Office on a contract basis simply because it wasn’t viable for us to keep staff out there, for the TIO to keep staff, so we passed it on to them to operate on a contract basis. We have got agencies all over the place, mainly in newsagents. They are all on-line and now that has developed to a stage where all South Australian credit unions are using it and of course they pay us for the privilege. Because our computer is now hooked into the South Australian system so are our agencies. It has been quite a seller for us simply because we haven’t gone to use of ATMs. I think we go this month, November. We have dodged them because of the extreme costs in operating out of our area. But we are going to ATMs, we are going to use the National Bank ATMs and the other ANZ hook-ins. We are not going to use Rediteller.
I notice from the New South Wales Teachers’ Credit Union that there is quite a few of its members in the Northern Territory that were hired in New South Wales and are either on loan or are still actually on the New South Wales system even though they are up there. I don’t know how that happens, it is not quite clear. Do you have any liaison at all with the New South Wales Teachers’ Credit Union?
BW: No, not really. How it happened of course is that they used to provide the teaching staff for Canberra and eventually those members of the Teachers’ Credit Union in New South Wales who were New South Wales teachers when they went to the ACT teaching service then they had reciprocal rights with the Northern Territory teaching service. Of course the Canberra people used to come to Darwin and vice versa and that is how it developed. Simply because we can’t meet the facilities that they offer, we have never been able to meet the facilities that they offer, it is no use trying anything special to compete with them. Now that the movement has almost ceased, it is only those longstanding members that still keep their ties. The same with the South Australian Teachers’ Credit Union, SATISFAC, a lot of the teachers coming from Adelaide or South Australia to the Northern Territory, when South Australia used to run the teaching service in Northern Territory, a lot of those have still maintained their ties. We have certainly got a big in with the teaching service up there simply as a result of a union dispute when the Teachers’ were banned from having pay-roll deduction. So we organised for the pay-roll deduction of union dues to come through the credit society. So we have got a pretty close tie with the Northern Territory teaching service so we will eventually pick up all those members.
Now the branches that you operate, did you cost them out our do a feasibility study to work out whether it would be cheaper to run ATMs than start branches?
BW: It was cheaper to run branches than to start ATMs simply because once you go to ATMs you go for the full membership. We have always wanted to go ATMs but the costs have been too high. We are coming in now and the costs are going to be high but we believe we have progressed far enough and have sufficient reserves to be able to do it. We know we can do it. But certainly the agency system was much cheaper and we believe that the agency system will still be viable, because it is that face-to-face contact that the members like. Where we have got the agencies, mainly in newsagents, we are operating seven days a week for pretty long hours. It is far cheaper for us to go through the agency system than to go through the ATMs.
Now how did you gradually spread the word amongst your prospective members and gain membership throughout the Territory? Did you do any canvassing or any other means of getting to them?
BW: Well in the early days the unions did it for us. We used to insist that the member had to be a member of their respective unions. Of course the unions would be pushing that to increase their own membership coverage. They used to sponsor us into the public service generally. In those days of course we also had representatives in the public service who would feed the information bulletins or recruitment material into the recruitment seminars that the public service itself had. Also as we developed we used to send staff members into address the induction courses.
Did you have any Field Officers?
BW: We have had one on a part-time basis on and off. But now that is part of the duties of the Manageress in Alice Springs, to go out into the field. We have more or less ceased that in Darwin and probably the volume of it has decreased in Alice Springs.
You were a delegate I know to AFCUL. Can you remember the first time that you were a delegate and went to an AFCUL meeting?
BW: I think probably it was the first week in April 1973, Adelaide. AFCUL paid my way, no they didn’t the union paid my way. I can remember being put in a hotel where my room-mate was Cam Laughton. Cam was the Vice-President, I think, in those days. That was my first experience with AFCUL. It was every early in my union activities and because we had a vote there was some serious lobbying going on. No-one really knew how the Northern Territory would vote. I forget what the issue was but various people were working on me. Not Cam, of course, he might have been in his subtle way but I didn’t wake up to it. There was a bit of vigorous lobbying of me but I can’t remember what it was all about.
Had the insurance debate gone past? Did you get involved in that?
BW: No.
CUNA Mutual-CUMIS versus the other forms of insurance?
