ANSWCU 39: 24 MAY 1990: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH GEORGE PRESCOTT WHO WAS FOR A WHILE A DIRECTOR OF THE ASSOCIATION OF NEW SOUTH WALES CREDIT UNIONS
Where were you born and when?
GP: I was born in Ivanhoe, Victoria on 23 June 1914, that makes me seventy-five, nearly seventy-six.
Where did you grow up?
GP: In Ivanhoe.
What did you father do for a crust?
GP: He was at one stage Manager of the T&G New Zealand, but in later life he was an Inspector attached to the T&G in Melbourne.
Where did you go to school?
GP: I went to the Ivanhoe State School and from there I went to Westcar Central which was for supposedly better than average intelligence and from there to Northcote High and from there to the Ivanhoe Grammar School and I finished my education there until the time my father died. Then I got a job in the T&G, they got me a job in the T&G because he died.
When did he die, during the War?
GP: No he died on 10 June 1931, right in the middle of the Depression.
What influence do you think you got from him?
GP: Well he was a good man, he was a good father. He was conservative. Mother was more inclined to be a Laborite and I think I got relatively more from her than I did from him. They used to argue. I can remember the elections of 1929 when the Bruce Government got defeated and Scullin came in, he said, ‘Ah, Bruce will get him easily.’ Well Bruce lost his own seat in Flinders, Hollaway. The next morning, it was the only time he would get a paper in Melbourne on a Sunday was after an election, and he couldn’t believe it and mum said, ‘I told you, George, that was what would happen.’
Why didn’t he get a paper on Sunday, normally?
GP: There were no Sunday papers in Melbourne at that stage.
Was he religious?
GP: Yes, he was religious. I’ve got it in here.
So what do you remember about school, what did you like and dislike about school?
GP: I liked school, particularly the sports, and my studies. Sometimes you would get a teacher you didn’t like. I was terribly disappointed when I had to go to work. I went to Grammar, Church of England Grammar School and it was a very good school. I still maintain a link. I am a member of the Old Boys, a life member. I don’t go to anything because I’m here and they are down there.
Well, you left school and started work, what was that job like?
GP: Oh it was an Investment Department and you were just a junior. You were called ‘Prescott’, which I didn’t like but I put up with that for a while. But then I moved into the Accounts Department and then at twenty-one I got in charge of a department, I was the youngest person ever to have such a large department. Then I started to dabble in politics and they caught up with me and they never, ever gave me another rise and gradually bit by bit demoted me, until I left in 1945 and went to the Iron Workers. In the between time I had become the Honorary Secretary of the Insurance Staff Federation. We did a lot for them during the War, especially the women coming back into the industry, married women. We got them ninety per cent of the male rate.
Now when you went to work at the Iron Workers Union who was the Secretary at that time?
GP: Thornton. John was the Assistant Secretary.
Jack McPhillips?
GP: Yes, the Assistant Secretary. They had just purchased, or arranged to purchase, the old Nock and Kirby building down towards the Quay, 188 George Street, and I took charge of all that you see. I had to arrange to get it altered and shift from where we were in Hunter Street down to the new building.
George Street, Nock and Kirby’s.
GP: Which has now been sold. There is a big high rise there now.
When I first interviewed Laurie Short a few years ago, his office was right on the main street there. You were working as an accountant there in the Iron Workers’ Association, you were there through all the problems they had during the cold war period when the groups were working.
GP: No, I had left by then. It had just started when I left. I should never have left, as I said before. I would have preferred to stay there it was my natural position.
Why did you actually leave there?
GP: Oh well, it was just an arrangement that often happens. I didn’t leave, well I did to retire, but I didn’t want to.
Where did you go to work then?
GP: I worked for the communist part of the Tribune actually and tried to straighten out its finances which was very difficult. In between there of course they had had the 1949 strike and were raided and all sorts of things and they started cutting down and I said, ‘I think I’ll leave too.’ I went and managed the Sydney Trade Union Club in September 1950 until March 1953. From there we invested in the Brookvale Brewery, thinking that you couldn’t get beer those days, and the Brewery got into trouble so they called me out there to try and straighten it out. It was very interesting. I stayed there until 1956 and then it went into voluntary liquidation. We paid all our creditors back, but the big boys were catching up with their production and we were going down, it was too small. If we had started properly we would have made quite a go of it, but it was badly run, bad finance policy. This is what people do, they don’t sort of see it properly.
You mentioned earlier on about going up to Newcastle, did you go up there quite a bit?
GP: Well now that I am at Normanhurst it is very easy for me to get up to there. But anyhow I go there about once every six weeks or something.
But weren’t you involved with the Club in its earlier days, up there?
GP: Yes, and to a lesser extent the Labor Council too. I did a look of work in the club movement. For instance I went out to Blacktown to the first meeting they had there of the Workers’ Club and they have got the big Workers’ Club. I went up to Muswellbrook and started in their with people, mainly coalminers, they have got a Workers’ Club there, and so on. It is a good movement.
When did you first meet Jim Healey and people like that?
GP: Well, I never met Jim Healey, I knew of him, but I never met Jim Healey until I started working for the Iron Workers. See they approached me, Thorton and McPhillips in Melbourne when I was working for the T&G to come over. After discussing it with my family, I decided to go over.
