START OF TAPE ONE – SIDE A

I am talking to Mr Pat Egan. I’m going to ask you where were you born and when?

Parkes, NSW, 14/7/33.

Where did you grow up?

The first five years we were in Parkes and then my mother died and we moved to Lithgow. We were there for fourteen years or so. I then moved with my apprenticeship to Sydney for twelve months and then went back to Parkes as the engineer on the Silver City Comet.

Where did you go to school?

At St Patricks at Lithgow.

Did you like that, or not?

It was a great school, yes. It was during the war years, obviously, and things were tight, typical of the times. We had no shoes on many occasions but we had ample clothing, solid food, fibre and fried bread, beautiful. It was part of the game.

I remember putting it under the floorboards one time. What did you like or dislike about school?

I enjoyed school.

Were there any subjects you liked?

I was probably good at mathematics. I enjoyed maths; geography and Australian history.

Was there anything you particularly disliked?

No, I enjoyed the lot.

Sport?

At school sport was limited. We were able to play rugby league in the children’s team at the time. I went on to play rugby league in later years.

Where?

In Lithgow, then in Sydney and then in Orange.

When you left school, you took up an apprenticeship, did you?

I went to the Small Arms Factory for twelve months and worked as a junior clerk. I got an intermediate certificate when I was fourteen and a half. That was a bit of a problem; you almost needed permission to leave school. I had a job in the Small Arms Factory for twelve months and then applied for an apprenticeship on the Railway and got that the following year. It was a five year apprenticeship, as opposed to today’s training for four years. But the Railway gave us a particularly good exposure and offered us many extra subjects which we all took on. That helped us in later life.

What sort of extra subjects?

I did oxy and electric welding; elements of supervision; elements of electricity, diesel engine fitting, which then qualified me for the job at Parkes, which was the engineer on the Silver City Comet, running between Parkes and Broken Hill for several months. I got sick of the travelling and I got tied up with my future wife here in Orange, so I moved back and got a job with Email in 1954. I started here as a fitter. Then I went on to tool making and tool design drafting; quality control foreman; industrial engineering; spare parts engineering; production control for the factory; then a Senior Production Superintendent and then finally Production Manager.

What started you off with credit unions?

I think Stan Arneil was the guy that initiated the interest here in Orange, via the trade union movement.

What year would that be?

It was twenty-five years ago last December, so 1964.

Was this when he was development officer for the Registry?

I don’t know what he was.

He spent about a year, or maybe just under a year as development officer for the Registrar of Co-operatives. He came round talking about starting credit unions.

I don’t know what his role was.

I think it was in 1964.

He seemed to activate some interest with our senior union shop steward and the word Credit Union to the senior shop steward – he was a German – was that it was a part of the trade union movement.

The Credit Union started in Germany.

Yes. But that didn’t mean much to the guy. When we first formed up he was the only union shop steward in our group of nine directors. The rest of them were staff people who were taking an interest, like myself, and other guys gathered throughout the plant.

So when was your inaugural meeting?

It would have been in December 1964. We formed the Email Orange Employees’ Credit Union which was strictly within the barbed wire fence of this plant. But slowly and surely as time went by we recognised the futility of being locked on an industrial site and we changed our name and bond to the Orange Mutual Credit Union.

About what year was that?

Possibly about 1970, I guess.

That was when most of them were doing it. I think it was the Act that allowed that, wasn’t it? In 1969 the Credit Union Act.

I can’t recall. I’ve been out of that direct involvement now for about four years.

The Credit Union Act was 1969, in New South Wales, the first one in Australia, for Credit Unions itself. That’s allowed the mutual bonds.

But the mutual bond was very good for this particular Credit Union, in that being confined to an industrial site with the problems you get with industrial action and all the connotations of lending money to people who are on strike and the rest of it just wasn’t on. Once you broaden your bond and your outlook – Email employees are still our major group in the Orange Mutual Credit Union, but probably only these days I would suggest, probably only fifteen per cent of the membership.

Does that bring any troubles, not having the payroll deductions for the other people?

No. Many other groups in the Orange Mutual have payroll deductions.

Right.

Direct to the Credit Unions.

And the Credit Union goes out on service calls, does it?

We’ve moved out of the Email site.

Yes, I see it out there, yes.

Many years ago. That is about the third or fourth location. When we first moved out we leased a building or an office in Lords Place. Then we moved up to Anson Street. Then we finally bought a building next to the Royal Hotel in Lords Place and upgraded that, it serviced our needs for many years. Then we sold that after I left the Board and bought this building. But it has been good and progressive; there were no major jumps in expenditure or in decision making. They were all little progressive changes on a continual basis.

When you started, do you remember the inaugural meeting of the Credit Union?

Yes.

What happened then, who chaired it?

I can’t recall where it was Stan Arneil or John Porter.

Was John Porter the foundation chairman?

No, he was an employee of the Association, or the league, in those days.

Right, he was a representative in those days. Was he a development officer there?

I can’t recall.

They had various names for them.

Yes.

But generally speaking, John Porter. I recognise the name.

I don’t know whether Stan was here for that or John Porter.

Stan normally came round and spoke but he didn’t usually chair the meetings.

No. I don’t think he chaired the meetings.

Because the Sydney Credit Union was started the same year and it is the same thing. As a matter of fact I think Peter McMahon was at that meeting. That was the municipal employees union, he was there at all those meetings I believe. Was Peter McMahon involved on this one? Did you take any council employees here?

Eventually we did, yes.

Did they have their own first?

No, we were the first in Orange.

Right.

Then, when I became a league director, I was responsible for kicking on or getting the Orange City Council Employees Credit Union started. This later became the Calare Credit Union. I was responsible for getting that off the ground. There is the Orange Base Hospital Credit Union; there was the Ophir County Council Credit Union; all little local groups; the Orange Postal Credit Union. Slowly and surely we encouraged those people to come into the Orange Mutual Credit Union, except for Calare who seemed to want to do their own thing. That may change in the future. I notice the Manager is now moving on to somewhere else. He was really the only reason that it was kept going. There is just no way that that little minor group can be leasing premises and providing the services that the Orange Mutual can provide here in Orange.

Did they ever try and do anything jointly?

No. Calare always said they would go their own way. The offers were made.

In Dubbo they joined up for joint offices and then they cut it out.

The greatest problem I had in Dubbo, as a League Director, was the Dubbo Community Credit Union of which there were some people who were directors that had little or no business ability. But slowly and surely they got some good people into that particular Credit Union. I think it’s going fairly well today, isn’t it?

Which one?

Dubbo community.

I don’t know it.

It’s gone, has it?

I’m not very well up. Macquarie’s the main one, the other one is Orana isn’t it?

Okay, Dubbo community became Orana.

Orana’s going.

Yes, it’s going well. It had some very hard days early on.

Macquarie wouldn’t go. They wanted Macquarie to go mutual but they wouldn’t.

