9 OCTOBER 1993: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JIM MULLER
I will ask you Mr Muller where were your parents living when you were born, and what year was that?
JM: 1939 and we were living in Peel Street Ballarat.
Did you grow up around there?
JM: We lived in Peel Street until I went to Kindergarten. Then went to Redan, which is another suburb of Ballarat, towards the end of the War.
What sort of influence did you get from your parents do you think?
JM: Well, I suppose to be truthful, I was the product of a mixed marriage. My mother was a Catholic and dad wasn’t. I suppose the Catholic influence was there all the way through. I think that is probably the reality of it.
Any Union influence, or political influence?
JM: No. Dad worked at the same place all his life. He wasn’t allowed to go to the War because of his skills during the War. Was always big on the social side. Life member of the Social Club of the place where he worked all his life. Very steady, always involved, that sort of background.
Was he active in any organisations as a Secretary or Director?
JM: No, just the dogsbody of the Social Club I think you could say he was.
Where did you go to school?
JM: Started of St Alleluias’. From there to St Aloysius’ at Redan, did my primary schooling there. Went to St Patrick’s in Drummond Street, better known in Ballarat as ‘Drummo’, for Grade 3 through to Grade 6. Then went to St Paul’s Tech, got the Junior Technical Certificate there, leaving there in 1954.
Any great influences on you at school?
JM: Probably two Brothers at the secondary school. Brother Cook, who was the Principal of the school was a fairly tough sort of man, and a Brother Archer, who sort of pushed us down the way we had to go. I think they were the most positive influences I suppose.
What were you good at, what did you like?
JM: Anything with my hands. Probably best at metal work and then finished going into wood work, but that is the nature of the animal. Coped with secondary education really well, no problems at all. Perhaps a lazy student who could probably have done better.
I notice that your were involved with YCW, did that start your interest in credit unions?
JM: Fairly major influence on my whole life I suppose. We started work at fifteen in those days. I was a third year apprentice at John Vale’s in Ballarat. I started there in 1954 as an apprentice pattern maker. I suppose for the next couple of years I messed around and then getting towards eighteen I got involved with the YCW in Ballarat North. My involvement fairly influenced where I went to from there. In those days I think YCW was pretty strong, in fact it was very strong in Ballarat.
Do you remember anybody like Ted Long coming up?
JM: I remember Ted Long coming up. I remember Ted Long. I remember people like Ted Long and Father Toomey from Melbourne, we went to a School there at Warburton was the name of the place. I remember doing that.
Was that a Credit Union School?
JM: No, a YCW School. My involvement with co-operatives came after a fair period of time. YCW led me down the track of escalating involvement. I became Branch President in the North. I came on the Diocesan Council Organisation when I was twenty-odd. There was a couple of very strong influences one of whom is a man who finished up here in Canberra, a Father Fennerly an Irishman, who was the Branch Chaplain and the Diocesan Chaplain was a man by the name of John Malloney, who is now an historian. He was a priest in those days.
Wasn’t a Jesuit?
JM: No a Diocesan priest. That was a scandal in those days, the way that ended up, but you live through these things I suppose. He went on to the Academe. I eventually got to be Diocesan Chairman of the YCW about the same time as I got married, so while this was going on there was a courtship going on as well. In about 1961 I became Diocesan President of that. Through that involvement I became involved with the Union, which in those days was the AEU.
Was that in the days of the Labor Party split?
JM: Yes that had happened in the early 1950s, and this was after that, so Laurie Carmichael I remember vividly was the State Secretary of the AEU. We got involved through YCW, sort of being led down that path to get involved against Carmichael, against all the other things. DLP and that sort of thing was around. Never got very involved in that though. Went to a branch meeting one night and it happened to be the Annual Meeting and finished up as Branch Chairman, the first time I went to the meeting. That went on for two or three years.
Which branch was that?
JM: Ballarat Branch. Became Trades Hall delegate for a period of twelve months, which was a bit dicey being a right-winger representing a left-wing Union. That was the way it was.
How did they accept you?