So that is when you met Jim Healey at that time, in what circles?
GP: Well I used to be quite friendly and we used to visit each other’s houses and had a sing song. Old Jim had a wonderful voice you know. He was a remarkable man and I was very fond of him.
??????? told me some wonderful stories about him in Canberra.
GP: I only saw him as a friend and I worked under him, you know, because he was the General Secretary and I was seated not that far away from him.
General Secretary of?
GP: Waterside Workers.
So when were you involved with the Waterside Workers first?
GP: Not until 1956. I was involved in the Club with Jim before that, you know. He was one of the early members in the Sydney Trades Union Club, well known, used to sing a song for us, was always there Friday night and had his dinner there and had his Friday night ???? He was a good bloke.
Lots of people speak with great fondness of him.
GP: Marvellous man.
Do you remember Alec Dowling in Newcastle?
GP: Yes very well.
He’s dead now, isn’t he. What was he like?
GP: Alex was a very nice man, a bit of a lad, but he was a good administrator and he did things well. He took over from, I forget his name, but he was a sort of an artist and he did a good job, but he went out and Alec came back, you see. I went up for a while to help him, just to get his books straight and things like that. I was about the only accountant around and I used to be asked by several unions and the Iron Workers used to let me sort of sort their affairs out. I went all over. Wollongong, Newcastle and in the Sydney districts.
Did you ever come across the accountant, I think he was the auditor, for the Miners’ Union? Used to live up the North Shore, started a credit union?
GP: What’s his name, can you remember his name?
Sorry, no I can’t.
GP: Willis?
It might’ve been, but I don’t think so. Did you know anything about that Waratah Credit Union? I believe he was a card carrying member of the Liberal Party, but in actual fact he was the accountant, I believe the auditor, for the Miners’ Union in spite of it being communist led.
GP: I didn’t worry about that. Among the auditors, I met some very nice people. Allen and Allen did ours, they did a lot of Unions and they did a lot of Councils. H P as I used to call him, Harold, he was a wonderful fellow. He’s dead now.
Now when did you first hear about credit unions?
GP: Well you see, my son John he had a job at the City Council in 1958 and it wasn’t long before he joined the credit union, because he got approached, they were pretty keen. He got really interested. He wasn’t just satisfied to put a bit of money in and all that. So they started to get him on and he got on the Committee there, he was on the Auditor’s Committee, he was in the Audit Department of the Council. He stayed there ever since and he has done very well. He is quite a different person from me, a very nice quiet, heady sort of a bloke, not as wild.
Well he was very much involved by Dermot Ryan mainly with AFCUL and all sorts of odd things, right down to the Australian Credit Union Historical Co-operative, he is still involved on that being it’s Auditor and Treasurer.
GP: He likes doing it, you know. So that is how I got interested in it. But Charlie Fitzgibbons, he was interested in it too, but it took some time before we started it. As a matter of fact it wasn’t until 1970, that was nine years after Charlie started it. He started a lot of things. He got me to accept the Treasurer’s job which wasn’t easy, it bloody near killed me. Starting off you see. We had the Registry who used to come around, these people who knew nothing about the bloody thing and you used to annoy and say you were going broke when I knew we weren’t. Even the mob here were a bit worried about them. To start off you see, every one who starts a business off without any capital always have a deficit you see. They stuck by us and so did the union. It only took a relatively short time before we were there and look at us now we’ve got about $22 million in assets in a relatively short time.
So were you on the Board or were you Treasurer?
GP: I was just the Treasurer, I wasn’t a Board member, I left that for Waterside Workers. I was number eight in the credit union, the first seven were creditors, were Directors, and I was the eighth.
Who were the Directors?
GP: Fitzgibbon, Docker, Tom Wilson, ???????????????, now I am up to four I’ve got to get three more I think, Tassie Bull the present one, he might have been an original, but I can’t remember them all.
Well you’ve got a fair few of them there anyway. I know you were only briefly on the Board of the Association or the League of Credit Unions, but how did you get on to that?
GP: Well, I used to be very friendly with Morrie Ryan from the Sydney County Council and his Manager. We were very close together, and Dermot Ryan, the City Council blokes, all characters you know. But Morrie approached me would I stand as a Director, it was for a vacancy. So I said, ‘Oh well if I’ve got some chance I don’t mind.’ So I got in. It was the next election I got in. I also worked later on with ????? I had to retire from that and all the little sub-committees that I was on, which I really didn’t want to do.
Where you involved with the Savings Protection Fund Committee?
GP: No, not at all. Savings Protection, my eye. They could not have done anything. Without that Reserve Board coming in we were in all sorts of trouble really. They used most of the Savings Protection money to buy this building, which I had to disagree with. You will have censor all this you know.
No. We check it out, but that’s it. As far as the Metropolitan Credit Union, were you involved with that before it began?
GP: No, only after it got into a bit of a mess.
You were working there then, were you?
GP: I used to come out in the afternoons that’s all. I was still working for the Iron Workers, you see. I never worked for the credit union, I was just sort of Secretary and looked after that side of it, and the Treasurer. I watched the accounts and spending so that we didn’t go down.
Do you remember why the Waterside Workers resigned from the Association?