BW: That must have been over in 1973, but there was still a lot of that hanging around. We had looked towards Stan Arneil as the father of the credit union movement and we had a book of his. We couldn’t understand why he was persona non gratis with the movement. We couldn’t understand and we didn’t really ask so therefore didn’t really find out.
Who did you insure with?
BW: The New South Wales League. We arranged most of our insurance in some form through the New South Wales League. Bear in mind that was what we were after originally when we tried to affiliate with the New South Wales League. They looked after all our insurance because they had the game scunned actually as far as we were concerned.
Did you use their Central?
BW: No. We didn’t use Central at all.
So you are not part of any central banking system now, or are you part of AFCUL’s?
BW: We are part of the South Australian system now, but that has only been in recent years. We have always looked after ourselves until we joined South Australia for that purpose probably about three years ago.
Well you virtually took a lot of them over with your agencies and what have you, computer?
BW: Well we have always had a fight with South Australian-based credit unions about their intrusion into the Northern Territory. I can’t put on tape what I said to Sam when he came up, Sam Walters, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Central Credit Union. He said, ‘How best can we help you?’ Sam and his Chairman came to see us and said, ‘We are moving into town and we are going to set up a big branch up here in Darwin, how best can we help you?’ He said, ‘Put that aside, we can blow you out of the water any time we like so how best can we help you?’ So I told him in no uncertain terms. I told him to something off. Sam and I often talk about that.
Did he?
BW: No way in the world. They set up in opposition to us but because we were a local body we were most successful, much more successful than they.
Were there any seminars conducted at that AFCUL meeting in South Australia?
BW: No, just workshops.
Did they have Professor Meredith down there, from Armidale University?
BW: No, I don’t think so.
Did you take part in any workshops there? Was that your first credit union education officially?
BW: That was my first credit union education, officially or otherwise. Except that I had been involved in the ACOA-sponsored credit unions meetings by then, I had been involved on at least one occasion.
So did you go home and start a Supervisory Committee?
BW: No. We didn’t know what they were all about. We didn’t need them.
So what was the next AFCUL meeting you attended?
BW: Canberra, here in Canberra. It must have been after the cyclone, 1975.
That was the year of Dermot’s retirement. His send-off, do you remember that night?
BW: No. No. It was at the Lakeside. That is when we lost our vote. I can’t remember Dermot’s send-off. No certainly not.
Do you remember a story about Dermot rolling some car wheels across the lobby in the hotel?
BW: No. I was only young and very well behaved in those days.
They were just a gift for Bernie Hansford. Dermot’s son had a car of the same sort as Bernie’s.
BW: Don’t remember anything about that.
Have you got any Dermot stories? Stories about Dermot Ryan?
BW: I must have attended one in Melbourne beforehand, between those two. It was the first time I had seen coloured TV. I can remember I was invited by Kevin Murray down for a breakfast meeting about the possibility of moving credit unions into the Aboriginal areas. I went down for this breakfast meeting and I think Kevin had forgotten all about it, probably no longer wanted to have the breakfast meeting. Anyway I arrived down there and Dermot was there, he and Kevin were sharing the same room. I could see all these ashtrays around the place and they were all chock-a-bloc full with cigarette butts. To this day I can remember how he was, a pretty good smoker, and having been a good smoker myself and having ended up with emphacymae I know what obviously happened to Dermot’s lungs.
Had he been up all night then?
BW: No, it was just that for some reason he didn’t want the cleaners to come in. So they used to tip the cleaner, Dermot told me this himself, a substantial amount of money before they moved in then they could leave just as big a mess as they liked. But I was really amazed at these ashtrays. I am sure, I was thinking about it last night as a matter of fact, there were about three ashtrays chock-a-bloc full of cigarette butts. Dermot with his cough. That is all I remember about Dermot. He was a character but that is about the only anecdote I can think of.
You went to World Council meetings, did you meet him overseas at all?
BW: I didn’t go to any World Council. The only World Council was in Melbourne in 1987, 1988, that is the only one.
Sydney, 1979?
BW: No. Geoff Gray went down for that. As a poor credit union we couldn’t afford the fares.
You couldn’t get AFCUL to pay for you?
BW: No. They used to pay for one person to attend the AFCUL AGM every year and that was pretty good.
Now can you think of any stories about any of the others? Did you meet Ken Miller?