JM: Well it is interesting that I was accepted on the basis that they knew where I was coming from and I knew where they were coming from and the thing went on fairly well. Friendships there. In fact the bloke who was Branch Secretary at the time, eventually joined me as a fellow Board member of the credit union. So all these things sort of led back together. I think reflecting back on the way that particular group, especially at Diocesan level, went, YCW, you got people like Frank ??? went into politics, became the local Member. Jimmy Ross got involved somewhere else in Melbourne and became fairly high profile. These people sort of drifted away but we could see where we were pushed, if you like, motivated to go. Union involvement sort of went on. I got married and had several kids. I eventually wanted some money for something, probably to survive in reality.
Had you had any loans before that?
JM: When we bought the house I borrowed money. The YCW sponsored lots of terminating building societies and we borrowed from one of those.
Who was running that?
JM: Maybury used to come up for that. He was the Secretary. I was on the Board of that, these things come back to you. The Board of YCW No. 2, I think in Ballarat. Maybury, Leon Magree, these people used to come up once a month to run the meeting. They would come from Melbourne to Ballarat to do the business. They would collect the money on Friday, we would have the Board meeting. That is the way I got the house. At the same time I borrowed money from a money-lender, the AGC-types, finance company, to make up the gap between what I could borrow from the other. That went on and we kept on going until I must have wanted some money for something and somebody asked why didn’t I borrow from the credit union, the co-operative society as it was called. So I went to see a mate of mine, who was the Secretary at that time.
What was the name of it?
JM: That was St Columbus’ Credit Society. In Ballarat I think it is important to realise that at this stage there were three parishes that had credit societies. There was St Columbus’, which was the North and I knew it was there, St Allebius, which was the East and Redan Sebastopol which was basically the St Aloysius Credit Union, but had the sense to keep its bond open at the start. So I joined and borrowed from St Allebius’ and St Columbus’, which eventually changed their name to Ballarat and District. Then a period of time went by and a fellow by the name of Don Harris turned up on the door of the place where I worked, John Vale’s. The factory in those days employed about 800 people, so it was the biggest employer in Ballarat in them days. The Secretary of the Organisation, Don Harris, must have done a real good job because he convinced the Company Secretary that a credit union was just what he wanted. He called me in, he called a group of Shop Stewards together funnily enough, and we eventually called a meeting which was virtually dominated by the Unions I suppose.
Who was from the credit union movement?
JM: Don Harris.
Was he Secretary of VCCA at the time?
JM: No, Don was just a Field Officer in those days. I can’t think of the year. On the same trip he set the wheels in motion to form one at John Vale’s and one at the Base Hospital. So in actual fact there were five credit unions in Ballarat after that period time. The meeting that Neil Crouch, the Company Secretary, arranged was in the Board Room of the plant. There were twenty-odd people there, and out of that twenty we finished up with a Formation Board of Directors. From then on it was just a case of the company supporting us with payroll deductions and some space to operate in. We then sort of operated on a purely volunteer basis for a few years.
This was the late 1960s was it?
JM: We are now in the late 1960s, early 1970s it would have to be.
Were you Chairman?
JM: I was the initial Chairman, yes.
How did that come about?
JM: Unpopular, or popular election. In a plant like that, which is a full manufacturing plant, the people in the machine shop and pattern shop sort of grasped the idea with open hands and the people in the foundry, who weren’t there anyway, didn’t have a bar of it. So virtually the guts of the people who ran the thing came from the machine shop and pattern shop. So we were basically an AEU basis, I suppose. I was fairly high profile in the plant anyway through my Union involvement and so forth. That is how that came about.
How did you go about getting membership?
JM: We just started off. I have still got bits and pieces of newsletters and that sort of jazz that we put out promoting the credit union. The thing took off slowly, but sort of plodded on. We got to the stage, I suppose after three or four years of plodding, where the thing got bigger and bigger and we appointed a part-time book-keeper.
Can you remember who was the Secretary and who were the other Directors and who was the Treasurer in the early stages when you were Chairman?
JM: If I could go back to my books and pick it all out I could probably remember them. The angry Flavell, Bob Bright, Jack Williamson, myself. Secretary would have been Bob Bright, I think.
He was a Director as well?
JM: Now you have got me, he might have been just the Secretary. He certainly was Secretary at some stage, but the preliminary research would need to go in there.
Treasurer?
JM: The initial Treasurer I am not sure. I know blokes like Peter Greenwood, fellow by the name of Stone, fellow by the Brown, these have all sort of come and gone. I have got most of those names down in amongst the stuff that I have kept.