They were formed around the Electricity Authority Group, similar to the Ophir County Council in Orange.

That’s right, electricity and the council put them together. But several times it was mooted but they didn’t want to, so that never happened. So your one started here and you were a director straight away?

Yes, I was one of the nine foundation directors.

Who was the chairman?

The Shop Steward guy, Tony Siemer, was the chairman. After about eighteen months we started to recognise that the trade union in Tony’s eyes was a very strong issue with him. He was tending to confuse the Credit Union philosophies and ideals with trade unions. He couldn not act as chairman of both those groups here inside the wire. So the following year I was elected the chairman and I was chairman for the next twenty years, then I retired.

Were you ever challenged at all?

A couple of times, yes.

Did you have a campaign or did it just go to the vote and that was it?

It just went to the vote, what the hell.

As far as the Credit Union here, what were your main problems? Were they the same type of problems as others?

No. Back in the early days when the Credit Union was being run by strictly volunteers, we used to roster ourselves on at lunchtime and do our own interviews and take cash and write receipts and you go home weekends and you hand write the ledger cards, that was hard work. Then we employed a lady, Ailsa Sheldrick was our first employee. That helped considerably that we now had someone doing all the nitty gritty, if you like.

Did she have an accounting machine?

We ended up buying one, an old NCR ledger balancing machine it was. I think we bought it second-hand from Email. Slowly and surely things happened progressively. We moved and bought a little accounting machine, then we bought a little computer. Now you see the results down there in Summer Street.

Yes, it’s quite a sizeable operation, isn’t it.

Yes.

You said you didn’t go through the problems when you became mutual, but did you go through the problems of when you were actually employing people?

We had problems with employees, yes. Whilst we were here inside the wire.

It sounds as if you were in gaol or something or a prison camp.

The lady we had employed, the work slowly increased as membership grew and we gave her an assistant. The policy of the Board was that we would try and pay those people the equivalent pay rate of a similar situation inside the Email organisation. So we tried to relate her salary to, say, the senior lady supervising all the office administration area, which was a bit of a principle we had. You are a member of this co-operative; you work here with Email employees; your salary is compatible with theirs. One night she decided that she wasn’t getting enough money and she put it to a board meeting without coming to the chairman first and said, `I’ve got to have more money’. So we allowed her to leave the room and we discussed the thing and we re-affirmed our principles: pay rates shall be compatible with people who work in Email. So we called her back and told her.

The following morning I’m up in the office up here – I had a foreman in the office – and there were two guys waiting outside the office to see me. The credit union lady, who also worked on the site, came up the stairs and pushed in front of these two guys and into the office; the other guy left and she said, `I’ve thought about the Board’s decision last night and if you don’t increase my salary you can have a month’s notice’. I said, `That’s tough luck because I don’t want a month’s notice from anybody: you can have a week and finish next Friday, because our principle is that you are paid compatible rates with the people you work with. I don’t care what you’re hearing outside; you’re not working in a bank; you’re working in the Email Orange Employees Credit Union and that’s the rate of pay.’ So we parted good friends.

As the years progressed I found another of our senior people – we were now a mutual organisation – in the staff had given himself an interest-free loan. He’d had the overdrawn savings account for several months and it was one thousand four hundred dollars, not a great amount of money, but only through my own investigation of the cards did we find this problem. So we fired him. I think it did him the world of good actually, he’s a very good operator. I think he was found out at a low level, he paid the price, and I am sure he was doing a marvellous job for the credit union in all other areas of operation.

Another guy who had been on the staff, he forged a withdrawal slip for two hundred dollars. I walked in the office one day – we used to have our meetings every Monday lunchtime – and I heard this fellow saying, `But I did not withdraw that money’, and he’s in the office next door to the manager. I thought I recognised the voice and I popped my head in the door and said, `G’day Henry, how are you?’. He said, `Pat, my account is two hundred dollars down and I did not withdraw that money’. I said, `Are you sure, Henry?’. He said, `Yes’. I said, `Okay, that’s good enough for me; that money will be reinstated to your account’. So we investigated and found the slip and the cheque and what the purchase was at the Western stores and that guy was fired. They were the only problems we ever had with staff in that particular area of fiddling.

You were either lucky or you were good at it to find it early. Some of them have gone on a lot longer in other credit unions.

Yes. But there’s a good manager here now, young Phil Nokes. He grew up with the Credit Union, he came as a loans officer from a bank. He did a pretty good job I think.

In the early days, did you have difficulty getting proper insurance?

What can be proper insurance? You can’t ensure against robbery really.

You get the fidelity bond, that’s easier done. But what I was getting at is that in the first instance in 1964 you couldn’t get very much loan savings protection insurance.

Savings protection insurance, no. We never saw a savings connected insurance as a major problem in that we tended to maintain a vigilance in the accounting system.

No. That was to ensure for the member’s death.

Loan protection insurance.

Yes, that’s right, loan protection insurance. So your protection insurance came after.

Yes. I don’t think it was ever a major problem, Rex.

It’s funny you calling me Rex. I used to work in factories myself and that’s the first thing they always used to do. I don’t know why, the surname Rex, I used to get Rex. You’ve done it just like that. Everybody did it. I worked in factories for years, it’s funny. In the first instance, they asked for CUMIS and CUNA Mutual to come over to Australia to solve the problems of insurance.

And to set up an insurance system.

That’s right. So that’s why I asked you in the first instance. Did you feel it as a Credit Union, that you couldn’t get proper Credit Union insurance here? Did you feel the need?

I think we were too imbued in our lack of knowledge of all the other things that were required. We were not too worried about the insurance aspects. It was not big on our agenda as a Credit Union. When I became a director of the League Board in 1969-’70, and then I became one of the Australian delegation to the World Council meetings in April 1970 and I went to Madison, Wisconsin, I went to a little old League office which wasn’t much. Then I went to the CUNA Mutual office and I couldn’t believe it. Here was this incredible block at least four storeys high, a block and a half long, white carpet on the floor about an inch thick. I thought we were in the wrong business. Later on, we had quite a lot of discussions about CUNA Mutual and costs of insurance. I was one of the directors of the League Board at the time when the five directors from CUNA Mutual came out here to put their case.

Five?

There were five, I think.

Do you remember who they were?

No, I’ve no idea.

Do you remember Carlos Matos?

I don’t think he was one of them. I’ve met Carlos.

He wasn’t a director, he was a Vice-President in charge of international operations at that time.

Yes, I’d met him and had dinners with him and met him in the States. I don’t think he was one of the five that came out, though. But our argument with them was that come what may, irrespective of the claims on the Association or on the system, they were going to keep eighty-two per cent of the premiums which we found outlandish, an outlandish costing. That forced us to rethink. It caused many disturbances in the movement, of course, but we were being ripped off. Surely, insurance should not cost you eighty-two per cent of your premiums. But they had this fixed thing in their mind that eighteen per cent can go out on claims and eighty-two per cent would fund their own organisation and it just wasn’t the way to go.