BW: Oh we had a fair bit to do with Ken Miller. Ken was a mate of Geoff’s over the years. As a matter of fact we invited Ken to Darwin in about 1987, I suppose, as a Facilitator for the old ACOA-sponsored credit unions annual meeting. He came up for that. I didn’t have all that much to do with him, but he was a good mate of Geoff”s over the years.
But you had a fair bit to do with Kevin Murray?
BW: Yes. Kevin was the off-sider to Dermot who gave us a tremendous amount of assistance. He was very involved in the winding-down of the Northern Suburbs Credit Union. He gave us a tremendous amount of assistance after the cyclone and help. He was always there if ever we wanted him. I still look him up occasionally when I used to come down on ACOA union business. I often look him up in Sydney and have a yarn with him about various things. He probably came to Darwin on two or three occasions at least anyway and I had a fair bit to do with him then.
He doesn’t talk much about Dermot and AFCUL these days, in fact he won’t be recorded. I got a feeling that he might have had a falling out with Dermot after Dermot left. Do you know anything about this?
BW: I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it. I have often wondered why he got the big shove soon after Dermot. I have often wondered and never really understood and never really asked. He was shunted out of the system. From our point of view he seemed to be doing a fairly effective job, but maybe he wasn’t operating on a high enough plane for the Board.
Well the story is, and I don’t know how accurate this is and you might comment on it, he actually wrote the job specification for his successor and he virtually wrote himself out of the job. Do you think there is any truth in that of is just an excuse?
BW: I don’t know but it could be.
I have even tried to put that to him to try and get him going and he wouldn’t bite.
BW: I never got the view of Kevin as a high flier, as the Chief Executive of AFCUL has to be or has been in the past. I would never put Kevin in that category of a high flier. Dermot was a different kettle of fish. Dermot was a down-to-earth type of person and Dermot got by on that. Dermot was appreciated by people who these days appreciate high fliers, if you know what I mean. But after Dermot you had to have a high flier for the purpose of communication with Government, communication with the hierarchy throughout the movement and outside of the movement.
Well they ended up with a diplomat, Peter Timmins. How did you get on with him?
BW: Pretty well. Didn’t have all that much to do with him in that period of time. Geoff Gray had more contact with him than I on a national basis.
You were on the Credit Union Advisory Committee for four years, now which one was that?
BW: Northern Territory one. But we weren’t very effective. Weren’t very active nor effective.
So what were the issues? What advice did you give?
BW: No real issues. We had no real issues. Most of the work on the new Credit Union Act for the Northern Territory had been done before I went on.
So who did that work?
BW: Geoff Gray was on it. The first one Geoff Gray was on it, nominated by the credit society, the Public Service Credit Society in those days. There was a guy on it from the Nhulunbuy Credit Society and one of our members who was the consumer rep. So I wasn’t on it for the first two years. But a lot of work was done at that stage in respect of the Credit Union Act. Towards the end of that was when we took over Nhulunbuy, really we took over Nhulunbuy. I was a transfer of engagements simply because there was no provision for it in the Credit Union Act other than that. It was a transfer of engagements simply because there was no provision for us to take them over. The township itself was stagnant, membership was therefore stagnant and they had a tremendous amount of money to deposit, their members had a tremendous amount of money to deposit and didn’t want loans. So they were a good adjunct for us because we could use their money and we could pay them well for it. They had so much funds that they had funds on deposit with a building society in Darwin, or in the Northern Territory, the banks and all this sort of thing. They weren’t doing the right thing by their members so it was a good think that we did, in fact, take them over. I didn’t mention, but we had a branch over there. I keep forgetting them, we have got a branch there in Gove.
That is good. Any other branches that you haven’t mentioned?
BW: No, I covered the rest. I forgot about them. They were fairly autonomous there and we used to use their old Board for loan review, to review all the loans and recommend all the loans, but that is not done now.
Do you have any other branch Loan Committees?
BW: Alice Springs, we have. They have more-or-less worked themselves out of existence. With the advent of fax machines that sort of wiped the need for them. Alice Springs, Katherine, the Palmerston one is done on an agency basis, Casuarina and Nhulunbuy of course, it is all interchange by fax and it is all done by the Loans Office in Darwin.
Yes that is a very handy thing isn’t it. Do you accept signatures over fax machines?
BW: I think so. I don’t know, it has never been mentioned.
Presumably the signature could be in front of the person who is operating the credit union down there, so if you wanted to specify it was signed in front of somebody you could do.
BW: I think all our forms are witnessed anyway.