Did you go to any Schools for the credit union?
JM: In those days not a lot, no. I do remember going to Warburton once, but I am not sure whether that was with the John Vale lot, but that is not clear, I would have to look. What I do remember is that as the thing grew up we became fairly involved in the Annual Meetings of the VCCA. We did all the right things there. The interesting thing was is that the credit unions around the town didn’t co-operative very much. We knew one another was there, but there wasn’t heaps of co-operation. Eventually we got to the stage where a Chapter was formed for the whole South-Western Area. It was called the South-West Chapter. There were the five credit unions from Ballarat, John Vale Employees’, Base Hospital and the three parish, St Columbus’, St Alleluias’ and Redan Sebastopol. There was Colac, Ararat, Stawell, Daylesford, Warrnambool. They were all the credit unions in those days who formed a Chapter. The Chapter went on for probably three or four years. We would meet mostly at Lismore, a little town half-way between everywhere. The Lismore Hotel could tell a few stories. Looking back there is only two credit unions out of all that lot left. One is a Warrnambool and the other is at Ballarat. I missed one too, there was one at Cobden.
Did you ever meet any of the people involved in those credit unions?
JM: I remember names like Flo Diggall out of Ararat, who was Secretary and an enthusiast. These names that sort of jump out of my mind. Fellow by the name of Sheedy, who came out of Stawell who was of the old school. Blokes like Laurie Steel of Redan Sebastopol. Met people like Pat Coggan who eventually became a Director. Pat Coggan was a YCW man and he went to Warrnambool credit union there. Went to Bendigo credit union there. So that link still happened. Judy Edwards out Daylesford. Schroeder, out of Daylesford. These are names that are written down somewhere but they are some that I remember.
Do you remember any of the leading lights behind the North-West Chapter?
JM: I got to become Chairman of that too, for a while. We sort of tended to dominate the thing a little bit. Myself, Johnny Pearce was Secretary, he came out of Ballarat and District, St Columbus’ Credit Union. That is virtually the way it stayed. Nobody else wanted it much, probably nobody else had the resources. We at John Vale’s kept going, the plant was still running at about 700, 800 people, the good days when the place was still growing. We got to the stage where we had to do something about the book-keeping, because it became too big a job to do on a volunteer basis.
What methods were you using on a volunteer basis?
JM: Virtually using the standard card system from the Association, which worked very well except it took time. So the decision was taken by us to employ somebody, this must have been about late 1975 I think. A couple of us then went out to look for some young bloke to fill the gap for us and we appointed a fellow by the name of Mark Bromley, who eventually went on to become a Field Officer with the Association. He is now back in town and his wife still works for the credit union, so there is a link there. We appointed Mark when he was straight out of school. I think he was seventeen, straight out of St Patrick’s. Threw him in the little room there at the end of the canteen and told him to keep the books, which he did a very good job on. Mark stayed with us then. But having done that and having the organisation settle down and still keep growing, we then decided that Mark was eighteen, by the time he got to a full-time wage we wouldn’t be able to afford him. So the next decision had to be made. The Association was sort of saying, “Get big or get out.” There was a Sunday in Ballarat which became known as ‘Amalgamation Sunday’ where they called together the Chapter. I remember Bendigo was there. The Association ran a seminar for a day and told us we would all go under and this sort of jazz, which wasn’t very good news and wasn’t a good message to put around. That must have started a couple of us thinking because we went back and felt we wouldn’t be able to afford Mark, perhaps we should look at the name on the door. So we were faced with the possibility of going to try and find other industries to back our payroll up. At the same time as that I started talking to other credit unions. I am not sure, but I think Phillip Elliott might have been there, anyways there was some pressure from the Association to do something. The bloke named Smith comes to mind too. A young fellow, Bruce Smith that’s right. The Association was working fairly hard around the town in those days, in and out, backing us up. Mark sort of became known to them. Eventually a couple of us sat down, after a Chapter meeting I think, and decided that maybe the Ballarat credit unions should co-operate by setting up a single entity. We all suffered from the same thing, we were all getting either too big for volunteers or the volunteers were getting harder and harder to find. So we went down the track for I suppose a period of several months of sort of looking around. We formed a Committee and looked at the idea of a service centre, whereby we would set up some place in the town and every credit union member could be served from there. That Committee ran through to actually making a report. The same group who wrote the report then sort of asked how big a step was that from all getting together and pooling our resources and that is where the thing eventually went in November 1977, might have been earlier than that. The middle of winter the four credit unions all had meetings on the same night, at the same time, to sort of amalgamate. On 1 November 1977. Into that amalgamation came John Vale’s, St Alleluias’, Redan-Sebastopol and St Columbus’, which left the Base Hospital one. They didn’t want a bar of it, they were quite happy by themselves. So in 1977 we amalgamated. I am not sure of the membership now, but I know we had $600,000 in assets altogether.