GP: They didn’t like the policy of the League at that time.
Was this during the insurance split, before or after?
GP: After. The insurance split had no affect on us.
They didn’t get into that argument?
GP: No.
So they went along with the League in that?
GP: Yes. I never really knew much about it, you know. It seemed (a) a lot of personalities; and (b) they started a lot of things more American-type things that never really fitted into our scene. That was my own opinion without really knowing the whole story. As I say there were a lot of personalities involved. There was a big tall bloke who used to be the General Manager before Robbo.
He was the President, he wasn’t the General Manager, Clarrie Murphy was the General Manager.
GP: Right, old Clarrie, he was from the ABC, no. no.
You are mixing up Clarrie Stewart and Stan Arneil.
GP: Yes, Stan Arneil is the man I am trying to think of.
Well he wasn’t the Manager, he was the Manager of CUNA Mutual, yes, but he was the President of the Association, the League.
GP: And he used to come around about insurance, too.
Yes, well he was then the Manager of the insurance company, he was employed by the Americans. So how well did you know Stan Arneil in those days?
GP: I reckon I knew him quite well. Robbo didn’t like him, they used to argue a lot. But Stan was a good man for his time, but history by-passed him. It did Robbo too, to some extent. Look at the show they’ve got now, it’s really good, but before it wasn’t so good and therefore there were a lot of arguments on the Board.
You knew Les Robertson well?
GP: Yes, reasonably well, not intimately by any means.
You saw eye to eye with him, did you?
GP: Not on all things, but he had a difficult job to do. He liked it his own way.
Don’t we all.
GP: I don’t think it is a good thing, not in a big show like that.
He is often seen as the main person who made the central banking system work.
GP: He was pretty good.
He didn’t start it.
GP: He was very able.
Do you know Clarrie Murphy as well?
GP: The name means something, I don’t know if I would know him if I saw him.
Well he’s got glasses, but I suppose we’ve all got glasses. But you weren’t in the movement in the early days when he was one of the young ones?
GP: No and I regret that. See Tom Kelly used to tell me about the old times. I liked Tom because he was very honest, very open and very outspoken. He and Les, they couldn’t get on at all. They were very nasty to Tom, I reckon, over the years. I had a lot of time for him.
What was that over?
GP: Oh a difference of opinion over policies, you know.
Do you remember the time when they actually ousted him, he lost his Vice-Presidency over standing up for the starting of a Co-operative Bank?
GP: Well I heard about that. I heard about that from Murray Ryan, they were great friends. Of course you see the credit union movement in this country was started largely by Catholics, by people of Catholic persuasion. It is a wonderful idea and it took on. So Murray Ryan, Kelly, you could see it running through all the old Irish-Catholic names. Dermot. To go to a funeral, you know, Catholic Church and most of them were Catholics. That doesn’t worry me, I am not religious at all really, but if I had to be anything I suppose I would be Church of England, I went to a Church of England Grammar School. I am not saying anything derogatory, I’m just saying that is how it started.
Do you realise how it started philosophically, do you?
GP: I remember as a young man in Ivanhoe, you would come over Ivanhoe Station and you would walk along and there was a sign which used to intrigue me. It said, ‘Join the Credit Union’ It always seemed to me it was connected with the Catholic church, which to me, in those days how things were then we were not nearly as sensible about religion then as we are now. It always interested me but I didn’t know anything about it. It has always stayed in my memory. I think it is mainly Catholics that originated and that it came from overseas. When we went over to Ireland, we went overseas in 1978, Alice and I have got an intellectually handicapped son, you see, and he came too. In Killarney there is a credit union. So I went up and had a talk to them. Because the Irish are beautiful and that brogue. Only small, they don’t earn much but there you are, there it was.
The thing about it you see, credit unions were started independently of the Catholic Church of course in Germany, but later on the idea of a working class organisation was picked up by Pope Leo XIII you see. His Encyclical, Rerum Nov arum, which merely means ‘New Matters’, it doesn’t mean anything else. That was really the answer to the Communist Manifesto about forty years late. It is from that the movement in the Catholic Church took it up.
GP: You see in the Communist movement they looked askance at credit unions. They reckon they were just … But it is not true you see. Credit unions have been very good. They have become very conservative in some places, especially in America. I mean when John went to America he was appalled at the conservatism of all the people. Nevertheless it is a big ?????? But it will never overtake the bank of course.
It’s competing with them, do you think that is a good thing?
GP: Oh, I think it is an excellent thing. I think it is growing. I think that people are interested. They have got to have more mortgage facilities. The average person in a home wants it there, not way over there and doesn’t want to pay ten dollars to join either. That is the Act you see. The legislator made sure that we were held back. You have only got to look at the Act. It might be better now, but it places too many restrictions on us than they did on the banks and other lending institutions or financial institutions.
But you were not involved in those days of the setting up of the Act in 1969 and that sort of thing?
GP: No.
What year was it that you were a Director?
GP: 1970. That was the year the Act came in.
Yes, it had just come in. Did the Waterside Workers have family and continuing membership as well? The credit union?
GP: Yes. Wasn’t availed of very much I don’t think. They had joint accounts with their wives and things like that.
Did the Waterside Workers have pay-roll deductions straight away on their credit union?
