23 AUGUST 1995: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JOHN HOPE
I will ask you first Mr Hope, what is your full name?
JH: My full name is John Edward Hope. I currently live at Bentleigh in Melbourne. My relevance in this interview probably traces back to the early to mid 1960s. During the 1960s I was in fact the Personnel Manager for the whole of Australian Consolidated Industries and that company, in the early 1960s, acquired some of the first large commercial computers in Australian business. Government departments had some big computers, but business and industry generally did not. ACI, in a sense, led the way with large scale computer capacity. Around 1962, 1963, they began setting up a computer facility and for a time it was on an experimental basis. They had enormous capacity but not a lot of applications for it. I found as Personnel Manager of that company at that time I was able to set up quite a range of computer techniques to aid the administration of the Personnel function in such areas as a group-wide accident prevention program, staff records on computer, using computer techniques that had never been used before. ????? programs, superannuation schemes, complex ones, and ultimately credit union facilities and a range of pay-roll deduction systems. So I was pretty well versed in how those things could be done.
Were you involved in setting up the ACI Credit Union?
JH: Yes, all three of them. There was one at the Head Office in the City here in Melbourne, one down at Spotswood, at the major glassworks, and another one in South Australia. There was in fact a fourth one also set up at that time in New South Wales. So there were four such credit unions and I was involved in all of those. By the time I came to Ansett early in 1972 I had a fair knowledge of the workings of credit unions and a fair knowledge of the useability of computers in a range of personnel management matters. I had come to Ansett with a view to inaugurating the establishment of a corporate personnel function that didn’t pre-exist in Ansett. My interest originally in credit unions dates back to a time when they were in their very formative years here in Australia. I had heard about them. I was concerned in the personnel administration area about the problems companies face about such things as employees seeking loans from their employmers. It was quite prevalent and quite obnoxious, because there was a fair bit of favouritism involved in that sort of thing from Managers who knew people well enough to be sorry for them. It generated a lot of problems like jealousies. Problems in getting the money back and in many cases it didn’t happen. I saw credit unions as a possible way of overcoming that sort of problem in industry, by way of saying if we joined together and mutually saved together as employees, we ought to be able to borrow from each other via a credit union without having to resort to the benevolence of the boss to help us out of the domestic holes we got ourselves into. That was one factor. Another was that I perceived a problem that affected me personally in those earlier years, and I knew it affected most people, that of trying to acquire property and set up house and be comfortable in living in the earlier years of your career when times were pretty tough. It was hard to feed the kids, pay the bills, do all of that out of a relatively modest salary in the early years of your career, knowing and hoping, and in many cases it is a fact, that as time went by you would increase your earning capacity and probably decrease your financial commitments. I saw credit unions as a possible way of helping people to alleviate the financial problems in their earlier employment years, to get on top of things and have a better standard of living and to rely on future earnings, hopefully, to pay debts. I think credit unions have achieved that to a very big extent. I identified that as what you might call a social need and I felt promoting the development of credit unions in Australia was a worthwhile aspect of personnel administration.
Did you see any garnishees coming through?
JH: Yes. That was another thing. Garnishees could and have been reduced considerably and could have been avoided to a great extent with credit union facilities.
Were there any door-to-door people operating in the Melbourne area here, like Waltons did in New South Wales. Door-to-door selling on credit?
JH: Yes there was quite a bit of that. A lot of people getting themselves into substantial difficulties. They are probably still doing that today with credit cards, but that is another story. However, that is a brief background of how I came to be interested and came to Ansett with that background. I came here in March 1972 and I found that there had been one or two earlier attempts at warming up some interest about a credit union in Ansett just prior to my coming here.
Like whom?
