28 FEBRUARY, 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH BOB MAYBURY
I will ask you Mr Maybury where were you born, and when?
BM: I was born in Melbourne in 1928.
Whereabouts in Melbourne?
BM: Kew, at St George’s Hospital.
Did you live around there?
BM: Lived in Borwen most of my life until I was married when I shifted to Northbourne so I moved only a couple of miles.
What sort of influence did you get from your parents, what was your father, do you remember?
BM: My father was a commercial traveller. He had been converted to the Catholic faith and was a very strong moral character and a great church worker. That probably influenced me considerably. My mother also was a big influence as she was always a person interested in looking after other people.
So where did you go to school?
BM: I went to school originally at the Catholic school at Deepdene and then went onto the Christian Brothers at Victoria Parade in East Melbourne where I did my secondary schooling.
Did you like school, were you good at any particular thing?
BM: Probably middle of the road and I had an interest in commercial law and in accounting and in the mathematics side generally.
So what happened to you when you left school?
BM: I left school and went to work for the Shell Company and at the same time started to do accountancy at night school at the Christian Brothers in Melbourne. I did that over a period of three or four years and completed accountancy qualifications not too long after I had left school. I moved on from the Shell Company immediately after the War as the people were returning from service, those who were too young to go to the War were being overwhelmed by those coming back who had preference in the place. So I moved to a company dealing with heavy earth-moving equipment, Tuck Bryant, where I was Assistant Accountant and I worked for them for about four years and then moved into the Secretaryship of the YCW group of Co-operative Housing Societies. That was in 1952.
Had you been involved with the YCW Movement before that?
BM: Yes, I was very active in the YCW in the middle forties and late forties and was on the State Executive and was in fact one of those people who was involved in the early work on the commencement of housing societies, the preliminary work which was before the Act was proclaimed in Victoria. The YCW was one of those bodies which worked to get a Co-operative Housing Society Act put in.
Who were with you on that, can you remember?
BM: Well, certainly Ted Long, a fellow named Ron Ferrari was the man who did a lot of initial work but didn’t remain very active, but certainly did a lot of initial work in bringing the concept to Melbourne. Ted Long and Frank McCann, others were less closely related but probably quite active in it. Then just after we started the Co-operative Housing Societies, I became a Director of one of those Co-operative Housing Societies, that was before I took on the full-time role.
Which one was that?
BM: It was Security, in those days YCW which was later known as Security, No. 7 Co-operative Housing Society, so it was one of the relatively early ones. I was Director of that for about three years before the position of Secretary became vacant and I then applied.
So what was the method of operation of the Co-operative Housing Societies?
BM: Co-operative Housing Society basically relied on the Victorian Government guarantee which we were able to take to a lending institution, either a bank or a insurance company, and then borrow a lump sum, in those days perhaps half a million dollars, or the equivalent thereof, and that was then lent individually to a number of people for housing purposes. But the single loan from the bank was paid back as individuals paid back the Society, so it was co-operative in the sense that we borrowed as one and any surpluses that we might make by way of interest and so forth were in fact rebated to the members as we went along. So it was a particular type of co-operative and it continues to be very successfully used today. Basically the Government guarantee has never been called on and it did enable banks and so forth to make loans at, in those days, a slightly lower rate of interest than they would have made on a general commercial aspect.
Do you remember the difficulty of getting the Co-operation Act going and the political ramifications of the fact that Minister Scully lost his seat and so forth?
BM: I wasn’t involved directly in the political discussions, the work I was involved in was more in terms of looking at the Act to see how it applied in Victoria and the possibility of model rules and all that type of thing, rather than the political ramifications of who was actually in Parliament and so forth.
So when did you first hear about the trading co-operative being formed?