Who was Chairman?
JM: I was the initial Chairman.
Have you any idea why?
JM: Mainly because I had driven the whole thing to that point, I think. I was the face they all knew. I spent innumerable nights sitting talk to individual Boards. One night sitting outside the presbytery at Redan for an hour waiting to be invited into the Board meeting, I got a very cold shoulder. But we got around that. They were in the same boat as everybody else, the bloke that was most anti the amalgamation was the volunteer Secretary, who was a man in his seventies who lived for the thing. It was his whole life and if he didn’t have that he didn’t know what he would have. Laurie Steel eventually came round luckily. A gentleman and a scholar of the last order. The initial Board was made up of two Directors out of each credit union. Then we dropped one in the first elections to come back to a Board of seven.
Can you remember who the Board was in the first instance?
JM: The initial Board was a Mr Monaghan and Mr Rollings from Redan, Mr Wright and myself from John Vale’s, John Pearce, Bill Armstrong and somebody else. We came together, appointed Warren Edwards as Manager, with the Association’s help. Initially the job was between Warren Edwards and a bloke who wanted it but didn’t take it, Phillip Elliott. Wheels within wheels if you go down that track.
Warren Evans is now at the ABC isn’t he?
JM: Yes.
Phillip Elliott is up in Queensland.
JM: With the opposition, yes. It was a plum job in those days. $600,000 of assets in a town with 70,000 people and a big membership base, there was heaps of potential. Elliott saw it but his wife wouldn’t move. Warren saw it and took it. So we went round looking for a building and we went in one day to rent a building and finished up coming out having bought it. I am not sure whether that was a good move or a bad move in retrospect, but still. One of the reasons we bought it was that it was cheap. That is the building the credit union started off in, in Albert Street, in the city. We stayed there for seven or eight years I think. Eventually sold the building and moved to bigger premises. The credit union has just sort of gone from stage to stage. Once we got settled in the Ararat Board, who had suffered the same as the smaller credit unions by not having the critical mass to survive, approached us to amalgamate with them, which we did. That was a nice soft amalgamation. Daylesford had gone bad somewhere around then and they were a forced amalgamation. The Association and the Registrar told them to do that, so we picked them up with a problem. Stawell was in a problem and that eventually came to us.
Who were the main people there?
JM: Stawell was Sheedy. We never ever met many of the Board there because they were in trouble and it was a bit of a mess. I think the mess still lingers on in our books. Sheedy was one of those blokes who would never have done a bad turn for anyone, but just blew the thing in how he handled the cash. I am not saying he was dishonest, the book-keeping just wasn’t there and there were loans that shouldn’t have been made, that sort of thing. So they came with us. We had an auction one night for Colac. Colac approached us to join with us and we got down there on the night, and I will never forget this as long as I live, Jack Paterson was there too, he was by then the Reserve Board man. When we had sort of settled the whole thing down, the meeting to amalgamate, the Chairman changed his mind, he wanted to go with somebody else. So there was a hell of a barney that night.
Literally?
JM: Well it was almost boxing gloves on, yes. Paterson saved the day. Black Jack Paterson is still not liked in certain sections of Colac very much. That amalgamation happened. That leaves Ballarat with all those it picked up, Warrnambool is still operating out of Warrnambool, and the recent history is the one at Cobden went to Warrnambool through a forced amalgamation.
End Tape 1A: 3860 Words: 1 hour 15 minutes
9 OCTOBER 1993: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JIM MULLER
You got up to the final stages of amalgamations there.