JH: I think it was late 1971 by some people who would have been associated with the then Personnel Department in Ansett Airlines of Australia, which was the major subsidiary of ATI. ATI had about twenty-five companies at the time, but the biggest one of all was the Airline. Such as there was of a personnel function in any overall sense existed only in the Airlines. There wasn’t a corporate personnel function prior to that. So I discovered that there had been a warming of interest in the subjects of credit unions, but no more than that. In fact, more than that in the sense that whilst some people had developed a measure of interest, several others in senior management levels had poured cold water on it. I wouldn’t say they were antagonistic to it, but certainly didn’t offer any warmth of support and did express some concern that they saw some difficulty both in setting them up and administering them, difficulty for company management. They saw the negatives about it rather than the positives. I have still got on my file one or two little inter-departmental notes from one Manager to another expressing some of these concerns, amongst them the inability of the new-found computer system which had just come into Ansett not long before that to handle such things as pay-roll deductions for a credit union. That was quite specifically stated.
What about the name, was it ever mooted to use Ansett’s name?
JH: Yes. There were several meetings held to form up the credit union.
About how many do you think?
JH: Three or four, before it actually was formally created. You have to have by law such preliminary meetings, leading to the formation of a Steering Committee. The Steering Committee then has the legal obligation of getting firm enough expressions of interest about having a credit union to in fact then legally form it. There are certain legal steps you must go through before legal formation occurs. Just very quickly flicking through some of these files I have got, I can see that I have got some of those relevant meeting records. Whether I have got them all, I really can’t say. There is a big stack of stuff. I had a quick flick through last night and it indicates that there are some of those records there.
I notice Leon Magree was at that one that we have the photograph of. Was he at all of the Steering Committee meetings?
JH: Not all of them. We called him in quite early in the piece because again in structuring a credit union you have to draw together the set of rules. That is a complex legal document. There is what they call a model set of rules to start with and the model set of rules has to be augmented considerably with a number of additional clauses. They all have to be drafted and agreed and approved by the Registrar before they can actually be amalgamated with the model set of rules, to become the rules of the new body when it is formed. So you virtually have to have a legally approved set of rules at the formative stage, and that is all part of the responsibility of the Steering Committees. So we called Leon Magree in from an organisation called Victorian Credit Co-operatives Association to help with that, and he was a great help. A very nice fellow Leon.
I know Leon, I have done a whole lot of interviews with the VCCA. I have got a lot of the background for that, but there is one question that comes to mind, one of the rules that some credit unions used to object to, and the VCCA often used to push in, was the business of being a member of Union to become a member of a credit union.
JH: I think that was an attempt from the industrial arena to latch on to the word ‘union’ associated with credit union. You can call them credit co-operatives without calling them credit unions. I personally favoured any credit union in industry called a credit co-operative rather than a credit union. What was decided here in the industry was to call it the Outlook Credit Co-operative Union, or Union Co-operative, one or the other. I think there was an attempt at one stage on the part of industrial organisations to get a foot in the door with the establishment of these credit co-operatives and get the word union into the name, with a view I think to having some management say in the actual operation of credit unions. That never really appealed to me. I didn’t really care much, one way or the other, as long as the thing worked and worked properly and worked on a democratic basis. I was never aware there was any requirement, in fact many industrial credit unions were set up without having anything to do with Unions.
I think Leon never really pushed it, but some people who were at the VCCA used to push that because they were Union people.
JH: That’s right. They came from that background, yes. I don’t blame them, but it wasn’t by any means universal.
Were there any other rules that you can remember that were special?
JH: There is a very special rule that has to be very carefully considered, and that is the one that establishes the common bond between the members of the proposed credit union. In the Ansett organisation that was particularly complicated for a couple of reasons. There was the widespread number of subsidiary companies and associated companies. A lot of the Ansett interests were not majority owned Ansett interests. Others came later that weren’t majority owned. We felt we wanted to rope in the whole of the staffs of the holding company, the subsidiary companies, the Airline of course because it was the biggest single block of employment and not only the wholly-owned subsidiaries, but those that were associated companies as we called them. So that made for some complications in expressing the common bond. Another one was, we set out with objective of making this an Australia-wide credit union, for the whole of the Australian staff. I had been through this at ACI because we set up different credit unions in different States there, under the different State laws. I was aware that there were some barriers, complications to setting up an Australia-wide credit union, but I helped the formation of the thing to the extent of trying to overcome those and trying to get it firmly established from the outset that it was Australia-wide, in spite of the then existing barriers. As the credit union began to grow it became known in the other States outside Victoria that this credit union was going to be a significant one and some of the authorities nosed their way into the scene and wanted to create legal obstacles to its continued operation in some of the other States and trying to apply stamp duty penalties that we were endeavouring not to incur and so on. We ran into quite a series of snowstorms about whether we should have been, or could continue to be a nation-wide credit union. In the end, bit by bit, one by one, we won all that. Later I think legislation was modified in the various States to not only validate what we had done, but to permit it to happen in other cases.
Did you have to register in all States?
JH: Ultimately yes we did.
As a foreign credit union? Foreign company?
JH: That kind of thing. There were all sorts of barriers, mainly I think based on plain interstate jealousies and rivalry.
I remember in New South Wales there was a bit of an argument with someone from outside because they had a cap on the interest you could pay at one stage.
JH: Yes that’s right. There were all sorts of headaches. From my ACI experience in earlier years I was pretty determined that we weren’t going to fall for the splintering of the thing. In ACI’s case, successful as those credit unions have been, they are still very minor credit unions. They are still workplace based, limited sized work forces and they will be constrained economically for their lives. Whereas the Ansett credit union has been able to get up and fly, I don’t mean to pun by saying that.
Anybody who belongs to an organisation, who buys tickets from the Airline can now be a member.
JH: That common bond initially we found after not very much time had a few unrealised constraints in it and we modified it from time to time. For instance, we quickly learned we needed to extend to retired employees. Not long after we got started we extended to spouses of employees and retired employees. We kept on picking up this connection with retired employees all the time. The original common bond was extended and extended and extended. Then as other interests came into the Ansett group, the common bond was extended again. Areas like Diner’s Club and the Rent-a-Car Company, Avis. Then later there were some amalgamations with other credit unions coming into Ansett.
Were you involved with any of those?
JH: No. They came after my time with the company. Not all of them. I think the newspapers might have come in. Then again the common bond was extended to embrace those organisations which were joining.
Were you ever an officer of the credit union in any way?
JH: No. I helped set it up. Held hands for a good long time, with Board meetings and Directors and staff, but I was never an officer, an employee or a Director.
Did you have, when you first set it up, an internal audit committee or a supervisory committee?
JH: No, that came a little later. They weren’t common in credit unions at that time, apart from the very big ones that happened to have been established for a while. We called them a Supervisory Committee in those days.
Well in Victoria there was a requirement for them.
JH: Yes, but we brought it in after.
I don’t think there ever was in the rules for Victoria though, I don’t think they had to have it.
JH: I don’t recall that particular point. You were asking how the name Outlook came about. When, in the Steering Committee meetings, amongst the considerations of the Committee at one stage was that of naming the credit union. It needed a name at its formation. We had meetings and discussed in great depth a range of possible names. We went and canvassed other companies that had credit unions and asked them what they did, how closely they identified the naming of their credit unions with their own corporate image, companies like BHP and so on. So we had a great list of alternatives, what others had done and what possibly we could do. I don’t remember all of the variants now but I know in amongst my papers I have got the list that was considered after a whole lot of them were bandied about. We boiled it down to about twenty and then of course we had to boil that down to a few, and then boil it down to one. The house journal that was running at the time was called Outlook and it was very widely appreciated, it was very well put together, very professionally done and very much appreciated. It had a very good circulation, very well read. It was a strength in binding the staff together in the company, it really did a wonderful job. The Editor of it at the time was very clever. We thought we saw that journal as being the ideal vehicle through which to communicate the setting up of the credit union and the early days of the running of the credit union, its health and wealth and prosperity, how the membership would grow. Indeed to generate a warmth of interest in the outlying points of the company for people at those points to be active participants in the credit union and representatives of the credit union. I saw Ansett as being somewhat unusual in the Australian scene in that although it was a big company, I think we had 15,000 employees overall when I joined the company, we were dispersed at many hundreds of points. Now companies like ICI and BHP, Ford, ACI, big companies, were big at a few places. Some of them were big at one place but many of them were big but at a few places. Ansett was big but at many places. I counted it up, I forget exactly now, but I think we had some 376 operating points all over the organisation. It is an extremely difficult organisation in which you can effectively communicate with all your staff in the personnel sense, having a feeling of togetherness. There were all sorts of social networks in the Airline, they had supporting groups and chess groups and all sorts of subject-oriented groups all over the Airline. They used to travel within the Airline and overseas. I remember things like table tennis groups going to China and stuff. So the sociability within the Airline was enhanced greatly with the travel afforded by the Airline. That didn’t exist though throughout the rest of the subsidiaries and you still had this dispersal problem. So I saw the furtherance of the credit union concept as needing to have support at all these distant locations and hopefully based on having somebody at least one somebody who would be a volunteer at each point to be the local representative of the credit union and that network was effectively set up. We saw Outlook journal as being a vehicle of developing that as a special overall network in Ansett, and it worked. So out of that grew the idea that perhaps the name to give the credit union was the name of the journal and that is what happened. Interestingly, in the long run, the credit union outlived the journal. Outlook as a journal, as the title of the journal I think that faded years ago.
It is now Ansett News. But Roger kept the name on by putting a journal out himself, a newsletter.
JH: So the credit union outlived the name of the journal and maintained it. So that is how it came to be called Outlook. Lots of people say, “Outlook, what a funny name to call a credit union.” Well that is how it happened. It was an existing vehicle for communication that was most effective, therefore desirable, and it worked.
That is interesting. I have got Margery Robson in Perth and she kept all the Ansett News after that. She sent the box over with all of that in.
JH: I mentioned in the earlier communication about this exercise, there is also a lady in Brisbane who was a very vigorous supporter of the credit union when it started and she often used to say, “As long as my money is in that credit union I want to see it work.” She really did too. I am sure I have got her name somewhere. I must dig that up.
I have already interviewed one lady in Brisbane, Noelene Franklin.
JH: No she is not the one. The lady I am thinking of almost certainly retired some time ago. But she was a tower of strength in Brisbane.
Noelene, I have interviewed her and of course Peter Bowman in Adelaide.
JH: Well prior to Peter Bowman in Adelaide, in the Airline in Adelaide there was a Personnel Manager over there. His name eludes me at the moment, but he became a Director quite early in the piece and represented South Australia very well. He was a tower of strength.
Would that be Tom Williams?
JH: That’s right, Tom Williams. He was marvellous, absolutely marvellous. An interesting aspect of the formation was that there had been management doubts about the wisdom of proceeding to set up a credit union. I have mentioned those briefly. They were quite serious and quite a braking influence on setting up the credit union, as a matter of fact. In the end we overcame those and in the end some of those doubting Thomas’s as I am quite prepared to call them, did ultimately join the credit union. They have since been significant beneficiaries as a result of having been members of the credit union. Substantial ??? and aiding them in their problems in their lives. I see them from time to time and they are a little reluctant to look back on the days when they weren’t that happy to think of a credit union being established. However, that is a side issue. Sir Reginald, of course, he got wind of the fact that it looked as if a credit union might be set up. I kept him informed as I rightly should about the early formative stages. I wouldn’t call him a doubting Thomas, but he didn’t know about credit unions and at one stage in the discussion with him he said, “What is all this about credit unions? What is doing there? What is happening?” So I told him briefly about the concept of credit unions and how they were set up and that they were employee-managed and they ran themselves and they wouldn’t intrude on the company’s business, but would aid the company’s business in a variety of ways by happy staff and helping to look after their personal financial problems and so on and so on, other financial services. In the end he said, “Oh well as long as you know what you are doing, that will be all right.” His attitude was as long as he was satisfied that whoever was doing whatever they were doing knew what they were doing, then he was happy. On that basis we got quite a little assistance in setting it up. You have probably heard the stories of Roger Bell’s early involvement in the credit union and the work he did. He was absolutely tremendous. The actual operation of the credit union opened in what was no more than a double doorway. It was a double door recessed into a wall by about eighteen inches and that was as much space as we could find to have. All the offices were crowded with the expansion of activity at the time and there wasn’t any space for a credit union. Of course the credit union didn’t have any money initially to start renting space or go elsewhere for space. We wanted to look for a corner in the company somewhere and the only corner we could find was the alcove of a double door that wasn’t used for any other purpose. It was a double door onto Swanson Street from a then existing building on this side. In as much as it was never used and never opened to the pavement on Swanson Street, the little alcove represented by it had to suffice. Roger used to sit there. I don’t even know that he had a chair, he just had a tiny little desk and just stood there eating his sandwiches for lunch, operating the opening of the earliest accounts in the credit union. As soon as lunch was over he had to go back to his own job and sort of see you tomorrow. He operated that five days a week for a long time. He was fantastic.
He said he only had three legs on the table and he propped the other one up with phone books.
JH: That is probably true. I used to pop in and visit him and say, “How are you going Roger?” He was always happy and bright.
He said he was in the garage there.
JH: That was probably at a later stage. The earliest actual office operation of Outlook was in that doorway.
He was saying that the doorway was in the garage, not the main building.
JH: I think that came later. The first one was not the main building, which was next door, it was in a building that was on this side at that time.
He said it was 501, whereas the office they had was 489, which is next door.
JH: I am sure that came later.
The registered office was 489.
JH: That could be right. That was where we held the formation meeting. The Steering Committee met there.
In what room was the Steering Committee meetings and the formation meeting held?
JH: It was the main Conference Room on the ground floor. Whenever any conference needed to be held about anything people used to use that. It was the only real Conference Room in those times.
That photograph we have in the Outlook here, was that in the Conference Room?
JH: I am sure it was, but let me see it again. I can’t swear that it was. I think that is right, but I am not prepared to swear that. I think I can look it up in the records I have got of the actual meetings. The notices calling the meetings and the records of the meetings, I think I can look that up.
In this one it had the business of the credit union and I think it mentions the details of a meeting to have a credit union at Ansett. But it doesn’t actually say where the meeting was, it just says Head Office.
JH: Well Head Office was 489. The old building in 509 was just a polyglot of little rooms and storage areas and so on.
So your credit union hasn’t moved far, lets face it.
JH: No, although there have been attempts to push it out.
There are even now.
JH: There have been many attempts over the years to say this space is more important than the credit union. They tried to put high rents on it to squeeze it out and so on. Roger Bell somehow always managed buck his way around that and keep a foot in the door.
Several of the Directors have said something about him having sort of arrangements that nobody else knew about. Then he was caught out with one of them, he would say it was for the good of the credit union.
End Tape 1A: 4618 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes
23 AUGUST 1995: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO JOHN HOPE
JH: One interesting little thing to mention is the size of the loan limit in the early days of the credit union. I don’t know what the loan limit is now, I think it is quite substantial. Before we could lend money we had to have money and we encouraged the earliest members to deposit with the credit union. We honoured Sir Reginald by offering him Membership Number One. At a later stage the membership numbering system was changed so there was no such thing as a sequential number based on how long you had been a member and it is now any old number that falls out of the system. He had the honour of being Member Number One for quite some time.
Roger denies that, he says he was Member Number One.
JH: He may have been the first member recorded, but when numbers were allotted, Number One was allotted to Sir Reginald just to give him the honour of that. Anyhow, I haven’t yet been able to turn up in my records specifically what the first loan limit was, but I think it was $100. After not very long it became $300 and it stayed at $300 for some time. Then it became $1,000. As we were able to move the limit up of course, they were great days. To be able to say to the membership in general that the loan limit is now so and so and it was such and such, and to be able to treble it from $300 to a $1,000 was a big step. They were occasions when co-operatively significant messages were sent out to the whole of the staff. Notice board announcements were put up all over the groups saying that the credit union limit is now up to a $1,000. They were sensational days in the early growth of the credit union to be able to do that. Bad debts were held to an absolute minimum for a long, long time. I don’t think we had a bad debt at all for quite a significant period. They have never been a great problem statistically, although they might have been a great problem from time to time in terms of recovery exercises. I don’t doubt that, but that is part of management. One early episode that comes back to my mind, and it is a lovely little memory, in the very early days of the credit union when it was relatively little known there was an employee who hadn’t been long employed in Ansett Pioneer. He was based in Alice Springs and was taking some annual leave with his wife and some kiddies, two at least, and they were in an old battle-axe of a car taking their holiday having left Alice Springs. They had come south to some point, somewhere near Moree or so, and crossing some of the most difficult dry country between Moree and Broken Hill. That is terrible country even to day, but back in these days, the early 1970s it was shocking and they broke down, their motor conked out and the were in desperate trouble some good many miles the other side of Broken Hill. This guy sent a telegram in to the credit union here from where he got to at Broken Hill saying that his car was broken down away out west and could he borrow $350 I think it was, which was over our lending limit anyway at that time. He was desperate, he absolutely had to have to fix what was wrong with the motor in car to get going. His wife and kids were out in the desert, a horrible story. As it turned out he wasn’t even a member of the credit union. So we didn’t know what to do. He was an Ansett employee out in that country, stuck with his wife and kids on a holiday, broken down car, not even a member of the credit union, what do you do? So we grabbed an application for membership form and filled it in, all but the signature, sent a message back saying, “We have got your membership application form here, but for Godsake the minute you get back will you sign it and we will do our best to rush it through for approval as fast as we possibly can.” The next problem was how the hell can we do it when he isn’t even a member, who is in effect going to stand guarantor. I said, “Oh bugger it, I will.” So I actually personally guaranteed the loan. The money was wired to Broken Hill. The fellow got his car repaired, got on his way, had his holiday, ultimately got back to Alice Springs, joined the credit union, signed the form, made it legal and was a loyal member ever after as far as I know. What that did for the staff in Alice Springs is nobody’s business in terms of saying, “Hip Hip Hurrah look at that.” An interesting little story in its formative days.
That is a good story. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief when he signed it.
JH: Including me. Another funny little one about computers and what they can and can’t do. When statements were being sent out and news items about the credit union were being sent out using the computer records of membership to effect mail-outs to private homes, which was seen as a good promotional technique, I got wind of the fact that an envelope about to go out to Sir Reginald was addressed Ansett, Sir, because the computer was only capable of addressing people from the indexing system that then existed by their surnames and followed by their Christian names. I think it was going to run Ansett, Reginald, Miles Sir, which was not exactly acceptable. I put my nose in and said, “You know you can’t do that. You can’t address people through the mail who carry a Knighthood from the Queen without saying first, Sir and then the proper form of address, Sir Reginald.” “We can’t do it,” they said in the computer room. “Well you can’t do it in the mail. You will just trample on the man’s toes, it is offensive and it won’t do you any good at all from the point of view of having worthwhile company support for the credit union to send a thing like that through mail.” They said, “There is no way they can get it through the computer.” I said, “To hell with that, pull it out of the damn computer and put it on a typewriter.” They found that rather difficult to do, however it was done.
You want to see one mailing list that I control at the present moment. For that very reason it has got things like that. What I would do, I would put his name as Sir Reginald.
JH: I suggested that but they couldn’t drive it that way without having a man called Sir. The support from VCCA was tremendous. It wasn’t just Leon Magree but there were others too, whose names I have forgotten, can conjure up some day. The VCCA gave great support. Don Harris was another important person, he played a big part too.
I think at the time you started he was actually the Manager of the VCCA. Leon was the Development Officer.
JH: That’s right. They both played a big and important part in that and other subsequent developments later on, which I will have to refer to very briefly as we go. I was invited at a subsequent stage to join the Board of VCCA and I was on the Board of VCCA from 1973 through to 1976. But that is another story again.
I should have interviewed you for the VCCA then shouldn’t I, when it was still going.
JH: There were some interesting things there. There were however a couple of stormy episodes in the history of Outlook. There was one in 1976 and another one around about 1978. They were quite separate, but equally important and problematical. The one in 1977 arose out of a dispute by some of the members about difficulties that arose about a Manager in the earlier days who departed the credit union when some of the staff were upset about that departure. They voiced their feelings by getting up a petition to call a Special General Meeting to raise protests about those events. That was a difficult episode. I still have some documents relating to it.
Roger Bell told me about it.
JH: It was fairly embarrassing all round at the time. It was more unfortunate than embarrassing. I suppose embarrassing is the wrong word, unfortunate, that there was such a difficulty arose over such a thing. However, the meeting was duly called and held and disposed of the matter with a vote of confidence in the then Board, which completely settled the matter and those issues remained settled. Other issues arose somewhere about a year or eighteen months later that gave rise to some more heartaches that Roger has probably told you about.
Was there another Special General Meeting then or not?
JH: I don’t specifically recall that there was, if there was I have probably got it in my files.
I don’t have any record of it. I have got a record of the first one, but I haven’t got any record of the second one.
JH: Do you have a copy of the Petition itself, and the signatures?
No.
JH: I have.
That would be interesting.
JH: That is something that I don’t think at this stage such a list of signatures should be trotted out.
It is the sort of thing that would be briefly mentioned, but not really highlighted.
JH: I would be pretty confident several of those people would still be here, or if not they would be retired staff and still members. It is one of those things that is best left.
As long as it was mentioned, “There was a Special General Meeting” and leave it at that.
JH: It was held in the Moonee Ponds Town Hall, we had to get a big Hall to hold it, because a large number of people turned up. Most of the petitioners of course, but a lot of others too.
Roger told me that.
JH: I have got this box of papers at home, which is about a foot high and quite frankly there is so much in it I haven’t had the time to go through it, but I am quite happy to do that.
I am only here this week anyway. But anything that you want them to photocopy and send to me, then they would handle it here.
JH: Right. I think that about runs me out unless you have got some questions?
Ah yes I have indeed. Not that many I don’t think. Now in the Steering Committee meetings you say have a list of the individual meetings. I would like to get a photocopy of that.
JH: Yes I think I have got them all. If I haven’t I might only be missing one. There were only about three such meetings. The first one to generate an interest, the second one to get a Steering Committee going and then the work of the Steering Committee to create the set of rules, which is the model rules incorporating the variants as they were needed.
Could I ring you during the week that I am here and see if you could get the dates for me of those Steering Committee meetings?
JH: That would be all right, I will give you my telephone number. You want dates of Steering Committee meetings.
Dates and locations, I guess they were all the same. Now the business of a Supervisory Committee, that doesn’t seem to turn up anywhere in the records.
JH: I will find some material on that.
They can’t immediately find the early Minutes.
JH: Minutes of Board Meetings? Whether I have got any of those I don’t know, I may have some. At one stage in order to help promote the development of the credit union in the minds of Managers at different locations we were sending out copies of the Financial Statements of the credit union, to show the growth and the health and the wealth of the thing. For some time the Financial Statements went out and I have some copies of those, an early sequence of those.
I have got all the Annual Reports and they had the Financial Statements in them.
JH: I am talking about monthly statements of the growth of the credit union, membership.
I can’t get into it that deep.
JH: But nevertheless they exist, at least some of them still exist.
OK. But the one thing I was interested in, if you did have Supervisory Committees, since I can’t immediately find the Minutes, they were elected weren’t they?
JH: Yes.
So that should be somewhere around. As I said they can’t locate the boxes.
JH: I will do my best to find some of those for the Supervisory Committee, I have got it under that heading.
Any records of any elections for that.
JH: Elections for Supervisory Committee.
Did they have a Publicity Officer or anybody else who was elected?
JH: No. One of the Directors was elected a Director, a very popular guy, and elected principally because of his ability to help with the promotion aspect of Outlook. He was the Editor of Outlook journal.
Which one was he?
JH: J R Crosbie I think.
Yes he is here, J R Crosbie. What was his first name?
JH: John Crosbie. He was a very, very active Editor of Outlook magazine, but a very active supporter of the credit union itself. He virtually was the credit union’s Publicity Officer you may say, without it being a formal appointment.
I suppose with the name as well, it might have given in an official imprimatur so to speak. Unofficial publicity, right. The Secretaries?
JH: John Crosbie was a Director for a long time, 1973 to 1978.
Indeed. Is he still around?
JH: I don’t know.
The first Secretary?
JH: Ian Sinclair. He was an Accountant, on the accounting staff. He was a very nice chap, very capable fellow.
Then Roger was Secretary and after that came Lee Titt.
JH: Ted Tierney played a role.
He was the Foundation Treasurer. But there was no longer a Treasurer after 1975, so I presume again that the Manager was doing it.
JH: Yes. By that time the staff grew. The growth of staff was very gradual. Initially there was nobody, just Roger part-time.
Here are the Financial Statements over the time.
JH: Incredible isn’t it.
Started off with 441 members and only $63,000 in assets. Within two years it was up to over $1.5 million.
JH: It was wonderful. Ian was an employee of Ansett Transport Industries and he was only devoting a little bit of part-time and night-time and week-ends to that role as Secretary then. This fellow Ted, was an actual staff employee of Outlook Credit Union.
That is correct. But he didn’t come on until Roger became Managing Director, then he took over as Secretary.
JH: I see.
Roger was officially Secretary for as long as he was only General Manager?
JH: Yes I think so.
He was officially Treasurer as well?
JH: I think so.
That could be a paid position legally. Of course any company has to have a Secretary and a Treasurer, and they can both be paid employees of course. I think Ian was the only one who was Honorary.
JH: Yes that’s right. Tierny was Honorary too, but Ian Sinclair was the only Honorary Secretary.
Can you think of any of the other people. Geoff Garside, who was he?
JH: Geoff Garside was Ansett Transport Industries’ Superannuation Officer. I think his title was Superannuation Executive. I can look that up. He was the first Chairman. He was on the Steering Committees, at Steering Committee meetings, and was elected the first Chairman.
Who is Chairing that meeting shown there?
JH: I think I did. I was elected Chairman of the Steering Committee. That picture there is of the Steering Committee, not of the credit union.
Who was this Paul Bertram, Observer?
JH: Paul was on the data processing staff in the computer area.
Do you remember the start of term deposits?
JH: No. I can’t put my finger on that one.
Well I can’t think of any more questions immediately. Perhaps I can give you a ring if any do come up. Who was John Hardy? Looking at a photograph of the Steering Committee Meeting.
JH: John Hardy? I don’t recollect.
Sylvia Macklow? She was a Director later.
JH: Was she. Maybe after my time. I retired in 1981.
That is a long while ago. Do you remember how Geoff Garside came to be appointed as the first Chairman? Was there an input from management for that?
JH: No. At the first meeting nominations were called for. There were two nominations.
Who was the other one?
JH: Peter Reilly. He elected to stand down rather than it go to a vote. So then Geoff was duly elected without any opposition.
Right. Peter Reilly followed him.
JH: Yes Peter was the next Chairman. I have a record of that. I glimpsed it late last night, one of the things around midnight, I saw that little bit about the election of the first Chairman. In effect he was elected unopposed. No input from management.
Who was Peter Reilly, what was he in Ansett?
JH: He was in the Airline Accounts Section at the Head Office of Ansett Airlines of Australia.
Well I haven’t got any further questions. Is there anything you would like to add?
JH: There is something I would like to add, if I may. One of the early promotions to generate interest in the credit union was that we arranged to insert in pay packets right throughout the entire group a simulation of a $20 note, which was our biggest note at the time. It was printed in red and the same size as a $20 note and it drew attention to the fact that Outlook was set up and running and inviting membership and so on. We had that inserted along with paper money in pay packets right throughout the entire group as a gotcha, and it really did work.
Did you have any trouble with the Reserve Bank did you?
JH: None at all, no. It had little 20’s all round it but no dollar signs. I still have one, I have got one copy of that.
I must try and get a photocopy of one of those. This is for the twenty-fifth anniversary history.
JH: There was a later version in black and white. That one was so successful we used it again later in a black and white version. I have a few copies of that one. I have only got one of the original red one. That could be run again for fun.
If you could get a photocopy for Dale that would be a very great help.
JH: I had better mention that on my work list. $20 etc., samples.
Thank you very much Mr John Hope.
JH: It has been fun.
End Tape 1B: 3243 Words: 1 hour 10 minutes