Oh that would be all right then. Otherwise, I mean, you can imagine the possibility for falsification.
BW: We are still small enough to not think of those sort of things.
My nasty suspicious mind I suppose.
BW: Well we have fallen into a couple of traps. We have got a guarantee out with the Northern Territory Police that our former Manager we will pay extradition charges to bring him back to face certain charges in the Northern Territory, if ever they locate him. Our former Manager.
Savings Protection Fund, did you ever have one in the Northern Territory?
BW: No.
Do you have a Savings Reserve Fund in the Northern Territory?
BW: No.
So how is any possibility of financial problems covered?
BW: We just keep our fingers crossed.
Well you have had one defalcation there, as you were just talking about.
BW: Oh it was only minor, only very minor.
Suppose it was big, how is it going to be covered?
BW: Well if it was that big we would be relying on some help from AFCUL.
You are insured for that purpose I take it? A bond?
BW: Yes.
But other than that there is no Reserve Fund that you can rely on?
BW: No. We have underway at the moment, which will probably be overtaken by the new legislation, we have got the verbal agreement of both the South Australian Government and the Northern Territory Government for them to proceed with complementary legislation to allow us to join the South Australian Reserve Fund. But that has been on the go for quite some time and will probably be overtaken by the new Australia-wide legislation.
Have you been involved in any of the other organisations in the credit union movement? Institute of Credit Union Directors, for instance.
BW: In the Territory we are all members of the South Australian Institute of Credit Union Directors. This year is the first year that we have attended any of their training courses. Three of us attended Canberra a month ago, and an Associate Director and myself attended Sydney last week. That’s been our only involvement with any of their training courses. We all did it in conjunction with something else. This last week because I was coming here I did it in conjunction with this one and the one in Canberra we did in conjunction with our participation in the old ACOA-sponsored credit unions meeting in Surfers Paradise last month.
Is there anything that I should have asked that I haven’t do you think?
BW: I think we have covered the lot haven’t we. I was wondering last night what the heck I would be able to talk about. We have covered a lot more than I thought. I think we have covered everything. In passing we talked about the premises, I mentioned the premises we built. We did have our own building in Circe Street, which we built, was built to our specification, which we have sold and we now lease on a lease-back arrangement. We had bought the block of land next door, which was on the corner of the main streets.
End Tape 2A: 3784 Words: 1 hour 35 minutes.
1 NOVEMBER 1991: NT1: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL WEST
You mentioned that the credit union got an award recently.
BW: I only found yesterday when I arrived here in the Board papers that were waiting for me here when I arrived. Last week we won the Northern Territory Enterprise Award for Small Business. We came second last year and got an honourable mention, but this year we went all out and really put in a good entry and we took out the Award. I think we beat twenty-one other local firms. In the papers they sent down to me, we got most of a four page feature in the local Northern Territory News. It is quite an acknowledgment of how we have been going lately. As a matter of fact we have got a very close relationship with the NT Government. We have been building up that relationship over a considerable period of time but more recently we have been very active in our lobbying of Government to get things changed on a national level through the Premiers’ Conference. We believe we have been fairly successful. This NT Enterprise Award, in one of the other papers that the GM sent down to me with it, indicates that we have had quite a deal of expressions of interest to front-line staff of inquiries about joining the credit union, bearing in mind that we are now a community credit union.
Now how did that start? Did you need a change of Act to in order to allow you to become a community credit union?
BW: No. Bear in mind we started out originally called the ACOA Co-operative Credit Society NT Limited.
What did ACOA stand for?
BW: Administrative and Clerical Officers Association, which was the clerical union in the Commonwealth public service which ran over and covered the same members who went into the Northern Territory public service. We stuck with the ACOA Credit Society name for quite some years, then because people were starting to think, or prospective members were of the opinion that only ACOA members could join, we then changed our name to the Public Service Co-operative Credit Society Ltd. It was something like what they had done in southern States, but bear in mind in the southern States they changed their name to CPS or Commonwealth Public Service Co-operative Credit Society. We changed our to Public Service because we were then covering Northern Territory public servants as well as Commonwealth. In the mid-1980s we changed our name again to the Credit Society Limited. This was done, I think, as a copy of Credit Union Australia in Queensland and Sam Walters’ Credit Union Australia-Central Credit Union, where they were trying to pick up and take a name which no-one else could touch sort of business and which stood them apart. Of course wrongly we took the title of The Credit Society NT Limited. We actually changed that very recently as a result of a survey, a membership survey. We changed that to the NT Credit Society Limited. Bear in mind that the press and everybody seemed to regard us as the NT Credit Society rather than our legal name of The Credit Society NT Limited. So all we did was just change it around a little bit. It has been very successful. We have changed our logo. Sorry, when we changed our name to The Credit Society NT Limited we then went community.