JM: Well Camperdown went with Warrnambool. The Base Hospital eventually came across to us, and they came across for the same reason everybody else had come across, volunteer, couldn’t afford to keep going, new legislation was going to run them over, so they eventually came in with us too. That was a very soft amalgamation, the membership hardly objected. In actual fact the reality is there membership is a lot better off with us than they would have been the other way anyway. That is what I keep telling myself. I think that is everyone.
So you amalgamated your whole Chapter?
JM: Virtually we did.
Did you still meet as a Chapter?
JM: We now meet with Geelong. I don’t know whether that says anything. The thing got there for all those reasons. I still sit and worry that maybe what has happened wasn’t right, but then I look and the credit union in my opinion still operates as a credit union. I think at Board level and certainly the current management still, in my opinion, under the present constraints put forward the philosophy I started off with. My motivating thing was to bring the philosophical side of credit unions, which isn’t very far from by basic Christianity I suppose, to as many people as you could. The only way you could do that was to finish up with an organisation like we have, which is now two offices and Ballarat and branches at Daylesford, Colac and Ararat and an agency at Stawell. So we have sort of kept the faith there to a point, even though Stawell is a disappointment because the base wasn’t there. Everyone else had a reasonable credit union base that we were able to build on.
What about record keeping, accounting during that period of time from being the spread out credit unions to the final situation where you are now?
JM: The last lot of manual records went out very soon after, probably in the first two years. We operated manually for a couple of years until we amalgamated all the credit unions, then we eventually bought a computer system which has been upgraded, I think, twice since then. Now our computer record keeping is good.
Did you get involved in any of the arguments about computer systems?
JM: Yes. Back in the initial days when we went to buy our first computer we didn’t buy the company computer, we bought the opposition. I remember Hildebrand, wasn’t it, rang me up one day and sort of said, “What are you doing buying the opposition’s?” But the reality is, as far as our credit union was concerned it was the right decision money-wise and back-up wise.
Who did you get the software off?
JM: GCS. I think Brian Dean was a name I remember, that sounds right. We brought GCS. I would worry, and I still worry to this day, that the bureaucracy we have set up now is not quite where we should be.
Do you remember the hardware you had?
JM: Was it Ultimate? That was the first one I think. We upgraded to a second one and we are now on a McDonald-Douglas I think. They were just big boxes in the corner as far as I was concerned, which cost a lot of money. As I say, I still worry in this day and age that the bureaucracy we have set up may be too big and my be too monopolistic. I think a bit of competition is health for everyone, certainly in things like insurances and the ancillary services. We have mainly gone the company line, but I don’t think a bit of competition hurts, it keeps you honest.
Did you put any money in Emerald Lake?
JM: No, but I was involved around that. I remember those arguments. I remember going to meetings about that, money going down the tube. I was at the meeting when the VCCA was at the brink, which nearly killed Larsson. If you were there and saw the state the man was in it is amazing he survived. I was there the night they were on the brink.
Can you describe it? Was there resentment about Reg Elliott coming down from New South Wales?
JM: No. From my recollection of the night, it was a night full of trauma. In actual fact Warren Edwards, who was Manager in those days, he had been in the old Managers’ network sort of knocking on the door about costs and this sort of jazz. The group of Managers involved, one of which was us, had written a letter to Larsson asking what was going on. Eventually it terminated in that meeting down there. I remember Reg Elliott being there. There always was this interstate rivalry, though I don’t know how fair dinkum it is. I would have said the rivalry is more Melbourne than New South Wales, than Victoria and New South Wales. Being country you were insulated from the politics. You would go to the VCCA Annual Meeting and you would sort of say, “What are all these blokes on about?” You wouldn’t be aware of the politics or the lobbying that was going on. Being out in the country a little bit sort of isolates you, or isolated us at that stage, from that sort of jazz.
Did you get involved in AFCUL at all?
JM: I didn’t no.
Never went to any of the meetings?
JM: No I didn’t.
Not when Dermot Ryan was Chief Executive?
JM: No. The first time I met Dermot was through this organisation.
What about Graham Benson?
JM: Benson I had met through the VCCA over the years.
Did you have any dealings with any of the other of the Presidents at the VCCA?
JM: Larsson and Don Harris. Don Harris was our involvement. Richard Crosbie.
That was later yes.
JM: In the early days no, we stayed out.