GP: Yes that was part of the deal for starting them. The deal was that the shipping owners, AWL as they called themselves then, would take deductions and we used their computers to start up with.
Did they try and charge you?
GP: Never. No. It was a good deal. ???????? was a very good man in that respect, in organising, you know he had brains.
I have already interviewed him and I see he is on the Reserve Bank, or he was, if he is not now.
GP: He’s still there I think.
I was amazed when I went round to his place, the various things they have to do as Board members of the Reserve Bank. It really amazed me that they are in constant touch every day, and they have to be in constant touch it is part of being on the Board.
GP: Well they are dealing with the country’s monetary system, aren’t they. He was a man that had very little formal education but had an excellent brain.
How did he get on with Jim Healey?
GP: Well they were sort of on opposing sides before and I always thought when Charlie ran in the game’s up but it didn’t turn out that way at all. He came in and he did a lot of good things, a lot of really good things.
Some of the other people, you knew Edgar Ross?
GP: Yes I knew Edgar quite well.
Did you work with him or anything?
GP: Not much.
Do you see the True Believers on television?
GP: No.
It was unfortunate they portrayed him in a ridiculous light, I am afraid. He really objected. Anybody that knows him and even met him knows that he doesn’t drink or anything.
GP: You see they write novels instead of writing history. History can be quite interesting but it has got to be truthful. You can embellish it a little bit, but not much. He never smoked or drank as far as I know. He was a wonderful reciter and orator.
A good writer too and for all the years he used to take the Minutes of the Labor Council everybody accepted the way he took them.
GP: A very upright man. His father was a famous man, you see.
They were all journalists weren’t they.
GP: Yes, Broken Hill.
End Tape 1a: 3993 Words: 1 hour 20 minutes.
ANSWCU 39: 24 MAY 1990: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH GEORGE PRESCOTT
Before you joined the credit union, what was your credit situation? Did you need credit, did you have any difficulty in getting credit yourself?
GP: I didn’t need credit. I bought my house through a building society, but I never needed to borrow money. I never had much money either.
You didn’t have any difficulty getting the money from the building society?
GP: No.
Did you save?
GP: We saved a bit. But when the kids were young and you are working for a union you don’t become very rich, I can tell you that. So we could always get a bit together. Not much, enough to say have a holiday every year with the kids, with the boys, which they recall fondly if you speak to them.
I have spoken to one. So why did you want the credit union formed?
GP: Well there was a general movement among wharfies, there was a particular chap down in Wollongong, and there were other calls for it. Charlie had discussed it in one of the Council meetings, and he had discussed it with me.
Charlie Fitzgibbons?
GP: Yes. He was the one that would do a thing and he started it properly and he looked after it too. So that was not really my effort. It wasn’t my position to sort of advocate these things and I would sort of support them and they relied on me really to look after them, financially.
But it was your son who that got you interested?
GP: Well yes, he introduced the subject in our house and I used to be quite interested. I got to know people from the credit union before he joined up. They were quite helpful with their advice and that, without intruding at all. We were down in Sussex Street and they were up in the Town Hall or up in the Sydney County Council up in George Street. People all around, Tom Kelly, we were quite close.
When did you first meet Tom Kelly?
GP: Wasn’t until I joined the credit union. I think I first saw him when I went to one of these Annual Meetings or something. He sort of got up and spoke in opposition and things like that. It is a while before you can sound things out and see who is who and what is what.
Can you actually describe the inaugural meeting of the Waterside Workers’ Credit Union? Who was there? Was there anyone there from the Registrar’s Office and was there somebody there from the League?
GP: I can’t remember. There might have been. I think Les Robinson would have been there and there might have been someone else. We were out in Kent Street. With 52 Phillips Street we did a deal, a very good deal and we got out of there and for a year we stayed up in Kent Street.
There is a sign down there?
GP: Yes I know, well our offices are just down there, Sydney D’arch, the yachtsman, he built a big place. Anyway we were on the eighth or ninth floor there and we were there for a year. Then went down to the new Labor Council building, we got space there, very nice space. I sort of had to do a lot of work on that too, Charlie and I mainly together, Charlie and I. I resigned in 1979 and they were still there. But since they have bought the building next door.
That was nine years?
GP: Ten years I was with the wharfies. Nine years down at the Labor Council building.
Did you have a Supervisory Committee at the Waterside Workers’ Credit Union?
GP: Well we started one off, but I think it is superfluous. Honestly, you need a good auditor.
What about computerisation?
GP: Started with computerisation.
Was it your own computer, or batch system?
GP: No that was the computer at the AWL ship owners. It was a bloody mess.
You sorted them out, did you?
GP: The program was all to blazes, we had terrible trouble. I am not blaming them so much. We didn’t have the people. They knew a bit about it and I was a bit too old. I went to a lot of seminars and things like that and I knew what it was supposed to do and I could check it, but I am not a programmer or anything like that. By the time I left they had a good thing together and we had our own computer by that time. Now they have got a really excellent system as most credit unions have.
Do you remember the Directors’ meetings of the credit union? Did they have them?
GP: Oh yes.
When did they have them?
GP: Every month, at least.
Did they have any catering arrangements or did they just go their way after the meeting?