BM: Well the trading co-operative was formed fairly soon after the Co-operative Housing Societies. It was obvious to the YCW that now they’d brought together a group of people who were co-operating together to obtain houses, and we’ve got to remember in those days ordinary people had very little access to bank funds it wasn’t possible to just wander into a bank and just ask for a home loan, certainly if you had no deposit, because most banks were requiring deposits of 40 or 50 per cent equity in the property. The big thing about Co-operative Housing was that it could lend up to 95 per cent of the valuation of a property. So we brought together a number of people who hadn’t really expected in some ways to get housing and they had very little deposit, so it was only a short step to say well can we apply this co-operative theory to assist them in obtaining their furniture and other household goods. So the Co-operative Trading Society was started soon after. I am not sure of the exact date, but it sort of grew out of that early group of Co-operative Housing people and it was quite active. Certainly Ted Long and Frank McCann, who were the full-time workers of the YCW, were very active and as they finished their terms as full-time YCWs they moved into this area of the Co-operative Trading Society. So I was on committees and so forth with them, although I wasn’t directly involved in the starting of the Trading Co-operative, I was certainly very much aware of it from day one.
So what business activities were there as the Co-operative developed over a period, that is the YCW Trading Co-operative?
BM: Well its early efforts were entirely related to household furniture and effects, things like stoves, washing machines; although there weren’t that many of those around in those days; refrigerators, even bedding and all of those requirements, kitchen tables. I remember I bought my kitchen table from the YCW Co-operative in the early days and much of the other furniture. As time moved on they became constantly moving in a way with the people who were the early pioneers of it and as they moved into the area of parents who had children at school, and a lot of them had a Catholic background, it was natural to look at the question of the Catholic schools. So they moved into the production and distribution of desks. I suppose it is one of the great success stories of co-operatives generally in that there had only been one or two suppliers for school desks in the whole of Australia and when the YCW came in, although it only had a very small fraction of the market, it was able to produce desks at quite a considerably lower rate than was available elsewhere. In fact the price of desks through the whole of Australia fell as a result of that activity, because it was the first time competition had entered into that particular field. So for a long time desks were quite an important part of the efforts that were done, although they continued in the other fields. Then as other activities were looked at, and we might come back to the role of the Co-operative Development Society later, but as they looked at other activities, the YCW Trading Co-operative, or YCW Co-operative, took up those opportunities and started an insurance company and then a building group which went into actual construction of buildings and moved along through that back to the school uniforms which were part of that growth period of the people who were in it, and of course school uniforms have become the most important aspect of their operations right up to the present time.
You mentioned co-operative education and development there, so what contribution has the YCW Co-operative had to the development of education of co-operatives?
BM: Well that is extremely important. The whole growth of the co-operative ideal in Victoria or much of the bringing together of co-operative ideals in Victoria, related to the Co-operative Development Society which grew out of the YCW Co-operative, the Association of Catholic Credit Societies and the YCW Security Housing Societies. People interested in the activities of those three bodies built up the original Co-operative Development Society which was exclusively designed for the education and promotion of co-operatives. It wasn’t long before they were joined by other co-operators who had been operating more or less independently around the State and brought them together and then broke away in the sense, or in fact moved wider than their original Catholic heritage and became, well that was the forerunner, the Catholic Credit Societies became the Victorian Credit Co-operative Association at a later date and likewise the Victorian Trading Co-operative Association was formed with the YCW Co-operative plus Morwell and one or two others at that point.
Can you remember a Credit Union School that opened in 1963 and how did that come about? No, a Co-operative School.
BM: Well there were a couple of efforts of the recognition of the need for education as a vital part of co-operatives, this was one of the big platforms which the Co-operative Development Society and its predecessors, or the groups that got together, were very much aware of. There was apart from that a desire to expand beyond the narrow group that we had and so the School which was organised to bring together as many co-operative people in Victoria as we could see, because at that stage although the Co-operation Act allowed for associations and federations there was no such activities in Victoria, all co-operatives were basically operating independently of one another except perhaps the Co-operative Housing Societies which had an association at that time. So although I haven’t got clear memories of the actual participation in the School, I remember it was a watershed to bring together people who had been doing their own thing and I think most of them were very pleased with the opportunity to bring together co-operation between co-operatives.
I have a paper which you wrote, spoke and gave, would that have been at that School in 1963?
BM: I wouldn’t be sure, I have spoken at a number of Schools and conferences and so forth and I wouldn’t like to relate it exactly to the 1963 one, but I certainly was involved in the organisation of it at that point.
I found it in Berry Calverley’s papers. Do you know him?
BM: Could well be. Not well, but certainly the name is there.
Berry told me he came down for that School as well.