Where was that money channelled? Was there an argument on that feeling?

I don’t think so, I think it was just that eighty-two per cent was for CUNA Mutual and they would run promotions and schools and all sorts of things themselves, which was really the responsibility of the League and the Association, not CUNA Mutual as insurance agents.

You were actually a director for the whole of the time. No, you weren’t a director when they accepted CUNA Mutual as insurer for the League, but you were when it was removed.

My word, I was.

Do you remember the meeting when that was finally solved?

Yes, we had it at Burwood in the old League office upstairs above some shopping centre there.

A director’s meeting, was it?

Yes.

But when was that put to the membership?

Possibly at some future half yearly or annual general meeting, I guess.

And you don’t remember that meeting.

Yes, there was a lot of bitterness because there were a lot of loyalties to CUNA Mutual because of the schools and gratuities, I guess, they were passing out. A lot of people who felt that CUNA Mutual had done a good job but there were also a bunch of people who were saying, the education of the people, the upgrading of Credit Union knowledge is the League and the Association’s responsibility. You just cannot have an insurance arm or insurance service providing those services at their will, no control. It was a nice little set-up for them and they were good people, I think probably well intended. But we finally won the day. I remember the meeting now. Stan Arneil was there. Stan felt he’d been badly done by. There was a lot of bitterness around at that time.

Do you remember who chaired the meeting?

Probably it was Ken Miller. Was Ken Miller the chairman then?

Yes, he was President at that time. Do you remember who was Vice-President at that time?

It may have been Dermot.

I think not because he was already chief executive of AFCUL when that finally happened. Tommy Kelly would have been one. I don’t know who was the other one.

Kevin Bain maybe.

We’re talking about 1971-’72. It was Ken Miller all through that and the Vice-President was at that time 1971, Lee Nash and then Jack Coyne and Tommy Kelly.

Yes.

They were the Vice-Presidents at that time.

It was a very bitter period and it took a while to outlive. I still think it was the right move. I’ve got no regrets about the culmination of the CUNA Mutual, or CUMIS I guess it is called these days, is it?

What about the split of the League? It was split up into a number of parts.

There were a few people who went their own way and there was some disaffiliation and all the rest of it. What did they have? What did they get? CUNA Mutual had lost the enormous income of the total move. They weren’t putting on the schools or the education systems that were now becoming a League responsibility. I think slowly and surely most of them have all come back, have they not?

Yes, but you were not director during that period of the early 1980s when they finally amalgamated again. It took them five years didn’t it.

It took a while.

I think the last arrangements were in 1985 when the Central Association closed down.

Yes.

It reamalgamated.

It’s probably on the negative side. That sort of thing happening, but the move was essential for the future good of the movement. The movement was static for a couple of years while all these little splinter groups were playing around. It’s finally come together and what the heck. I think, to me, the most progressive thing that really put the credit unions on the map in Australia was Les Robinson with his innovative thoughts. I don’t know where he picked up the idea of central banking, but central banking really put the New South Wales Credit Unions on their feet first. Then some of the other States and then AFCUL. That’s probably the best thing for the credit union movement we’ve had in the history of Australia. I don’t know where Les got the idea; whether it was his own or he’d seen something like it.

Ken Miller and Dermot Ryan came back and wrote a report on it from Canada.

Ken, in those days, wasn’t the architect that he is now. Ken was a Board member and Charirman of the Motor Transport Employee’s Credit Union. He didn’t have the expertise in those days.

No, it was Les Robinson.

It took Les Robinson to do the job. He was a clever man.

He’s still going strong and I’m going to interview him. He’s not very well, but he’ll do it.

END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE A

START OF TAPE ONE – SIDE B

We were talking about Les Robinson and the central banking. Were you involved? Was there a banking committee or was it just generally as a director?

Only as a director as I recall. I think Les did all the analysis. He researched the opportunity with the banks. I think it was the ANZ Bank which was the one he got the best cooperation out of and the best deal out of. I think that’s the way we went first as I recall. But the enormity of the system set-up was really handled by Les and his staff, all on Les’s initiative, I guess. He had some people around him that obviously helped all the time.

Did you realise the significance – I asked you about it before but I was mixing it in talking to you – of the savings stabilisation fund?

Yes. I was involved in that. I think it was a very necessary creditability requirement for the credit union movement. There was always the open discussion annual meeting about how much should be in there and who should put it in and all the rest of it.

Do you remember who were the main proponents? Do you remember the argument between Dermot Ryan and the rest of the Board?

No, not particularly.

Reading the minutes it seems that he was on one side of the field and the others were on the other. His attitude was, I believe, that they wanted to use the insurance premiums which they’d manage to keep from distributing.

I can’t recall. It’s so far back. We’re talking twenty years ago.

The other things that were set up around about that time like the supply cog.

That was again a Les Robinson initiative, or the New South Wales Credit Unit League at the time. Standard stationary, promotional material, et cetera, really cut the costs for the credit unions and helped standardise accounting systems. There was some fairly good educational material coming out of that area too. Some of the characters around at the time were good for the movement then. There was Ron Swanson. The girl who was Les Robinson’s secretary, Esme Chong, was a very clever person. She had a secretarial role but I think she was a great backer for Les and handled the administrative affairs fairly competently. All those names are escaping me, though.

What about the other service that they started to provide then? A collection service. Did your Credit Union ever use that?

Yes, we did. One of the things that I observed in the early days of credit unions was this lack of directors have the guts to recognise bad debts and write them off. Because of my League Board involvement and therefore gaining fairly first hand knowledge continually coming into the League Board meetings, the credit unions whose balance sheets didn’t really reflect their true worth and the heavy involvement of the League staff in trying to rectify some of those situations, I think I was probably lucky and therefore maybe the Orange Mutual Credit Union was very lucky in that we slowly and surely insisted that any doubtful debt was written off. If you got a recovery, good, it showed up on the balance sheet. We were always very hard. In fact one of our auditors who’s since deceased, John Owens, said, `I think you’re going a bit too far with some of these. They could be challenged. They’re not really bad debts’. So I said, `We haven’t got the money and we can’t find the bloke’. We always maintained a strong write-off of bad debts.

The other thing is a principle. I guess again it’s my League Board knowledge of trying to secure the future of the movement. The Orange Mutual always tried to put away reserves. I didn’t mind what the reserves were until they were about ten per cent of our total assets. They got to about nine per cent of the total assets of the United Mutual, a couple of years back, which gives you a very safe feeling in the gut, especially if you are confident that your loans are good loans and that you’ve been writing off if it was doubtful. In those days we used to show on our balance sheet, bad debts written off, bad debts recovered. We would analyse all troublesome loans at each monthly board meeting and we would write them off if they were doubtful. We have managed to recover some but we were trying to ensure that the worth of this credit union is as the books show and it has certainly turned out that way. But I think all that good that went to the Orange Mutual is because we were involved in the League Board and hearing first hand, every board meeting: we’ve got John Porter out at so and so; we have Ron Swanson out at so and so; we’ve employed a bloke and put him in as administrator here; we’ve wiped the Board out there. It had to happen.

I was amused when I first heard that the Registrar wouldn’t accept used car salesmen as directors for credit unions. I thought this was discrimination. If you look back on the history of the place you see some used car salesmen were fairly shonky, but there were a lot of good ones too, of course.

Were you involved in training at all? Were you involved in schools either as a leader or a learner, so to speak?

I went to a CUNA Mutual school at Newport.

Do you remember Room 19 down there?

Yes, Sydney City Council’s grog room.

I think they called it a hospitality room.

You could call it hospitality but to me it was a grog room.

Didn’t some important discussions take place there?

The particular one I went to, it must have been about 1966, we had the opportunity to go and I took a weeks holiday from my annual leave from Email and went to attend this thing. I think that’s when I first met Berry Calverley.

Was Father Ganey there?

Not at that one, no. I met Father Ganey in the session we had at Surfers Paradise which was an AFCUL meeting if I recall. He was a very impressive man, very, very impressive.

At Broad Beach.

Yes.

You didn’t see him on his own territory in Fiji?

No, I didn’t have the opportunity to do that.

Going back to the schools. What do you think was good? What was important about the schools?

I think the first thing that came through was that you weren’t participating in a little minority movement. It was really going places. It had good principles. The idea of co-operative savings and loan associations to me was enticing because in those days wasn’t easy to borrow; interest rates were high.

Did you have difficulty borrowing money for the credit union?

No. Not if you look at some of my background. When we were married my wife’s mother was very ill and she could not attend the wedding. Because of this illness she was bedridden. We moved in with her parents. Her mother died about a month later and we lived with her father then for the next nine years. The home was about one hundred years old and never had had anything spent on it, so slowly and surely, to make the place habitable, we had to spend all of our money on just improving the joint and putting in new walls and new floors and new ceilings and chucking out the old fuel stove in the kitchen and putting in a decent fuel stove. I bought a block of land before I was married for two hundred and ninety pounds, which we eventually sold, and invested in this house to try to make it more livable. But as the years progress, after about nine years, we had two children, we had a miscarriage and we had a third child on the way and the house was outgrowing us and so was the father-in-law: he was a bit hard to live with.

I had the opportunity to buy a house, I think with the Orange City Council who had built several homes around Orange and offered them to key people in local industry for five hundred dollars deposit: but where the hell was I to get five hundred dollars. So I sold everything I owned, including my motor car, my bike, even a little Warmray heater I had put in the lounge room of this joint, but I had to remove the damn thing. I cashed in an insurance policy, I paid all my bills and had eighty dollars – I needed five hundred dollars. I got a first mortgage lined up and second mortgage lined up and I was still four hundred and twenty dollars short.

So I went to my father-in-law and said, `Listen Ted, I’ve spent all my money on this place. If I can buy this house I need five hundred dollars, can you help?’. He said, `Oh no, I couldn’t help. Now the boot shop’s going bad’ – he was a boot maker. The man was illiterate and I was doing his banking for him so I knew how much money he had anyhow, and he could have afforded it. But finally, after a bit of pressuring he gave me one hundred dollars, which I needed anyhow to buy a new refrigerator. We were moving out and we had no refrigerator. I thought this was great. So I went to the Commonwealth Bank and said I wanted to borrow some money. They said – that was where I had my eighty dollars – `What for?’ I said, `I want to buy some furniture for this new house’. They said they could not do it for me. So I said, `Okay, close my account, I’ll take my eighty dollars somewhere else’.

So they closed the account and I went up to the State Bank. I think it was called the Rural Bank in those days. I said, ‘Here is my eighty dollars deposit for savings – I owe nothing and I own nothing. I want to borrow four hundred and twenty dollars to buy some furniture for this new house I am moving into.’ – which was a lie, but I needed the four hundred and twenty dollars for the deposit, and they gave me the loan. So I had their four hundred and twenty dollars and my eighty dollars and went round to the solicitor and said, `There’s my five hundred dollars’.

My wife was four or five month’s pregnant. She was not going to work for a while. We had two other children. I was working at Email, not on big money. I had a first mortgage and a second mortgage, two and a half children, a four hundred and twenty dollar loan. I was wondering how on earth I was going to pay this. I picked apples and did a bit of work around the farms at weekends and we got there. So borrowing money, I have been rejected once. I have never had trouble since.

So the credit union had not happened then?

No.

Was there any loan sharking around this area before the check up?

There probably was, but I didn’t have the needs.

I was just wondering about the people here at the factory.

They were going through the same problems I was. The population of Orange would be doing the same thing.

But not the same sort of thing that they had in Sydney where whenever anybody gets paid in the payroll it is the people following the pay people around.

No, I don’t think so. This is a good, clean country city.

That’s your background, yes, we didn’t cover that before. I know you’ve written it in there but I wanted to get it on the tape. The schools, again, did you ever form a chapter around here?

Yes. We formed a chapter where we had Bathurst, Lithgow and Orange. I’m sure Dubbo was part of it at some stage. I can’t recall. I know I quite often travelled to Dubbo to attend meetings.

Who was behind the formation of this chapter, do you remember?

In Orange, possibly myself; it was Orange, Bathurst, Lithgow.

Were you on the League Coordination Committee? It was called the Coordination and Development Committee.

I don’t think so.

It was acting as coordination between the League and the various chapters and it’s also setting up chapters, and also starting credit unions.

No.

Owen Jones was the secretary for a while. Do you know Owen Jones, the manager of Sydney Credit Union?

Yes. No, I was never part of that development group, I don’t think.

But you were part of the chapter that was set up here?

Yes.

Is it no longer up here?

I couldn’t honestly answer. I think all those things tended to disappear and they became manager’s associations.

There was Leichhardt as well which is very active now, the Institute of Credit Union Directors and the Australian Institute of Credit Union Managers.

They were sort of forming up. The Institute of Managers was forming up then.

Do you think that, since that, that the need for schools has decreased generally, apart from those?

There are more professional people now.

Is that a good thing, do you think?

They were needed in the administrative side. The philosophy of credit unions when we first kicked off was a very strong, help your fellow man, involvement, having recognised your own difficulties and how you might be able to help somebody in budgeting their savings or something else. I’ve often wondered actually whether the philosophy is still there.

Dermot Ryan wondered that too, and so did Stan Arneil, but they didn’t think it was.

I can’t see it, I can’t see any signs of it. I think it’s become a professional organisation. They’ve mooted professionalism, the accounting and money management systems. There’s no doubt about that because there were too many amateurs in there, fiddling with money, who had no idea what they were doing, but where the philosophy fits in now I don’t know.

George McCready said to me yesterday, for instance, that he didn’t approve of different rates of interest, different rates of charge against loans, different types of loans. He thought all loans should be the same rate.

No, I disagree with that.

Regardless of the risk. In fact he thought it should be the other way around. The people lower down should get a better rate of interest.

If they can’t give you security, that’s where your bad debts are coming from and there are plenty of bad debts, I think, still around at the moment. Hence, I think their interest rates are structured to try to give a bit of insurance against that bad debt because of the lack of security. I think if a guy comes in and offers you his mortgage or his first mortgage, his deeds, and he wants to borrow ten thousand dollars, it’s the same as a bank, you’ve got his house. If a guy comes in and he wants to borrow ten thousand dollars to buy a motor car, you’ve got no record of saving, you’ve got no security except maybe a lean on his motor car, I think you’re taking a bit of a risk with his loan as opposed to the guy whose offering you one hundred per cent insurance.

So if you don’t agree with that, you do agree with that in principle and not with what George McCready was putting –

No, I strongly oppose to the George McCready principle.

Right. So where do you think the credit union movement has gone short on its philosophy recently? What do you think they’re doing wrong?

A man who is offering you security and therefore the risks of losing some of your other member’s savings, which is what you’re administering, there’s no loss ability. The guy who can’t give you security and therefore you’re risking other member’s savings, means you pay a bit more for insurance against that debt. As a philosophy it stinks but that’s business I guess because the philosophy of the thing is that you’re there to help everyone to the best of your ability and all men should be equal, I guess.

Some people, for instance, Dermot Ryan, felt that there should be a percentage of money that you suggest, that people who are prepared to take a low rate of interest on their savings, if people are prepared to take a low interest on part of their savings, then that money would be loaned out at a lower rate of interest.

It doesn’t happen though.

No, I know that doesn’t happen, but that was suggested by Dermot, in fact he did it. He used to have a pool of money in a credit union – Tom Kelly did as well, in the Rail Staff Credit Union, whereby if people were prepared to put in their money at a low rate of interest, then they were prepared to lend that money out at a low rate of interest.

And did they have any people who are willing to do that?

Yes, in fact there were lots of pensioners doing it.

Okay, trying to avoid tax payments.

That’s right, they were afraid of losing their pension. In fact Tom Kelly, at the railways, had a no interest account which he used to lend out on low interest.

What’s the different in low or no interest accounts versus reserves?

But I’m suggesting here that these are various methods that have been suggested and some have actually been put into practice. As a matter of fact, at the present moment a number of lawyers – this is something that Bill McMahon told me about, he’s a legal clerk; he was transport credit union years ago – have set up their own company in order to put money in at a low rate of interest to lend to their children.

But that’s not a risky business is it, not when it’s in the family.

They are not only lending to their own children, it’s like a company and they’ve worked it out legally. But that is only because the credit unions are no longer.

There was no chance of defalcation.

I suppose not.

And that’s the difference.

At the present moment there’s quite a number of ideas in this direction. Do you think that they’re a good idea for credit unions?

I think credit unions have gone beyond that.

They have.

Therefore I can’t see it being a practical idea.

Do you think that bonds were a good thing?

I think initially they were.

What about now?

I think they outgrew their bond of association needs. I think the big philosophy of bonding was probably where the philosophy, where people who live in this little town or where people who work in this environment were bonded together and by God, we’ll stand by one another. I guess the opening of bonds is also the diminishing of philosophy. With the Orange Mutual, we have progressively opened up the bond and embraced any people living in Orange.

They all did that in the ’80s in Sydney, the unions got upper Sydney.

Yes. Where’s the philosophy in that?

But on the other hand you could say that it’s opening up credit unions to a lot of people who did not have the ability to get into it.

Sure. I think maybe, looking back on it, if you had small credit unions of three hundred or four hundred people who all lived in a community, worked together, then the philosophy was still applied. The minute we went to almost multi-national credit unions, where really a member is a number we remove the philosophy.

What about the ones that were within churches, parishes?

I think they had something going for a while.

They’re still going.

Are they?

Rose Gallagher runs the Lidcombe one with old Father Gallagher. Did you ever meet him?

Yes.

What did you think of him? Did you agree with him he didn’t believe in the League?

He didn’t believe in the League.

Can you remember why?

I think he was quite happy with his little everybody knows everybody group. I don’t think he wanted to be part of the big scene.

He also objected to the savings protection fund.

With his background he probably understood it. In the Antigonish group, they probably never had a bed debt to speak of, so why would you want savings protection?

That group of credit unions round there, they’re still running. Ms Rose Gallagher, his sister, is still running most of them. She runs about five. Not all credit unions, she also runs a co-operative building society and all sorts of things.

When you’ve been exposed to the big, bad world, you learn by experience and recognise that ninety-six per cent of people are honest and four per cent will take you for every bean you’ve got. So you have four per cent of people who fall in that category and you’ve got to have all these protections, otherwise you’re putting at risk the investments and savings of the other ninety-six.

So when you were on the Board in those years between 1970 and 1974, what were the main issues, do you remember? I know there was the insurance, we’ve discussed that, and the central banking. That was already set up.

Not quite, I don’t think.

Yes, it was just going in, that’s true.

I think there were lots of distractions with the CUNA Mutual thing which held the movement back for a while. I think one of the main issues of that period were the number of credit unions who were having difficulty in maintaining their credibility. There was a strong and effective group within the League staff and, obviously, their directors, amalgamating and administrating some of these areas for the good of the movement. There were many significant things that occurred, obviously, but that stands out.

The legal challenges at that period that Dermot Ryan was involved with: firstly, there was the legal challenge of the Taxation Department with the Water Board. Were you in the decision for the Water Board to make on that test case?

No, I can’t recall that one.

Then it went down to Adelaide because they already had one going down there. That failed. That was where Dermot picked up on the political scene with Vince Martin. Were you aware of that, and involved at any stage?

I was probably aware of a lot of those things, Richard.

There were the four issues with the Government, there were three actually. One was, were the credit unions able to deal with the housing grants, the first housing grants; to be able to handle pensions and social security benefits; the Commonwealth employee’s payroll deductions; and the fourth thing was the deduction of income tax, to get the tax concession back from income tax. During those four years Dermot Ryan was at AFCUL.

I was probably party to some of those things, aware of them, but not a leader by any means.

When you went overseas in 1970, was it?

Yes.

Who went with you?

Ken Miller, Col Dade, Ron May from Gosford, myself, there were five of us, including a guy from Canberra.

END OF TAPE ONE – SIDE B

START OF TAPE TWO – SIDE A

We were talking about your going to America. Can you remember where the World Council meeting was that year? It was the first World Council meeting, wasn’t it.

Yes, it was in Madison, Wisconsin. It was also the time went the riots were breaking out all around the States due to the anti-Vietnam situation. I can recall when we got to Madison, we arrived at our hotel, the Lorraine, and it was surrounded by the national guard – the whole block. The guard inquired of the cab driver, or whoever was taking us out there, what our needs were and this was quite standard. I think it was the university, the State University in Madison, Wisconsin, where the students cut a riot and smashed all the shop fronts in one of the main shopping centres. The feelings were very strong – the anti-Vietnam thing. As we were arriving in the States, a student or two had been shot at Kent University in California, so things were fairly volatile in the anti-Vietnam scene.

We stopped over in San Francisco. Ron May and I had gone a day earlier and we went to Los Angeles and Disneyland, our first little trip. We went out with Ken Miller and Col Dade in San Francisco. I can still recall that we had a room somewhere in a hotel in San Francisco and so did Col and Ken who were also sharing. I can still recall Ken washing Col Dade’s underpants in the sink. We went down to Fisherman’s Wharf and Col Dade was a real stirrer – do you know Col at all?

No, he’s dead now, is he?

No, no way. He’s living up in Gosford I think, near the Entrance.

I’d better get him then, hadn’t I.

Yes. He was on the League Board at the same time.

Yes. I was under the impression that he had died.

Col was a real stirrer. I think he was probably still the chairman of Sydney County Council Credit Union. This Ron May from Gosford spent a lot of time in the sun and he had a good, dark suntan. We went into this pub at Fisherman’s Wharf and …

Is Ron May still alive?

I think so, yes. It was also the time that the Indians – I’m not sure which one: the Navaho I think they were – were laying claims to Alcatraz, just off the bay there. They came into this particular pub. Col Dade got talking to these guys and suggested to them that we weren’t racist because we had this black fellow with us, this Ron May. Ron was no Aboriginal, he just had a good sun tan. He was also trying to convince these blokes that we were reporters from the Sydney Morning Herald and were sympathetic to their cause. He stirred up some trouble that day.

Where else did you go before you got to Madison?

Nowhere, that’s all, straight to Madison.

How did the meeting there go?

It was an amazing event. The presentation of all of the participating countries national flags and the conferences that were conducted in an incredible way. There were little sessions going on all over the place and then they all came back to the main venue.

Were they caucusing?

Yes.

What were the issues? Do you remember that?

Not so much caucusing I don’t think, but I guess they were. A particular subject was picked and a group of people were picked to try to analyze it and come back with a recommendation.

What were the subjects?

I can’t recall now.

Were you in one of those groups?

Yes.

Can you remember what that was?

No. The big push at that meeting was for Australia to host the World Council meetings in Australia about four years later, or something, which we ended up being successful with.

Sydney.

Yes.

No. The first World Council outside American was in Australia but in 1979.

It was booked that far ahead, every three years.

Outside America. The first World Council outside America.

That was proposed by Ken Miller, the World Council meeting in 1970. We got on the agenda for consideration. It happened in 1979, that’s right. It was booked the next umpteen years.

Did you hear anything about the work or the arguments that had been put by Ken Miller and Dermot Ryan and Owen Jones about restructuring CUNA International into the World Council?

Yes, I did. It’s too far back though, Richard.

We’ll leave it then, there’s no point in flogging a dead horse, as the saying goes.

I think one of the problems we’ve got is that even though I was heavily involved in the credit union, I also recognise that my source of income was here at Email, Orange, and I had to make sure I doing my absolute best here all the time. If you look back through my history you’ll find I progressed through the organisation to the stage where I was enjoying a good salary. So my employment was paramount to me. My family was obviously the same way. Some of the things you had to learn in industry, the changes that have occurred, are probably more indelibly stamped in there than the things that happened twenty years ago in the credit union movement, even though I was probably a party to it.

Ken Miller, incidentally, got sidelined in his job because he was spending too much time on it. Were you aware that that could happen to you?

I think it was always in my mind, therefore I had to keep my priorities right.

Was there any time when you thought that you might become a credit union manager and go through that way to become employed in the credit union movement?

No. There were times I probably wishes I had gone that way.

When things elsewhere weren’t going very well you mean?

Yes, enjoy some of the benefits that finally accrued to the managers.

How do you think that being country as opposed to – Orange is not exactly country.

It’s country.

You were the second country director on the League. Were you very much aware of being a country director?

Only in the difficulty in getting to meetings. I used to go and visit all the credit unions in this particular area, as a League Director. Then the Board meetings required me on occasions to take a day off work to go to Sydney to be there for the Board meeting. Then the airline flights got better and you could leave here at four-thirty and be in Sydney in time to get to the League Board meeting and then go to the hotel and be up at five and catch a cab at six and have a Mascot plane at six-fifty and be back in Orange at half past to start work at eight. They were demanding times and if the plane couldn’t land in Orange because of fog or something, you could land in Bathurst or Parkes or something, it was even worse. So that worried me a bit.

Did you get plenty of support from the management, or were they sometimes annoyed?

Sometimes annoyed, yes. One particular guy was.

He wasn’t in the credit union?

No. He’d say I spent a lot of time with the credit union and I would say I was putting in the hours. I used to spend Saturdays here, if necessary and an early night was six.

Were you on call as works manager?

Yes. So there was no pound of flesh missing.

Do you have shift work here?

Yes. There is the main shift during the day of course. In the afternoon there’s a fairly substantial back-up and there’s a midnight shift that operates some of the continuous machinery, vacuum forming and extruding and that sort of thing.

But as works manager now, I’ve no doubt you have somebody else to come in.

Yes, you don’t find me here at night time. I had a change here some twelve months ago. A senior supervisor rang me about five to ten one night. He said, `We’ve got a problem’. I said, `What are you doing ringing me?’. He said, `It’s not me, it’s this other guy who wants to talk to you’. I said, `Hang on, is the factory burning down, it’s not going to start tomorrow?’. He said, `No’. I said, `Write me a note and I’ll see you in the morning’. He’s never rung me since. The next time I saw this guy I said, `Listen, the only time you ring me after eight at night is that the factory is burning down or there’s a major equipment blow-up that’s going to stop the joint from working tomorrow. Then I want to know about it.’

That’s right. However, some of the places I’ve been you do get major equipment blow-ups all the time, particularly electronic equipment.

Yes, there’s plenty of that about.

It’s more reliable now than it used to be in the electronics field, although some of the other equipment is not very.

Most of the PLCs are running on twenty-four volts too, which is much safer and more reliable.

As being a country director were you aware of being different to the others? Do you think you were second class citizens or second class directors?

No. One of the problems we could possibly have is our lack of knowledge of the big scene. When they first started talking about the Antigonish theme, I thought what is that? They had to explain it to me.

You didn’t have your priest explain it to you. You didn’t go and get a copy of Rarem Navarum?

I didn’t ask him what the hell it was all about either.

I went and got two copies only a few weeks ago from the people at Marylands there.

You lacked in knowledge of all the things that were happening in Sydney. It’s probably a good thing because your views therefore weren’t in some ways influenced by all those little happenings that were going on. The Stan Arneil thing, in the end, I was divorced from it. I was party to it, no doubt about that, and Stan and I were good friends. I think, looking back, if Stan was still alive I would still regard him as a good friend. It was just a difference of opinion, I saw it my way and he saw it his way. It’s a pity it all happened actually. It certainly put the movement back five or ten years.

Taking to your point, where you are a director of AFCUL: do you remember that period? How did that come abut in the first instance?

By nomination at League Board.

They asked you first?

Yes, would I be prepared to stand and so on, what’s involved, this and this and this.

Who were you a director with? Was Dermot Ryan a chief executive officer at that time?

He’d progressed. I’m not sure if he was chief executive officer during my period or just after that.

If he wasn’t yet chief executive officer, then he would have been vice-president of the League at that time.

Yes.

Dermot left Sydney in 1970 and became the chief-executive officer of AFCUL.

I must have been on the League Board in 1969.

No, you were 1970 to 1974.

I attended several League Board meetings.

Yes, you might have been in, in 1969, but the year 1969-’70. So you attended a number of meetings with him, the board meetings at the League.

Yes, my word I did.

Do you remember him particularly?

Yes. He was bombastic – he called a spade a spade. I think he was a very political man in lots of ways. He maybe had a background as a negotiator of a trade union movement or similar because he was smart on his feet, a quick thinker. I think he had a heart of gold. I don’t think he’d do you wrong. He often gave me the impression he could handle himself in the back blocks, in a brawl or whatever it may be. He was a hard drinker.

What about the other ones at Sydney?

He certainly wasn’t the man to be the chief executive officer of a professional organisation, but he was probably the right man to kick it off. You needed someone in there with a bit of hard nutting, push, shove, ignore the protocols, sweep them aside and get things done. He was that sort of man.

When you became a director of AFCUL was he the chief executive officer?

I don’t think so.

But when you did, he was chief executive.

I think AFCUL was in its formative years, really, because when we went to the States in 1970, there were five directors who went from Sydney; there was a New South Wales contingent and three or four went from Victoria. There was a Victorian contingent, not an Australian Council of Credit Unions contingent at all.

But there wasn’t for years.

No.

It was the various leagues.

There were League representatives. Graham Benson from Victoria, the guy who did ABC Australia, a very rich speaking voice and he came from Melbourne; Radio Australia. Have you struck him at all?

Who?

(His name was Keith Glover) I can’t think of his name. He was in the States in 1970 with the Victorian contingent.

George McCready said the same thing but he can’t think of his name either, so I don’t know who you are talking about. He wasn’t anything in New South Wales.

He was the voice of Australia or Radio Australia on the ABC.

Several people have told me that but we don’t know who he is.

He was a very good speaker, a good presenter. Graham Benson would know who he was.

Was he a credit union director?

He had to be a director of the Victorian League.

It wasn’t Peter Lucas, was it?

No.

I don’t know. Who were directors with you on AFCUL? Who was the president at that time? Was it Berry Calverley?

No.

Was it Graham Benson?

No.

Was it before that?

We weren’t directors of AFCUL. We were New South Wales delegates.

There was a full board after 1974 when Dermot Ryan resided.

No, we were delegates to the AFCUL annual meetings from New South Wales.

But from that there was a president and two vice-presidents were first elected out of those delegates. Then later on it became four vice-presidents and one president. After that there was a full board. Which period were you in?

Whatever coincided with 1970 to 1974.

All right, I understand. Did you ever hold one of the offices of AFCUL?

No, only as a delegate from the New South Wales League.

I can trace that out actually because I have the annual report as well. But I haven’t done it because I’ve only done the Leagues one, as yet. I did these from the League annual reports but I haven’t done the AFCUL ones. Now AFCUL doesn’t issue any reports. You only get an annual meeting. So what do you remember of when you were a delegate? What happened during that period? 1970 to 1974 covers the whole of Dermot Ryan’s chief executiveship.

1973 to 1974 maybe. There were always many contentious issues. I know they were meaningful meetings.

Did you ever go down to Lidcombe to the headquarters of AFCUL for meetings?

No.

Did you ever go there at all?

Not to my knowledge. That was well after my time.

I understand it was just a shop front of a cottage.

No, I don’t know.

It’s all right, other people have described it. So if you can’t remember anything, there’s not much point in going on with that.

Us country boys were not in that scene.

Do you remember the inauguration of the Australian foundation?

Yes.

Did you have anything to do with that?

No. I can remember it all happening though, and the need for it to happen. There was certainly a need to help our neighbours. It was well expressed and I think it was well supported actually.

Dermot was much involved with that again as well.

Yes, he was.

The need for that was because of the World Council and the fact that we were having an Australian Federation they decided they wanted their own foundation. Was that put to any boards?

It would have had to have been, yes.

Who put it?

It probably came through a New South Wales League annual meeting presentation, I would think.

Were you involved in that at all, apart from just as a voting member?

I can’t recall directly, Richard.

Do you remember the involvement of the Federal with Aboriginal people in Australia?

Not particularly. I can’t recall that.

It did happen, but if you can’t recall it, never mind. We’ve already covered the insurance bit. What about the other services that came out of AFCUL? As a matter of fact they were started in the association of the League.

I think it was all a learning situation where New South Wales was by far the leader, I believe, in recognising and providing the services. When the States finally got together via AFCUL the need obviously was in the other States and therefore AFCUL had to also earn its keep or just be a body out there doing the figurehead work. I think a lot of the services that New South Wales had invented and implemented were transferred progressively over to AFCUL. So I didn’t really see a change in the services, except they may have diminished for a while, while AFCUL got on its feet.

They were really banking services, weren’t they, most of them. They were pioneered not with the credit union movement.

The AFCUL services?

Things like check a month schemes.

Yes. There were a lot of take-offs from the banking system. The term investments. The ATMs. That was big business.

Incidentally, you weren’t on the Board at the time. In 1977 the Queensland teachers wanted to start. New South Wales wasn’t ready and nobody else was ready, but they did start.

We had some rough times.

Do you remember that?

I have memories of it but nothing specific.

What about the start of ATMs, you weren’t involved in those?

No, but we supported it as a board of directors. We progressed to the stage where the managers had become more professional and we had our managers attending monthly meetings of the League and keeping us updated with all the happenings. By the time you went to an annual meeting, if you remained in good contact with your manager – which we did – you got a lot of ideas about what was going on and which direction the movement was going, whether it was good or bad. I think that was our link.
The only thing about having managers or associations was the very obvious discussion that went on about comparative salaries and perks. I guess it was a means we had provided to them to discuss their relative salaries and perks and titles and all the rest of it. It may have been good for the movement, I don’t know. I think a lot of people made good in the credit union movement who couldn’t make good in equivalent banking services. They just weren’t good enough. A lot of them have been found out and they’ve gone. People rose up to managers of credit unions who just did not have the ability.

The Sydney Credit Union was one. Has your credit union put people through in management at all?

We’ve encouraged our managers, especially the current ones, to attend the institute management schools.

Did you get them from the credit union movement or did you get them from elsewhere?

We hired this guy as a loans officer from a bank.

You’ve got people, Sydney Credit Union particularly, was one where lots of people, to some extent transport as well. Ken Miller became a manager. What about Laurie Daley? What about John Prescott? What about people like Barry Holmes? Have you come across him?

Yes.

END OF TAPE TWO – SIDE A

START OF TAPE TWO – SIDE B

I asked you before whether you felt that there were any successful credit union directors that had made successful managers after that, employees.

Ken Miller, of course, stands out. Possibly Helen McIntyre – I don’t know about John McIntyre, he was too far removed; I didn’t know anything about his credit union. There was someone around Sydney County Council, I think, at one stage. I can’t think of the name. I think there were not only credit union directors who became successful credit union managers, but I think a lot of credit union directors were aided and abetted in achieving better positions in their workplace, through the knowledge they achieved with their credit union involvement. I think, sure, I’ve done a lot of study pertinent to my work but I think things I learnt in credit unions, some of the accounting methods etc, and the philosophies and people have probably helped me in my particular role here at Email as a production manager. There were all those exposures that were beneficial to many people.

Do you think that your experience outside has benefited you inside the credit union movement as well?

Yes, I do. I think because I was involved in a supervisory role here, made me more aware as a person of the difficulties that some of the employees were encountering. The lack of ability to budget. One of our big things here was getting people to budget for their known accounts. Slowly and surely, looking back over the years I can think of quite a few people that we helped mature, if you like, in money management. It was probably one of the best things we ever did for them around here.

How much do you think computerisation has helped you to be able to help them in budgeting, using their accounts?

Computerisation is only quick mathematics and these days quick access to particular accounts that you are trying to research.

Not only that, I’m talking about the way that they can say, `This account is for so and so and we put so much in a week and they pay it out monthly, or three monthly’, car insurance and all that sort of thing.

The manual systems used for recalling that monthly account to make sure it was paid or that three monthly account to make sure it was paid were very cumbersome. We can hit the old computer system and say accounts required, monthly or three monthly payments or rate payments or whatever it might be that we do down here. You couldn’t do those without a reliable computer and system. You could do them for a small group but not for seven thousand people or ten thousand people.

Has that led to a rise in, or a genuine use of more people budgeting? Does it help people to budget?

It helps. But until the person gets the message that there’s a need to budget, the service can sit there and lay dormant. Getting the message to people they need to budget for their ongoing permanent commitments. That’s the area in which you fail.

So you’ve gone in for that a lot, the savings and loan counselling?

Yes. That was a major feature. I don’t know how it’s going now, I’ve got no idea. I know that many people save down here with their Christmas clubs and they put their rate notice in and have it extracted from their savings accounts on bi-monthly credits to the Orange City Council etc. I think the service has probably been fairly well used, but it could be far better used. Not many people budget correctly. I think there are probably more people budgeting now because of credit unions than there were twenty-five years ago, maybe the need wasn’t there twenty-five years ago.

I think there was when I was in factories. Certain people used to get their garnishees very regularly.

Yes. We brought out many garnishees in the early days, just to relieve the person of the problem.

And there were certain big department stores who also had finance companies that used to constantly.

Waltons stood out. Interest rates were twenty-odd per cent.

I had more garnishees on my fellows from Waltons than anybody else.

Yes, they were bad news and they had a poor accounting system. We were able to prove on a couple of occasions that the debts weren’t really owing.

We’d better clean up the last of these and that’ll be it. Do you think that religion had anything to do with your getting involved in the credit union movement?

I don’t think so. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re a Catholic, Uniting Church, a Baptist or whatever it may be. Christianity, as I put in that little note I gave you about my grandfather, he never spoke a bad word about anybody. He didn’t curse or carry on. He helped his neighbours but he didn’t go to church. I think they’re more crooks going to church than there are that aren’t. So Christianity is one thing, religion per se doesn’t make you a better citizen, it’s your own personal beliefs, whether you believe in God and not doing damage to your fellow man and therefore trying to help your fellow man if possible. That’s where the credit union people came from.

Do you think that – I’ve asked you before whether you think the credit union has stuck by its principles and you said you didn’t think it had?

I don’t think it’ll be sticking now with its original philosophies, it just hasn’t had the opportunities, it’s too big.

Is the current balance of saving and credit correct, do you think?

I don’t know. I haven’t been a director now for four or five years. I wouldn’t know what the balance is.

Do you think the credit union movement should just react to whatever it is, rather than leading this sort of thing?

I think that’s a pretty deep question, Richard. The credit union led the way, I think in the education of people in the budgeting system. That was their personal budgeting. The banks have now picked that up, but I’m not sure, personally, where the next move is. I think it’s a better mind than mine that can foresee the future problems and their solutions.

Nobody has yet, I don’t think.

I don’t think it’s Paul Keating either. Dermot would probably argue with me on that.

That it was Paul Keating? I don’t think he was particularly enamoured of him, although Paul Keating I understand was – yes, Dermot was right wing Labor, yes. The union employed Keating as a research officer, MEU, the Municipal Employee’s Union.

I can’t foresee where a credit union could lead the way in financial aid to its members.

You haven’t got any suggestions in that area?

No, I can’t think of any.

You’ve named a couple of people here, of people that should be interviewed that we haven’t got on the list. You’ve got a couple here. Col Dade and Ron May. Is there anyone else you can think of?

Obviously Les Robinson.

Yes, he’s on the list for sure. In fact, when I get back to Sydney he’s going to be one of the first ones again. I’ve done Ken Miller once but he declined to do the Association until they picked up the project, which they did, and he’s going to be done again. He was going to compartmentalise it. I don’t think you can, but nonetheless.

Have you done Stan Arneil?

No. I’ve volunteered, but we don’t know whether he’s going to be in it again. He’s turned it down twice but that was once with Sydney and once when I was doing transport. But this is the Association so maybe he’ll do it this time. I don’t know. I’ve asked him to be in it, but we shall see whether he will.

But Col Dade, for sure.

Can you think of any questions that I should have asked that I haven’t that we should cover?

No, I don’t think so. In fact I was a bit amazed at the extent of the questionnaire.

Sorry about that. I did it, it’s my fault. I gradually added to an existing –

It’s accumulating.

It’s accumulating, as you said. I would ask that question but other people put other things. There are a couple of things to go on there now actually, which I asked, but they’re not on there and that’s re-legislation of the legislative committee. Also, the other committee, the Savings Protection Fund committee and so on and things like that. The committees that are around now, like Life Insurance and so on, in fact. All right, if you think that that’s it.

I think it’s covered pretty well.

Thank you very much, Mr Pat Egan

END OF TAPE TWO – SIDE B – END OF INTERVIEW

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