How did you go about changing your bond?
BW: We just had a meeting of members. I am not sure whether we did it at a Special General Meeting or at the AGM.
What about the Registrar?
BW: We weren’t worried about him. All he had to do was register our rules. If he hadn’t registered our rules, bear in mind the relationship we had been building up with the NT Government, we would have just gone to Government. We would have organised some adverse publicity for the Government via the fact that they wouldn’t let us do as our members wished. Our relationship is fairly good, but we have always got the ability to hit them with two bricks if we need to simply because we can pull in quite a deal of support throughout the electorate. Bear in mind I’ve come out of the trade union movement where you can always hit these politicians around head with a baseball bat at any time you like in order to get where you want to. We use the same tactics in the credit union you know if we have to, but we have never had to. We enjoy a very good relationship, as I said just a few minutes ago, a very good relationship with the NT Government and with the Opposition.
So how did you have to change your operations in order to take in the community?
BW: Well bear in mind that our rules did state that once a member always a member. We had in fact started to infiltrate the community anyway. We just did it gradually and we just used certain advertising tactics where we said that everybody was entitled to be a member. It hasn’t caught on all that well. As a result of our survey we found out that a lot of people who are not members still think they can’t be members unless they work in the public service. We will gradually overcome that and do things very gradually as we have done all through the years, the twenty-one years of our existence.
The other thing you must have done is this business of having Area Credit Committees.
BW: Well the Area Credit Committees are no longer applicable simply because, as I said, we are using faxes. But that was done under the public service regime anyway. Of course we had picked up the general community in Nhulunbuy which was either work for Comalco Bauxite Mine mining operation or the public service over there.
Do you have moles or agents or people who keep you in touch with the Accounts Departments and the various people who remit pay-roll deductions to you?
BW: Not these days. We used to. When we knew every member and we knew every staff clerk in the public service we used to be able to keep some form of control. We have lost that to a certain extent. You can always do it in Nhulunbuy because very rarely can they get out by road, it is a torturous drive for them to come out by road. The only other way of course is to fly out so we have pulled people off planes that have been doing a bunk from that area. Before we took them over we used to do it on behalf of the Nhulunbuy Credit Union. I can recall that we pulled a guy off a Qantas aircraft at Darwin Airport one time because he was doing a bunk.
How did you get the information?
BW: Well in Nhulunbuy they can pick up the information. They know, it is only a community of 4,000-odd and they know who is moving where. They know who is at the airport.
Do you have a form that people sign? I understand it is highly illegal in some areas, whereby they have to sign the superannuation?
BW: We had the official Treasury representative, the official Treasury Director was also a Director of the credit union, so we have never engaged in that. He never would have allowed us to. So we have never been able to put an embargo on any superannuation funds. At one stage we used to try and get them to agree to make any refund payable care of the credit union. But of course that fell by the wayside with the influence of the Treasury Director who was also a Director of the credit union.
Who was that?
BW: Kim Francis. He is still in Darwin but no longer works for Treasury. He is the Registrar of a school somewhere.
There is another area that we haven’t covered that I can think of. There is an association of Government public service credit unions wasn’t there? Were you a member of that? Were you ever on it?
BW: I’ve been to nearly all their meetings since I first became a Director. I used to attend because I was an Executive Councillor of ACOA and ACOA were paying the fares. In those days I used to attend every one. Subsequent to that I have been to most. I make a point of going to one every eighteen months now instead of annually.
What are the issues at those meetings over the years do you think?
BW: It is only a club with an exchange of views really. That is all it has become. We do exchange statistics, monthly statistics, between the credit unions. The meetings we have every eighteen months where special times are set aside for Managers to get together one day and exchange views. Then Directors get together for the rest of the week. It is really an exchange of view and nothing comes out of it which is mandatory on any one, simply because we are all independent and under separate legislation.