Did you get involved in Project Renewal, as it is called?
JM: Yes. I was invited to one of the early meetings, being seen as one of the dinosaurs in the organisation, to make a few comments. I was worried, in those days and virtually the same worry I have got today, that you build something big and the thing starts changing its head. I worry that the organisation is really a service organisation or something that only has 300 members. Are we talking about a staff member per member or what? That is the sort of things that gnaw away in the back of my head, that is still the worry that is there. Whether they have lost the plot.
Are you glad to have some competition in that case?
JM: I have said at our Board level several times, I am quite happy to sit here as long as I don’t see the day when we say we should form another credit union. Not that you could now, but I have always had that worry that if we ever got to the stage where somebody still didn’t see us as a credit union, that’s the day I would leave. I think competition and that sort of thing is healthy, but.
With banks?
JM: I have got no real worry about competition with banks. I think if we do our job right, I think the thing comes right in the end anyway.
What about being a credit union rather than being a competitor of a bank? Do you think the credit union movement has lost its philosophy?
JM: I think that is the basis of my worry, the fact that we have set ourselves up with a big organisation that could be seen as something other than a grouping of something with a philosophical base. That is the worry of course when we first appointed a Manager to handle the operation. Now over the years I have become comfortable with sort of saying, “Yes you go and do that. That is your authority. You are delegated to do that. You can make the loans, but bring back the ones that don’t fit,” as I have told you, I am quite happy with that now. But when you get a bureaucracy out of hand, and I have been there that is the other thing, Warren Edwards isn’t with us any more because he wanted to go down his own track which the Board didn’t agree with.
What was his own track?
JM: The real split was because the Board had told him not to do something and he went away and did it. It had been building up to that. He saw himself as the credit union, and I think that is the most dangerous thing. He was it and the Board would bless anything he did, but that in the final analysis didn’t become the reality of the thing. So we parted on not very good terms.
Who did you get after that?
JM: A fellow by the name of Paul Tracey. He was there at the time. A Ballarat boy who succumbed to temptation, I will go no further than that.
Who was after that?
JM: The current Manager, Denis Conway. He has been there a few years too.
When did you get into plastic cards? What sort of grouping were you in? Were you in Teledata at all?
JM: We must have been in Teledata because we got the company card, whatever it is called. Redicard, we were on the Redicard track.
That is after Teledata was taken over. They were competing at first.
JM: Yes. I remember Steel was involved. Only in the last seven or eight years would we have gone into the plastic card.
Do you have any ATMs?
JM: No ATMs. We stayed away from them. Interestingly enough we see ourselves as a poor cousin of Bendigo. Talk about Victoria and New South Wales, Ballarat and Bendigo is a bit like that too. Bendigo were the flamboyant, entrepreneurial types who went down one track and we just kept plodding on. History will say who was right. We know who suffered from Farrer the least.
What is this about Farrer?
JM: Well when Pyramid went under, Bendigo shed something like half its book. We lost $2 million in money which went out the door, but two our of seventeen I think. Bendigo lost thirty out of seventy, those sort of numbers and were under enormous pressure.
Not now?
JM: They are coming back. Slowly but surely they are fighting their way back. The Manager has changed, management has changed.
Did you lose much in assets or nothing?
JM: We rode the storm out fairly well. We actually lost something like two years hard work, I suppose. But our annual growth is currently something like 24 per cent or 25 per cent. The thing is away again and running quite comfortably with, however, pressures for the bottom line but that is the reality of it.
Have you suffered in your credit union from the retrenchment syndrome that has been around of late? The early retirement syndrome, or whatever you like to call it.
JM: To a point. I think in retrospect, looking back, if John Vale’s, where I originally came from John Vale’s Employees’ Credit Union, had kept going down the track it was going we would have been gone. The plant, as I said, when we first set up was 800 and it has got less than 250 now. The Base Hospital was under this pressure also, shedding people. The interesting thing about our organisation is that I suppose it has got such a spread of payrolls and Ballarat downturn happened before the thing actually hit, so we haven’t suffered very much from that. We have got a fairly high percentage of money from your EDVEST-type people. Two million of the twenty-four comes out of that type of membership.
You are involved with EDVEST?