GP: They used to have them in the mornings before we started work. We didn’t believe in some of the others who had all sorts of beer and skittles around and had expense accounts. We didn’t have any of that.
Some of them had fish and chips or pies and peas. You had them before work in the morning. What time did you start?
GP: Eight, used to finish about half-past-nine, maybe ten some mornings if they started to argue. I took the Minutes you see, answered questions.
In shorthand?
GP: No. Long hand. But I was a good Minute taker.
Tape recorder?
GP: Nothing.
One of the old school.
GP: I’m sort of in a sense a conservative accountant. They used to call me the old conservative, the wharfies, maybe it was the way I dressed.
In spite of being a member of the Communist Party.
GP: Oh we can be a bit conservative, have a look at the Soviet Union ones. Life is interesting isn’t it?
Yes I agree, definitely interesting. Did you go to any of the credit union Schools at all?
GP: Oh yes, I went to several of them.
Which ones?
GP: I went down to Yarra Bay twice and went up to Terrigal, that was beaut. Stayed at the pub there. God we had a rip-roaring time there. A few other places.
Was that an AFCUL meeting, the one at Terrigal?
GP: No it was arranged by the League here.
What did you learn?
GP: I learnt they were on the wrong track. But nevertheless they were doing a lot of good things.
On the wrong track in what way?
GP: Well at lot of the credit unions weren’t feasible and they were trying to do things that wouldn’t work out, financially wouldn’t work out.
Such as, trying to pin you down, sorry?
GP: Well they would have a Manager and try it out but they just didn’t have the income or profitability to afford it and they would get into deficit. They used to call it deficit budgeting.
That wasn’t allowed under the Act though, was it?
GP: Well they knew about it. Very apprehensive, let me put it that way. The bloke in charge of it, what was his name, the Director of Credit Unions, it was a funny old department. I see some of them still.
You mean Charlie Butler?
GP: Yes, Charlie Butler. Charlie wasn’t a bad bloke. He was always 2IC.
What about Horton? I think he is in Canberra now.
GP: Well they gave him*down here and he had to get out and he had to get another job somewhere I think. He was nice, his wife was a dreadful person. When she heard I was representing the Waterside Workers she said, ‘Those dreadful people.’ She was very religious. So I was with my son Ralph and I said, ‘Come on Ralph, we can do better than this,’ and walked out on him and her. He always put his head down after that. I didn’t mind him, he was quite a good bloke. But it was just in its voluntary stages then and we were at sixes and sevens.
The Waterside Workers Credit Union movement was always on a sound financial basis, there was never any problems or talks about mergers or anything like that?
GP: No.
Was there any suggestion of extending the Bond?
GP: No. The only thing we brought in, were allowed to come in, were additional union members on the waterfront other than wharfies. With the things going on at the waterfront now, they almost accept one union, going to amalgamate together, you see. So it is not just the waterside workers, that’s its name, but if covers the waterfront, nationally. That was our big advantage, the national thing.
The power struggle was going on when you were on the League. Do you remember who was President at that time, do you remember how it lined up?
GP: Oh well the rebels were always in the minority.
Were you one of the rebels, were you?
GP: Really, I suppose I was. But there were others. There were others in the centre and others on the other side, you see. We didn’t have awful arguments, but we had differences of opinion. Particularly if they were budgeting and financial affairs, which were a bit of a mess in my view. Trying to do too many things with too little income to do it.
What about the collection service, that was being set up at the time, do you remember anything about that? The League Collection Service?
GP: Well we didn’t come into that much really.
Didn’t have any bad debts?
GP: Well we had a few, unexpectedly. It could have been up in bloody Broome in Western Australia and that wasn’t much good. We only had a few branches in New South Wales, where there was a port, Newcastle, Wollongong, Sydney.
Did you have difficulty with a credit union like that crossing State borders?
GP: No.
Well there were different credit union laws in different States, how would you go. Especially Queensland?
GP: But we were registered in New South Wales and we got away with that.
What about the central banking system, they didn’t object to that? Were you in that, did you use that? Do you think that was good?
GP: Yes. Still good.
Better now than it was then, I suppose.
GP: Well, it is bigger. It is on a better basis. The League here has been very good to its members. If they wanted loans they usually got them. There are a lot to start credit unions up. They have had to amalgamate.
Were you involved in any of the amalgamations?
GP: Not personally but I was there at some of the meetings.
Which ones?
GP: Well, I remember going out to Baulkham Hills one night and having a rip-roaring meeting where the people in the small credit union, had a funny name, up the hills not far from here, up the line there, and they really wanted to continue their own credit union. But there was no basis for it.
What do you mean no financial basis?
GP: We talked them around in the end to joining with someone else. It was the best thing for them in the end. You know how people hang on. You can’t say it is parochial, they just want to do their own thing. But it was best for them to do it and you had to try and express it in such a way that it was acceptable to them.
But you didn’t have any punch-ups like they did in the Botany Council when they amalgamated into Sydney. I understand they had it on a Friday night and it was a bit of a barney there.
GP: I don’t like those, I think they are unnecessary.
I understand it wasn’t between them and Sydney, particularly, it was between two factions in the Botany one. They didn’t want to amalgamate. Apparently they reckoned they shouldn’t have it on a Friday night they should have had it on a Monday.
GP: All drunk.
What about the Metropolitan, you were involved with that were you?
GP: Yes. It was in a bad way then.
So how did you get involved?
GP: Only in an advisory capacity. I think I became one of the Directors appointed by the League here.
Were you on the Common Board? Do you remember they had all those credit unions in one organisation and it ended up as Metropolitan, but it was referred to as the Common Board.
GP: Yes, I was one of the Common Board, I think.
Was Helen McIntyre on it and John McIntyre?
GP: I don’t know whether John, but Helen was. At that stage John mightn’t have been. He was probably a member of the credit union there.
How did you get on with her?
GP: I respected her. She was intelligent, you know no fool. Nor him.
At Metropolitan, Kevin Bain, was he involved?
GP: Yes.
Did you know him? Did you like him?
GP: Yes a good bloke. Where is he now?
Oh he is still at Transport, he is a still a Director at Transport. I have interviewed him for Transport Credit Union. Ken Miller, you remember him. How did you get on with him? He was always very much an accountant wasn’t he, although he wasn’t an accountant.
GP: A good organiser, good manager. Forward looking. ???????? Credit union there the teachers, he takes most of the credit for that in my eyes. John has taken his position. John has just carried on. It is a big organisation now.
It is really big isn’t it. Were you involved at any stage with the computerisation of, shall we shall the electronic banking, the start of that, ATMs and such like. You were out of it by then?
GP: No. I didn’t know enough about it. No I wasn’t in anything of the ATMs, they weren’t on then.
At Metropolitan, as I say, when the Common Board was on who else was on that, do you remember? McIntyre and?
GP: We used to have our meetings there. There was Morrie Daley.
Was he on the Common Board?
GP: I was the Chairman, he was the Vice-Chairman. He was on this meeting I used to go to, I think it was the Common Board. We used pass things. Les used to look in on it and Helen. There was a woman from North Sydney, one of the departmental unions, I forget her name.
Was that the Water Resources, now the Water Resources but then it was called the Water Conservation and Irrigation, was that the one?
GP: Yes, might have been that, could have been that. They had their offices in North Sydney.
Yes, well they still do.
GP: I was on that when the Water Services decided to affiliate and that was the finish of me. Some people wouldn’t talk to me after it, but it wasn’t my doing.
You didn’t approve?
GP: Well I didn’t disapprove. I was just a member, I wasn’t a part of the Board. I think the League at that time were just a bit rocky, so we got out of it, but we came back. ?????????
When did you come back?
GP: I don’t know, we came back in the last two or three years I would say. Very good decision, I think.
But what were their philosophical points of reasons for the wharfies disaffiliating, the wharfies’ credit union?
GP: Well we didn’t like the look of the League’s finances mainly.
Well you were the main one who would have the advice on that, wouldn’t you. So you can’t really say you weren’t any part of it?
GP: Oh I was part of it. I was part in the reports to the Directors’ meetings, you see, but I had nothing to do with the disaffiliating. I would have rather got hold of them and talked to them, more.
It wasn’t only the finances though, there was more to it than that?
GP: Well it wasn’t politics. There was no politics.
Was there argument about purchase of the building? And that was part of the financial thing?
GP: That’s right. Not so much purchasing of the building, but we had no finances. You see the Reserve Fund was used so that left the credit unions actually not covered from something which should have covered them.
That is important, if that is the case.
GP: I was in the Building Sub-Committee and it was made in my absence. I was never, ever consulted about it. Of course that made me not very happy.
Who were the main proponents on the other side?
GP: Robbo.
Les Robinson, yes. Ken Miller?
GP: Yes and some others. Looking back it has worked out well. I think the Reserve Board was the thing that saved the credit union movement, otherwise some of them were heading for disaster.
Is there anyone else? You see I don’t know if I am going to be in a position of writing this up or not, but if I am I am going to have to look into it a bit more thoroughly than I am just talking to you and a few other people. Is there anybody else of the same view as you about the finances at the time? Who were the ones who took that view?
GP: They were a minority. You see when we had our Annual Meeting they came from all over, all over New South Wales, a lot of country people. It was mainly a group of city people. Tom Kelly would be one and Morrie Ryan would have been another. There were a few others. Not a lot.
What about people like Ken Byrne?
GP: He was in the centre.
But he was a financial person, wasn’t he in many ways?
GP: I never, ever noticed that. Nice man.
So he wasn’t either side of it, he was sitting on the fence?
GP: Well I think in the end he would have sided with Robbo and I don’t blame him for that. He had been there a long while.
What about Helen McIntyre?
GP: Firmly with Robbo.
She always was, I know, but was this a financial thing or just backing him? Has there been anything that I haven’t asked you which I should have asked you?
GP: A bit of both. A wonderful building. I don’t blame them. They had very poor offices around over there, you know, tripping over each other.
If they did run into financial strife they would have been in trouble because they would have had to sell it again.
GP: Something would have had to happen. Buying buildings is good there is no doubt about that, but you have got to finance them properly and sensibly. Otherwise you take awful risks. They got away with it.
I see your point. You are speaking as an accountant in actual fact. Who was their accountant at the time?