Do you remember the time when Queensland Teachers’ was going into the ATM business and actually was setting up a means of having the Access Cards printed first in America and then in England? CPS of Queensland, ACT and South Australia went into this scheme. Were you asked to go into this scheme? Did you consider going into the scheme?
BW: No. We weren’t on ATMs then.
They were only ones that you operate yourself. They weren’t on-line.
BW: In-house ATMs?
Yes they were. They had a strip of tape, a punched tape or a magnetic tape in it, and you took them out once a day and action it.
BW: That would still be too expensive for us in the early days.
You have answered my question, you didn’t know about it or how it operated.
BW: Didn’t know how it operated.
Lloyd Hawkins was the one behind that.
BW: You have mentioned the CPS Queensland, well the Manager there George Hanlon, my wife and I used to work with him years ago when he was the office boy. Actually what happened, and one thing I didn’t mention after the cyclone when we had plenty of money, when all our members were getting pay-outs for their destroyed houses and they couldn’t rebuild anyway, we had an excess amount of money, three-quarters of million dollars, which we deposited with George Hanlon of CPS Queensland. They turned round a bought a building out of it. I always have a go at them over that. We deposited three-quarters of a million dollars with them which we couldn’t get rid of to our members. By the way, he gave us one per cent over the going rate for interest but they bought a building out of it. They paid millions of dollars out of it.
Out of your cyclone relief funds?
BW: Not the relief funds, it was the insurance pay-outs to our members when their houses were blown away. Bear in mind it took a long time, it was a long involved process to rebuild on a permanent basis up there. So that money was excess to our members’ needs because most of them were living in caravans anyway. So we had quite a deal of money.
It is an ill-wind as they say.
BW: That’s right.
I will have to have a go at George about that.
BW: Actually every know and then I have a go at George about that.
He didn’t mention that.
BW: No, he wouldn’t.
Mind you I was trying to record him and he said, ‘Oh I am too young for that.’
BW: Well he has been in the credit union movement for a long time.
Right is there anything else? Changes over the years that you haven’t recorded?
BW: I am a bit disenchanted at the moment with the credit union movement generally and our own credit union in particular on the philosophy, the fact that we have got away from the old philosophy now. I understand why it is done, why people have got away from the old philosophy, but unless something constructive is done it will be the ruination of the movement. It is too expensive now in time, resources and therefore cash to devote much support and devote much time to members who are in trouble who need advice, or to make proper inquiries about their ability to repay a loan. Our Loans Officers these days in our credit union, and in most credit unions throughout Australia, will certainly reject a loan rather than make proper inquiries as to whether in fact the credit union can take that member on as a risk. I believe that is getting away from the old-fashioned philosophy that I can recall twenty-one years ago. No doubt a lot of the members of the Historical Co-operative these days can go back a lot further than I can as to the member we used to have to help out and want to help out. Now we just wipe him aside because it takes too much time for our Loans Officers to go into the detail. That is my pet hobby horse and I am playing with it at the moment.
What about Project Renewal as they call it?
BW: Not very happy about Project Renewal. Bear in mind my credit union has endorsed Project Renewal unanimously. I did so reluctantly, I allowed my vote to go with it. My concern is that there are too many people these days who are leeches on the credit union movement in that they take high commissions and high salaries out of the movement which was in the past done by volunteers. Now I have always been a volunteer. I have got very little out of the movement financially. I can remember when Geoff Gray and I went to Nhulunbuy to negotiate our take-over to them Geoff’s accommodation and airfares and my accommodation and airfares were paid but we took our wives with us and we had to pay for them. I have never been so annoyed about having to put my hand in my pocket on that occasion because it was done for the goodwill of the two credit unions. But that is just an example of how we used to treat things. You look about in the other credit unions they are wasting their members’ money by excessive commission and excessive salaries they pay to their people. I think Project Renewal will only foster that.
Now is there anything we haven’t covered now?
BW: I think we have just about covered everything.
Any regrets is one thing I often ask, do you think your time spent on the credit union movement has in any way hurt your health or your family life?
BW: The union hurt my health and family life, but not the credit union. With the union I was involved for probably eighty to a hundred hours a week.
With the credit union on top of that.
BW: And the credit union on top of that. Now in retirement the credit union is all I have got to hang my hat on. I am getting more out of the credit union movement than I ever put into it, in my opinion. I am still learning.
Well thank you very much Mr Bill West.
BW: OK, thanks.
End Tape 2B: 2606 Words: 1 hour