JM: Yes we are involved with EDVEST. Interestingly enough that is one of the pluses I see in the organisation. I was at an EDVEST meeting the other night and I can remember when we were talking about the fact that the credit union basis was thirty-years old and I said, “The thing started off with cottage meetings and here we are back having meetings of people. What really worries me, I think it is the same people who were at the cottage meetings as are at this meeting thirty years later.”
Who master-minded the cottage meetings?
JM: The St Alleluias one, which was the first one.
Was there a priest involved in that?
JM: Bill Fogherty was involved, so it must have been Father Russell.
Was he involved with the Antigonish Association?
JM: I am not sure where he came from. He was certainly with the Rural Movement, that sort of came out of that area there somewhere.
That is not the Antigonish Movement, that is the National Catholic Rural Movement.
JM: Yes. He was with that. He was an old man when I first knew him, so I am not sure where he came from. He was always a fire and brimstone man.
Did you hear anything about credit unions in the National Catholic Rural Movement and YCW before the Second World War?
JM: No.
There is one statement which came out of a book, and what is more several people have repeated it, that the NCRM re-organised their credit unions in 1945, right. Now that means they must have had them before the War, although they were unregistered in those days. I can get at the records, but I haven’t had a chance to get in there.
JM: Bill Fogherty claimed that we really weren’t the first credit union in this area because there was one at Buninyong that never took off, and that came out of the Rural Movement. That was in the 1960s of course, wasn’t it?
What about credit unions or credit societies which came out of parish savings schemes?
JM: I don’t know about them. Too early for me, all a little bit early back when I was a pup.
I believe there must have been a lot.
JM: They still talk about Father Russell at the credit union didn’t have enough money to make loans. He would get up in the pulpit on Sunday and say they had to put some money in. That happened.
That is still happening, believe me. I don’t know whether you have ever heard of Father Gallagher who was the leading light behind the Australian Antigonish Association. He is dead, but his sister is still alive and running Lidcombe Credit Union. I was in there one day when they did just that around the office.
JM: The story Bill Fogherty was talking about on the night they made their first loan, they made the loan and then looked for the money and Fogherty put in the ten pounds that they lent. That was the way they operated.
There are some stories at industrial credit unions too, of getting the Secretary of the whole organisation to put his savings in to get going.
JM: They were good days, I suppose.
There is another thing, when they got to payroll deductions of not having money to cover things and they have already made all their loans, the cheque has gone missing and the bank deny having it.
JM: Never had that, not that I can remember anyhow.
Have you got any good stories out of your credit union? Any funny things that you have had collateral on, greyhounds and things like that? Bills of Sale?
JM: I can remember they still talk about one of the early days, Jack Williamson times who was member of the Board of M B Johns. One bloke applied for a loan and Jack knew he would be all right. Of course the bloke then didn’t pay it all back and Jack went looking for him. We got the money. Those sort of things went on.
Not going out repossessing cars, tow trucks?
JM: No. We leave that to the professionals these days.
My word you have a very ordinary credit union.
JM: Conservative, let’s put it that way.
What about insurance, have you been much involved in that?
JM: We have got them all there currently.
What about before that? For instance did you get involved in the insurance split when Stan Arneil was CUNA Mutual-CUMIS?
JM: No I didn’t.
That was 1972 just before you amalgamated.
JM: Yes. We had CUMIS at M B Johns but the professional management handled all that after 1977. I remember meeting Stan Arneil once somewhere, I don’t know where. He was sort of ‘God’ in those days, so that must have been very early in the piece. I was somewhere and he turned up.
What about any Credit Union Schools you went to? Did you ever go to Warburton?
JM: I went to a School at Warburton very early on. No great recollections of it, except it was different. I suppose it was the first time I had ever been away to that sort of thing. Have never strayed away very far from Ballarat.
Did you run any Schools in your Chapter area?
JM: We ran a few seminars as time went on. We got to the stage of running seminars in the Chapter, sponsoring those. They went very well, mainly with VCCA backing. Amalgamation seminars. I remember we ran a seminar in Ballarat which Geelong credit unions came to, which was a surprise. I can’t think who the speaker was, must have been Brian McMahon from Bendigo, I think. He spoke about amalgamations like war at that particular seminar. The Johns ones don’t speak to one another, they’ve actually only just started since this Chapter has moved down there. They couldn’t even talk to one another let alone co-operate.