BM: That’s right. There were certainly a beginning of an association with interstate operations and that was probably the first time we had real direct contact with the Movement of Credit Unions and of Co-operatives in interstate efforts and certainly that was, I believe, the beginning of the co-operation that finally came together on a national basis in both co-operative trading and in the credit union field.
I noticed that that particular School happened in 1963. Now there had been no Credit Union Schools before that as far as I can see, in Australia. But the following year, right, there was one started in Sydney at Newport by the Chapters, the combined Chapters of the New South Wales Credit Unions and also the New South Wales Credit Union League. I wonder if they got on to you people down there and modelled it on that?
BM: It is hard to say. I suppose they certainly had a lot more strength than us and I suspect that having got the idea that they might well have decided they ought to do a better job than we could in Victoria.
I don’t know about that, because Stan Arneil certainly decided that it could be done better with more money from CUNA Mutual.
BM: That’s right and that caused some differences of opinion both in New South Wales and on the Australian scene.
Well a lot of Schools happened after that, modelled on the Newport one and the Warburton School was modelled to a certain extent on the Newport one.
BM: Well, it wasn’t surprising because everyone was looking for an opportunity to spread the ideas. Particularly the office bearers of new credit unions were really struggling, it was something new to them and it was not surprising that even without too much consultation, you got a similar approach from various organisations, because all of them were looking for when you sat down to say what do we want a School for, well you wanted it to teach the Directors what their responsibilities are, you wanted to teach the office bearers how to meet the various requirements of the Act and so forth. So it was not surprising that most of those early Schools were the real bread and butter Schools as far as the work was concerned and so all turned out looking the same.
Well, of course, we have got ahead of ourselves now, because you at one stage, you told me how you came to be working from the Co-operative Housing Society, but I believe you had some input into the actual formation of the Association of Catholic Co-operative Credit Societies?
BM: One step further back from that, probably, was early in the piece people like Ted Long and Frank McCann and myself used to discuss the various types of co-operation which could be undertaken and it was obvious that credit unions were an important part. There were one or two credit unions existing in Victoria, but there was no legislation in Victoria which enabled credit unions to operate. There was a parish credit union in Richmond, another one in Oakleigh and a third I think out Northcote way and one or two who we had no particular contact with in relation to the various commercial activities. So we were very pleased to see when the new Co-operation Act was coming in that it did allow for credit unions to be formed. We had some input into that, but mainly from the trading side than the credit union side. But in anticipation of the Act being formed we started a credit union called the YCW Central Credit Union, which operated from my office at that stage in the Housing Society office.
Which was where?
BM: At that point at 99 Queen’s Street and then later we moved to 212 Elizabeth Street which we shared with the YCW Trading Co-operative.
What were the offices like?
BM: Well the ones in Queen’s Street weren’t too bad, except they were down at street level and every time you opened a window, which was high up, you got the dust from all the lanes in Melbourne, or water from the water cart. So then we went to 212 Elizabeth Street which of course had been built during the War as a servicemen’s entertainment centre and it was built of fibro-cement with a tin roof and I suspect that the ceiling was made of cardboard because the temperature rose to some terrific degree in summer and in winter it was freezing because there was a couple of inches gap between the doors and the floors had all collapsed due to the fact that it was only a temporary building anyway. We had wind and so forth blowing everywhere. So it wasn’t a very bright place to operate from, but anyway we managed to survive there for a number of years until we decided we did need something better and moved to A’Beckett Street, so it was important. But the YCW Central Credit Union was in fact so active in its promotion of credit unions that when that was proclaimed the then Registrar said, ‘Well I will make a point of registering your credit union as number one.’ In fact the YCW Credit Union is the very first credit union to be registered under the Victorian Act for that reason.
I just want to ask a question. I have got a reference, from Susan Pepper in the first place, she is the girl who wrote a bit about the history of credit unions for the VCCA, and she mentions the fact that the National Catholic Rural Movement in their annual report of 1945 say that they re-organised their credit societies.
BM: That is right and as I mentioned, the Richmond, the Oakleigh and the one at Northcote were in fact National Catholic Rural Movement activities and there were certainly another one or two in the western district, but I don’t know what their strength was, but we certainly had close contact with the Richmond and Oakleigh ones and they were active in those early days although the Rural Movement’s association with those two places was a little surprising. But nevertheless, they were very active. In fact I was speaking only yesterday to the son of the fellow who ran the Richmond Credit Union for many years. He told me that their records showed that they in fact in their early years financed twenty-three houses in Richmond, which was an amazing thing, because even though amounts were small the comparison was still there. They had enough funds to in fact finance twenty-three houses in their first seven or eight years. So they were quite active and strong. But they had started to fail a little by the time the new Act was introduced. They had some difficulties with the new Act, they saw it as a little bit restrictive on what they wanted to do and so forth, and so there was a period when they were not keen to rush in and register themselves. In fact that is where we got registered as number one, right at the start, despite the fact that they had been going considerably longer than us.
During the War they would have been illegal as well. The Chifley Government warned off the ones in New South Wales.
BM: Not only that, it only warned off the YCW. I don’t know whether that is recorded anywhere. The YCW, long before credit unions were thought of, attempted to start a savings scheme. We didn’t know what credit unions were, but we attempted to start a central savings scheme and it was just for young people to save for the future, it had no provision for lending, it was merely a savings organisation, and we received a letter from Mr Chifley warning us that we were breaking the law and please desist. That was probably the earliest attempt of the YCW to be involved in financial matters, or to assist in the economics of young people.
So who was it that took the next step in the YCW Central to form an association?
BM: Well YCW Central always believed it had a role to in fact promote the idea of credit unions and at the same time we had the other co-operatives doing the same. So we formed the Co-operative Development Society, which may not have been registered immediately, but we had a working group which existed and met regularly, and they took on the task to promote co-operatives. But it was obvious that the basic co-operative which was best promoted was the credit union and that was the thing that we could make people aware of co-operatives generally through and over a period we set out to start as many credit unions as we could manage. There were some fairly exciting times and we were starting credit unions at the rate of two or three a month for a period at that point.
There is a report there that there were four a day on one occasion, an evening.
BM: Yes, well I remember one occasion when Ted Long and I went to Murray and Morwell and he was going to the opening meeting of Morwell and I went to the Murray’s opening meeting.
Do you remember who was there? Was Jim Moore there, or Bernie Hanford?
BM: Certainly Jim Moore was one of the very early pioneers of that activity and Newborough had a credit union as well, so you had three of them within striking distance of one another. It was an exciting time but a time consuming time. Our method of starting a credit union was to have what was known in New South Wales as cottage discussion groups, but we didn’t believe in cottages here so we referred to them as house discussions and we picked up that idea from Father Gallagher’s group in New South Wales.
You know that came from Martin Luther, don’t you?
BM: I don’t think Father Gallagher would have been terribly impressed that it came from Martin Luther, but nevertheless he made it a very effective method. So we used to have an initial meeting of a few people we had contacted, usually YCW people within a parish, ex-YCWs who might have been Housing Society members of whatever it might be, and those half dozen would then agree that they would each hold a meeting in their homes in a week’s time and by the time you went to the formation of the credit union you’d probably have anything up to thirty or forty people.
End Tape 1A: 3754 Words: 1 hour 35 minutes.
28 FEBRUARY 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH BOB MAYBURY
We got up to the point where you were forming credit unions. Were you still being paid, by the way, at the Co-operative Housing Society?
BM: Now, this was voluntary work in the sense it was all done after hours. I remember another night where we all drove to Bendigo and that may have been an occasion when three or four credit unions were started. But I think we went to Bendigo four times from Melbourne in several cars for a number of meetings and I think they formed four credit unions, or certainly three credit unions, on the one night in Bendigo and that was quite an exciting time too. It is hard to say how many I was directly involved with but I think I did calculate at one stage something like twenty-five credit unions that I had direct association with at that state of formation. But it did have the effect of spreading the word as to what credit unions were about in a very wide field and then as other credit unions were formed officially, particularly those in work places, they often found that people who were in what was then parish credit unions were interested in the idea and many of the people that we were involved with started to appear in the industrial-type credit unions at the same time. They took on roles there as they had in their local parish credit unions.
Do you know if any of these were involved in the Movement, had got involved in the political side of things?
BM: I didn’t really know any, there may have been, but I steered very much clear of the Movement on the political side other than those things which interested us in terms of co-operatives. It is not a question that I really pursued at any stage so I wouldn’t know off hand. I am sure that there were people in parishes who were active in the Movement and were certainly active in anything that happened in a parish and they would certainly have been involved in the credit unions. But I didn’t think there was a direct relationship between the two.
Yes, I haven’t observed the relationship in New South Wales, although I know a number of individuals who were involved with the Movement, they didn’t seem to carry it through to the credit unions, nor did people like Kevin Yates.
BM: Well there was certainly no direct influence on the credit union movement from the activities of the Movement, although I think they from time to time produced writings on the value or otherwise of credit union co-operatives. But I didn’t know any of them who were actively involved in a personal way.
Did you become friendly, or did you become involved at all with Father Gallagher from New South Wales and the Australian Antigonish Association?
BM: Yes. He came to Melbourne on a number of occasions and met with us, which was a fairly hairy night. When he moved, he moved and he could talk at a great rate and after a day’s work you would go and listen to Father Gallagher for a few hours and he would really stir you up. Unfortunately, despite his great work, and we could see that, there was this antagonism between the two sections of credit union activities in New South Wales. We tried to steer a middle course and obtain the best we could from both. So we remained pretty friendly with both camps for most of the time.
Again, was there any involvement of the Anglican Church, Anglicans generally in the credit union movement or the co-operative movement in Victoria?
BM: No. I am sure there were Anglicans involved, but not in the sense that there were any Anglican parishes involved. They didn’t see that apparently as one of the objectives, or probably there wasn’t just any organisation within the church who fitted that pattern at the time.
Did you have anything to do with any of the Anglicans in New South Wales like Keith Young or Reverend Morgan Brown?
BM: No, I didn’t know them well. They were just names as far as I was concerned. We didn’t have a lot of contact with New South Wales. Frankly we couldn’t afford to go there too often, and they couldn’t afford to come here. None of us were in a position of being able to pay airfares and we certainly couldn’t take time off to drive up there. So, you know, we used to write letters and so forth. It was only when people were here on other business, or we were going there on other business that these contacts became personal ones.
So what was the next stage in events around these YCW co-operatives? For instance what other co-operatives had been started, or assisted, by YCW? There would be a number wouldn’t there?
BM: Well there was a growing group in the trading co-operatives, and I wasn’t directly involved in much of it except as a useful observer. But there was a growing getting together of existing co-operative trading societies and there were probably six or seven of those in existence around the State, mainly in rural areas, and they were meeting on a semi-regular basis and then they decided that they would form an association of trading co-operatives, which was formed later. That included the Moore Co-operative and Wangaratta and a few of the others. Gradually they sought to interest the bigger ones, people like Phosphate Co-operative and Acmal and the bigger dairy co-operatives into joining that organisation. So they were successful to a degree and then they were also joined by a group of co-operatives who were being built in the dairy industry on artificial insemination, which a large number of co-operatives, and there were a few people amongst them who were active in various co-operatives. You often found that the people who were active in their local credit union were also active in the rural area and then also in the trading area. So we found a number of co-operators sort of appearing at frequent intervals from various locations.
Of course the YCW assisted in the start of the Association of Catholic Co-operative Credit Societies, didn’t it, just by virtue of the fact that you were involved.
BM: Well I think that was basically it. As we formed a credit union ????????? to be in it. That continued until 1964. There was the debate as to whether the Association of Catholic Co-operative Credit Societies should in fact be something more than an association of Catholic Credit Societies. There were other credit unions in existence in Victoria and others being formed, and although we had been talking to them there was still a number who felt that it ought to have been a Catholic organisation. With the degree of finance from a number of co-operatives in Victoria, I went overseas in 1964 and that was paid for in part by the Association of Credit Societies and in part by the YCW Trading Co-operative and the Trading Association and in part by my own organisation, the Co-operative Housing Societies. The object of that was to attend a School for Building Societies in London, but then I went on to Canada and America to look at credit unions and other co-operative activities. My report when I came back strongly favoured the expansion of the Catholic Co-operative Credit Association into a more general association. So in fact, we changed the name to Victorian Credit Co-operative Association and invited as many other credit unions as were interested to join us and they immediately did. There was no sort of question of them hanging back and, I think probably in 1965 I wouldn’t be sure of the exact date, the general Victorian Credit Co-operative Association was formed and became very active.
1966, actually.
BM: 1966, yes. It took twelve months to get organised.
Do you remember Stan Arneil coming down and trying to form a league, a credit union league in Victoria at about the same time?
BM: I remember meeting Stan and talking to him and this was the time when there was this great debate about the association with CUNA and CUNA Mutual particularly. I had called on CUNA when I was in America and there seemed to be a difference of opinion even between CUNA and CUNA Mutual Insurance Company at that stage. CUNA Mutual were in fact, as remember it, offering to put considerable amounts of money into Australia and particularly into New South Wales on the understanding that they were going to be the total insurers of everything that was done. Now there was a resistance from a number of people, I suspect in Victoria mainly because insurance arrangements had been set up elsewhere which were proving satisfactory and so forth by various organisations, but Stan certainly came down and made strong pleas to get that league operation activity. But I guess the Victorians were probably a little worried about the influence of Stan and some were aware of the differences which were splitting New South Wales at that stage and rather than getting involved they decided that they ought to be sure we were altogether in the one boat in Victoria at least and we could look more seriously at our national associations at a later stage. I think that is what did happen, ultimately.
What about the management of the Association of Catholic Co-operative Credit Societies from the beginning? I mean, I have got you down as Secretary and/or Manager from 1956 to 1960, would that be right or not?
BM: That would be right. That was an entirely voluntary organisation. We used to meet once a month at night and by the time you had that once a month and the other activities at the same time, it was quite important. I remember some of those early decisions, particularly the late Jim Ryan was Chairman and the great debate about whether or not credit unions should pay anything towards the association. Up until about, I suspect, 1960 there had been no payment, it was purely a voluntary organisation which existed. Jim was the one who was given the task of selling the problem of paying subscriptions. He struck on the thought that one shilling per member per year, so he started his ‘bob a nob’ campaign and he sold it on the basis that it was a ‘bob a nob’ to belong. There was some resistance to it because people had the idea, probably correctly, that credit unions should operate absolutely the cheapest possible way, so that the absolute benefit could be given to members. There was some difficulty in convincing people that the payment for services was something that you should do. I suspect that was a problem in the early ones too in relation to paying honorariums and so forth to people who did the books and that sort of thing. People were doing an enormous amount of work in terms of keeping books of individual credit unions, some of them which were quite large at that stage, with no payment, no remuneration of any sort. It was Jim’s ‘bob a nob’ campaign that sort of started to alert people to the fact that the payment of some cash from funds was quite a legitimate expense in a credit union.
That is fascinating. And how long was it before they started a central banking system?
BM: That was around the same time. There was always this thought that we could probably do better. It had a bit of a mixture, I think. Some thought that it would be useful for getting better rates of interest on what we had and secondly there was this thought that we would be able to even out demand between credit unions, those who might have had surplus cash and those who didn’t. Although at that stage there were very few who had much in the way of surplus cash, although each of them was holding liquidity funds, it was really that debate about the level of liquidity funds that each credit union should hold that resulted in the central banking system being popular. In fact, if we all put our cash in together we could all hold a little bit less in terms of liquidity and be able to make that extra for your loans which were pretty important in those days. That was one of the very early things that was seen right back in the early days, even before the Association was formed, there was talk of that, it was a very early idea. I would have put it back probably in the mid-1950s we were talking about that, even though the Association of Catholic Credit Societies wasn’t formed. It took some time of course to achieve the results but it was certainly one of the very early objectives of the Association.
Now, was it formed under you, the central banking system, or was it later?
BM: No, it was later. It certainly wouldn’t have worked in the completely voluntary system we working, we were just operating at night. It needed a central banking system and I think it was in Leon Magree’s time, I suspect, when he was Secretary of the Association on a full-time basis that it really got underway in any proper form.
Yes, I think that might be right. Was there any talk about stabilisation or reserve funds at that time?
BM: I can’t recall that as being an objective. I think we were all convinced that no such things could happen in credit unions at that point of time.
Was there a policy re keeping reserves?
BM: No, there wasn’t. There was no policy and certainly the Government were not encouraging it. There was certainly a statutory reserve, but it was so minimal that it didn’t really represent any sort of buffer for any problems and I think it was probably one of those things no one really expected a problem in the future. So it wasn’t one of the early worries, anyway as far as I felt.
So when you were Secretary and Manager of the Association of Catholic Co-operative Credit Societies exactly how did you run it?
BM: Well, as I say, in the early days it was merely a meeting of people interested in first the formation of new credit societies and secondly the training of people within credit unions, the activities, so there was great discussion on how we trained people. There were a number of Schools held for Treasurers and Directors and various other activities which brought them together.
Where were these held?
BM: Often held at the YCW. By that time we had an office in A’Beckett Street which had a room which was quite adequate for meetings of up to thirty or forty people and we frequently held meetings there. I recall a couple of week-end Schools, but I am not too sure where they were held to be perfectly honest, there was certainly one at Warburton I remember and where the others were I couldn’t be too sure. So there were a number of people coming together. But a group of Directors, and I think there were twelve Directors who were elected in the early stages, might have been seven plus five extras, but there were certainly about a dozen people involved in regular meetings at that point. So we used to meet and until we had the cash coming in there was not much, and even when we were getting the cash in at a shilling a member, a head, there wasn’t a lot to do. We didn’t have a lot to spend. These were mainly organisation meetings in the same way as you would have a committee meeting. There wasn’t a lot of book work to be done, other than minutes to be kept and things to be organised on a month-to-month basis.
Now, who produced the handbook?
BM: Well, I think that was a combined effort by a number of people and I just don’t recall the people involved in the actual writing of it. I suspect Ted Long who was the best writer amongst us, or the best author amongst us, would have been the primary mover in terms of the writing. Although the ideas might have come from a whole group of people, certainly Jim Ryan and Tom Stubbs were very active in those days. Jim was from Reservoir and Tom Stubbs was from Box Hill.
Were you involved in any of the credit unions?
BM: Yes. I am still a member of the Greythorn, St Brigid’s, Greythorn. I was a Director there for the first couple of years but I felt that my task was a broader one than that so having been there at the beginning, I pulled out I think after the second annual meeting as a Director. But I am still a member and it is still an operating parish credit union, one of the few that still operates as a parish organisation in the State.
Were you involved with the Chapters at any stage.
BM: No, I had not particular involvement in those at all.
But what about the Co-operative Federation, you were involved in that.
BM: Yes. The Co-operative Federation was a combination of all sorts of things, but as a group of Co-operative Housing Societies we were involved in the Co-operative Federation of Victoria. We had it that people from trading, producers, credit unions and co-operative housing societies involved in that activity and I was there, at that stage, representing the Co-operative Housing Societies operation rather than the credit unions.
And you are still involved with that, are you?
BM: No, I have retired fairly recently so I am not involved. But my involvement moved on more into the building society which grew out of the Co-operative Housing Societies and that was my main general activity outside my own business for most of the latter part of my working life.
What has happened to the building societies in Victoria now, just incidentally? I mean, I know what has happened in New South Wales they have all become banks.
BM: Well in Victoria there are still a few left. Of course they were fairly shattered by the Pyramid debacle and they’ve had their back to the wall for three or four years. But they are starting to come good again now and probably the numbers are reduced to seven or eight now, as against the forty odd that was here in the peak of the business. The only one in Victoria which became a bank was the National Mutual’s society and the others have mainly amalgamated with other societies. That has been the move here in Victoria.
Of course in New South Wales there is still all the old co-operative housing societies which dealt only in money, using Government funds matched by the funds that were put in by the individual.
BM: Certainly that is the case in Victoria still and only in the last few weeks the Victorian Government has in fact extended the guarantee limit, something they have been refusing to do for the last twelve months so there hasn’t been any opportunity to form a new society for quite some time. Co-operative housing societies are very active again in Victoria and becoming quite a big part. They have expanded their roles in various ways, they have had legislation to enable them to involve themselves in second mortgages and various other activities which they weren’t allowed to do in the early days.
What about the situation re equity co-operative housing in Victoria?
BM: As far as I know nothing really has happened. Lots of talk about it but I think there has been very little activity at this point. It is one of those expanding ideas which people keep looking to, to say ‘Where can we go from here?’ But I have been not directly involved for a couple of years now, so I am not sure. But certainly I haven’t heard of anything very startling happening there yet.
End Tape 1B: 3395 Words: 1 hour 15 minutes.