GP: The accountant here, I can’t remember his name.
Wasn’t it the man himself, John Francis Richards?
GP: He was the auditor. Where has he got to?
Kendalls is the main credit union auditor now. He is involved with Kendalls. It is his firm now, he has bought into that.
GP: Who are Kendalls?
The large credit union auditor. I believe they are still the auditors here and I think they were the auditor for AFCUL and lots of credit unions and so on. Do you know him?
GP: Reasonably well.
Ever come across his nickname?
GP: You mention it, I might know it.
I shouldn’t be prompting you.
GP: No, I don’t know it.
He had a few arguments with Dermot on odd occasions.
GP: Who didn’t.
Did you?
GP: Not with Dermot, no. I have had the odd one, but I was very fond of Dermot. He’d done his length of service. Of course the poor man’s dead now. He was a remarkable Irish wit, he was really. A bloody larrikin, which I like. He was full of life.
The opposite side of the political spectrum to you, right wing of the Labor Party.
GP: Oh yes, but that didn’t seem to matter. I was never an awful red-ragger and insisted on my views being right. I never introduced politics into the credit union here or anywhere else and I have done a lot of public work. For instance, I have an intellectually handicapped son and I worked for thirty years and got a workshop together and I led the whole bloody thing right from the word go and they all knew I was a Communist. But politics never came into it. We just had to get that and we all worked together. We might sit down when we were having a working bee and have an argument about this or that, but very rarely. They don’t mix you know, politics and getting things together. If you want to destroy a non-political organisation, bring politics into it. That will absolutely wreck it. I have seen it done. We used to do it. Not deliberately but in effect that’s what happened. ??????????????????
Yes, well it’s always got to be that way in the end hasn’t it. Well we have dealt quite considerably in that area. Were you involved in AFCUL at all, Australian Federation of Credit Unions?
GP: No. I used to just go to their Annual Meeting.
Do you remember when Dermot Ryan was Chief Executive.
GP: Yes. I went to one at Wollongong and I went to one in Melbourne.
The one at Wollongong would that be the one where Stan Arneil turned up and reckoned he was turned away?
GP: Yes, and he was.
He was.
GP: It was very awkward then.
Do you remember there was some mix-up about bookings, so I’m told on one side, on the other side they reckoned he was discriminated against?
GP: I think so, I got that impression. I never took any sides. I think he was rather silly to push himself at that stage, but I don’t know.
You didn’t know him in the early days, did you?
GP: No, didn’t know him until I came to the Waterside Workers.
Because he had been one of the big founders in Australia, going around founding credit unions. He has been criticised for going around founding credit unions that were too small.
GP: No feasibility to that. Just couldn’t exist.
But he was an accountant.
GP: Well, you see, you can be an accountant but if your ideas are to do something and that gets behind you, you just do it, because you’ve got this motive to start credit unions you see. You know he started little community ones and you have no idea of the mess he made. They had to borrow from here and they lent and people never paid them and they couldn’t find out where they bloody well lived and all this. It was an awful mess when I started to get into it, get my teeth into it. I was getting hard. Because I had done a lot of that over the years, you know, a lot of investigations, mainly in the trade union movement. Helping people to manage their money. Teaching them how to manage other people’s money. It is not easy. People take too many risks with other people’s money. Something I would never do. You have got a responsibility to good people, don’t let them down.
End Tape 1b: 3940 Words: 1 hour 35 minutes.
ANSWCU 40: 24 MAY 1990: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH GEORGE PRESCOTT
I suppose we had better clear up a few of these outstanding questions. You didn’t have anything to do with CUNA Mutual Insurance. The Australian Foundation?
GP: I didn’t know about it until comparatively recently, really. It has never been pushed.
Well, if you had known about it in the early days you probably wouldn’t have approved because Dermot Ryan was giving away the capital. He said we didn’t have much so what was the point in hanging on to it. A number of them took him to task on this saying you can’t give away the capital. He was very keen on the Foundation. What else have we got, the Institute of Credit Union Directors, no. You weren’t involved in the Central Banking, you weren’t involved in the start of that and the Investment Services, what about the Supply Department?
GP: We might have got stuff from that.
Yes, I expect you would mainly promotional material from America. But you criticised the sort of thing that people put out to you, you didn’t think it was Australian?
GP: I didn’t think it wasn’t Australian, but some of it wasn’t real, it was in another world. The ideal was all right, but putting it into practice is always another thing. You’ve got to have your feet on the ground not start flying high with your head in the clouds.
So what are you actually talking about?
GP: Setting up credit unions.
So you are talking about the material, the development material that came in from America?
GP: I don’t recall any of that, quite honestly. If I had it I don’t remember it. No, it was just generally. They had some good things, but there were too many small credit unions that were not at all viable, that is the word I am looking for.
I know credit unions are now providing all sorts of co-operative services. They are starting travel services, investment services. Do you think this is a good thing?
GP: I think it is all right. I think we’ve got to have a really good investment that suits the credit unions. I look at the investment services as a business to make money and therefore some of their advice is not always good.
They’re not selling their own service, they are only an advisory service. They don’t actually sell a product, they advise people to go and buy certain products, put their money in certain places.
GP: Well take Bridges for instance.
They’ve got fifty per cent of that.
GP: The office there. I went in there once and didn’t like it, just between you and me.
What about the travel services?
GP: Some of them have got it and some of them haven’t.
But generally speaking they’ve copied the banks haven’t they?
GP: Well, what else can they do. There is nothing new in it. You are just restricted to it. You’ve got to work through the whole tourist thing, which is a money making thing. It is not necessarily ???????, but it is a very big thing the world over. You look in the paper and what they are offering and then go and see what you get.
Do you think they should provide other co-operative services?
GP: I don’t know if they should provide anything more. Their main aim is to have a co-operative banking service which I think is wonderful. I believe in co-operation properly run and I wouldn’t get too far away from it at any stage. That doesn’t mean that I disagree, you know the Teachers’ Credit Union gets a penny out of travel and some of it is good. You’ve got a chance to develop it through the credit union, if you want to have it financed. But I think anybody who borrows money to go touring, I don’t think it should be encouraged and that is my own personal opinion. We can’t get perfection in our lives, no matter what you do there is something wrong with it.
Should any government regulations of credit unions be changed, should the credit unions be pushing for change?
GP: I wouldn’t know now. I didn’t think much about the Act, but they’ve cleaned it up a lot now. They can advertise, do a lot of things that weren’t allowed to in my time you see. I think they were too restrictive and I think deliberately so, so they didn’t offend banks, etc. That is my own personal opinion.
Who are the outstanding people that you think you met in the credit union movement? The Irish always say Father Ganey.
GP: I met him of course, but John knows him well. There are some very good priests around you know and apparently he is sort of a real name. They always went to go and see him if they went over there.
Who impressed you in the movement?
GP: Well I think Ken Miller impressed me, I think he really led it as the President, as the Chairman. They all did their bit. You know, it was just the general thrust sometimes that I got a bit off-side about because I thought some of them were a bit risky and we weren’t doing enough about other things. But it became a big movement and got a bit out of hand I thought. All the people were good people. They were never really at cross-purposes. We had differences of opinion, which I think are good. When you speak with one voice, as they had in the Soviet Union for some years, you are buggered, you are down the drain. It stops thinking. It stops thought and you just give it away and you stop thinking. You’ve got to advance, you’ve got to have new things all the time and that is what they have got here now.
But do you think the credit union movement has stuck by its principles?
GP I think so, generally yes I do.
Well, is it just a middle class movement now?
GP: No it extends right down to working people, don’t you think so? No it is in the towns and it is in the industries, it is up the Latrobe Valley and so on.
So you don’t think it has gone wrong in any way?
GP: I don’t think basically it has gone wrong.
Is there anyway it can be improved that you can think of?
GP: I wouldn’t know now. I’ve been retired ten years. I read things occasionally and have a bit of a yarn to John. They’ve always got problems. Problems of seeing ahead, problems of dealing with what you have got. It is not good for an outsider like me to come in and say what they should be doing. I think no matter what you think about this or that, if you are in a credit union you should support it. I don’t like the people who sort of criticise it, maybe members who don’t save with them, you get all of those people in business. Put your money where your mouth is.
Do you think the balance of saving and credit is correct, or do you think there is too much credit not enough saving?
GP: Well I never ever borrowed off a credit union, but I always put my money in there. So my money, I suppose, was used to give loans out to people, some of them needed. You have no idea. I used to be called in occasionally to a bad case. I nearly used to fall off my chair when they used to unravel all their debts and heave too. We used to put them all together and give them a loan and settle out. Even then they would start playing up.
There is a move to set up an independent counselling service now so you don’t have to go into your credit union and let them know all your business, as far as that is concerned. You can get counselled independently. Do you think that is a good idea?
GP: I don’t know. What have you got to hide, eh!
That’s a good question.
GP: Unless you are truthful no-one can solve your problems, no-one, not even up there. If you want money and things are a bit desperate, you’ve got to lay your cards on the table. I know it is not easy. That is what I used to say to anyone I dealt with in the credit union, which wasn’t many, ‘Now look, we want the truth otherwise you are going to mess us up and you are really going to make real mess of your own lives.’ There is no need to get so deeply in debt when you can’t cope with it with your income. I was talking to a man and his wife, oh dear. I will never forget, I don’t remember their names and I wouldn’t tell you if I did, but we straightened them out in the end. We had to keep at them, we had to keep checking their loan and their repayments. Everything until they got used to a routine. I used to deal with their money but they never used to pay the credit union, they got used to it all the people they were with before. That is counselling. Really, not being a know-all and being sorry for them, I would say, ‘Let’s just be honest with each other. We are giving you the money and we want you to pay it back.’ Really you can put up all the things around which they have got, but really when it comes down simplistically, you know simply, it is being honest enough to work with each other with our money. Once we do that it is a wonderful thing. In the end, I am idealistic enough to think all the trouble we are having with finance, in almost every country in the world one way or another, have got to be resolved, and it will take a long while, but resolved by co-operation of people.
Well, I might leave you on that note. Is there anything that I should have asked you that I haven’t.
GP: I’m an old philosopher. Having said that, I haven’t had a discussion like this for donkey’s years.
Well thank you very much Mr George Prescott.
End Tape 2a: 1739 Words: 45 minutes.