What about the Ford one?
JM: Well it plugs on. It has had its ups and downs.
They have asked for information from us to do their history, they are members.
JM: That’s good. They were travelling well until the car industry turn-down. Farrer went down and they got the Commercial Credit Union, which was the Farrer link, and that caused them some problems, but they seem to be travelling all right. The giant community ones, the Johns community one has gone now, it amalgamated with Telecom rather than talk to the other two in the town. That is what I don’t understand, why would a community credit union go down the track of amalgamating with a big industrial one when they its survival could have been in the town there. Especially as Ford have actually come out of Ford and are now operating out of the city.
What about Institute of Credit Union Directors in Victoria?
JM: Well I remember years ago coming to Macquarie University, or something, to a course.
In Sydney?
JM: Yes, flew up here. I don’t know how long ago that would be. It would be after 1977, it was after we had amalgamated. There was a Professor Alan Tyne, he was there. I think he gave the seminar. There New South Wales had already set up an Institute of Credit Union Directors and the idea impressed me. I was talking to Ian Larsson at sometime when he and I were involved together, and I said, “The idea impresses me.” He said, “We should go to a meeting.” So in actual fact we bought a plane ticket each one night and flew up to a meeting of the Institute in New South Wales and flew back the same night. We both thought it was a good idea but did nothing about it. That was back in the late 1970s, I suppose. Then we met again at some other stage and we spent a day sitting in my lounge room saying we should do this and we put some thoughts down on paper which we exchanged notes on. We still didn’t get around to doing much. Anyway the wise men in the Police Association had had the same experience that I had, had come to New South Wales and seen the idea, but they went on with it. The thing eventually formed and I was asked to join it and I did.
Why you and Larsson, what is your connection with him?
JM: I am not sure now. I am not sure how it came about, but I know it exists. It is mainly through the Institute of Credit Union Directors that we got friendly and have spent a Christmas or two together. He has come down to my place and we have enjoyed one another’s company.
What haven’t we covered?
JM: I suppose what we haven’t covered is that I was Chairman of the credit union in Ballarat for too long. I was in the Chair there for seven or eight years and whenever I went to get off the Chairmanship of the Board a crisis would arise. In retrospect I think that was a bad thing. Maybe a Chairman should serve for two or three years and then step aside. I think it is healthier for the organisation. I know that is the way it has gone since then. When we change Chairmen I think it makes for more stability on the Board, especially if the old Chairmen stay there. Certainly that is what has shown in our organisation any way. Really we appointed the last Manager ourselves by going through the process of going outside. We finally finished up making an internal appointment, but I found that educative, helpful. I think the other thing that is missing that we need to go with is use every opportunity. That is why I am delighted that ICUDA works so well. Directors really need a network. You need the broad experience that other people have had. They are the things that I see at this stage anyway.
What about your involvement in the Australian Credit Union Historical Co-operative, how did that happen?
JM: Well because so much of this thing has gone on and I still know most of the people who were involved, the idea appealed to me. Somehow or other I got talking to somebody and we decided to come to one of these meetings two or three years ago. I know it has got to be done. I know in my own mind it is necessary. We have done all the right thing at Board level saying we needed to do it but there was no commitment until the other night when they heard the four original Directors speak and they realised I was right. It is one thing to say something and then demonstrate it. We are at the point where maybe you will be hearing from us to go down that track. We certainly need to record those voices.
I am suggesting that one of the things you need to do is just put a blaster down, one of those tape things with a microphone, that is the first stage, at a meeting. Try and meet in rooms with a carpet on the floor. Start that way and then you will start criticising it and then you will start doing it. You have got the paper work from here as well.
JM: Fair enough. Must do something. Yes we have got all that.
I don’t see why people can’t do it themselves instead of employing me to do it, although that is not doing me any good. The only way you learn is by doing it. It falls over into other parts of your life. What else?
JM: About talked out I think. I suppose I should go back and put all the dates and that together.
Yes when you start to put names and dates down, it brings a lot back. But when you don’t have that before you start it is like cottonwool, rummaging around and you don’t quite know where you are.
JM: I had better go and get ready for mass or Jack will have me.
Well thank you very much.
End Tape 1B: 4049 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes