13 AUGUST 1990: ANSWCU77: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO RON SWANSON WHO WAS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE NEW SOUTH WALES CREDIT UNION LEAGUE
Where were you born and when?
RS: In was born in Sydney on 8 September 1935.
Where about in Sydney?
RS: Annandale.
Did you grow up around there?
RS: Annandale, Leichhardt all of my life until about twenty-five then dad got his first home by virtue of a War Services Loan and we moved to Ryde. I got married when I was in Ryde and my first house was in Ryde.
Where did you to school?
RS: St Thomas’ Christian Brothers at Lewisham.
Before that?
RS: St Fiacre’s, that is a little Catholic convent school at Leichhardt.
Just off Catherine Street. I used to know that area. What did you like and dislike about school?
RS: I disliked the discipline because I was always in bloody trouble and the Brothers always had those big long leather straps in their gowns. I became quite familiar with those over the years.
Any subject that you liked?
RS: No, I was just a very middle of the road average student. Just plodded along and managed to get there in the long run.
What about sport?
RS: Sport? Well when I was in third year, if you can imagine it, I was six foot three and weighed about eight stone. But because I was about six foot three I was always a front row forward in the football, or something like that, which I quite disliked, it was not my scene at all. I was good at athletics, running, long-jump, high-jump, those sorts of things. Once I left school my primary sport then was tennis, I was quite good at tennis.
What sort of influence do you think your father had on you?
RS: Dad had, and still has, a profound influence on me. My father is a very charming fellow and has a very high sense of moral values. It was through him and certainly my very gracious mother, that I was always taught at a very young age that if you can’t say something good about a man, don’t say anything at all. So often times silence is devastating but through him I got my sense of values, my sense of responsibility towards society. Don’t kick a man when he is down and always remember on your way up the ladder to say hello to people, mate, because you mightn’t have a chance to say goodbye on the way back down again.
What about political or religious influence?
RS: I am not a religious person, but I think the schooling which I had through the Christian Brothers certainly instilled in to me a very solid form of Christian beliefs I guess you would call them. It is that platform of Christianity which very much harmonised with the concept of the credit union movement. That is why I fell in love with the credit union movement, when I was first introduced to it, and the movement became to me a vocation as the priesthood is to a priest.
What was your first job?
RS: Clerk in the Sydney County Council. I was there for about seventeen years.
Did you like that or not?
RS: It was a very interesting period in my life. I mean a lot of people poke fun at public servants and all the rest of it. But I always remember with fond memory a group of people who had a profound influence on me and my thinking when I worked for the County Council, they were very intelligent people. Also through them was my introduction to the credit union movement as well. So I think very fondly of those days.
What was your first job there?
RS: I was a junior clerk in the Cost Office recording plant and equipment on their Assets Register. It was very exciting stuff.
So it was a sit-down job?
RS: Oh yes, a shiny-bum.
Some of the Motor Transport people there used to have to stand up and do so many an hour and all that sort of thing.
RS: None of that for me.
Who was your boss? Was he any influence on you?
RS: A fellow by the name of Perrott. He didn’t influence me, I quite disliked the man. He had a two-faced set of principles as far as I was concerned. He was the sort of man who professed to be highly religious and very ethical and those sorts of things, would never gamble, would never buy a lottery ticket, but he used to play the stock market like you wouldn’t believe. But he couldn’t see the clash of principles as I did. So he didn’t have much of an influence on me at all.
Well where did you first hear about credit unions?
RS: It was when I was working in a depot in the Sydney County Council at Five Dock. I was just walking through the yard one day and a fellow by the name of Stan Hatton called out and said, ‘Hey Ron are you coming to the meeting tomorrow night?’ I said, ‘What meeting Stan?’ He said, ‘Oh about this credit union.’ ‘What’s a credit union, Stan?’ He said, ‘Oh it is like a co-operative where you save your money and they pay you interest on it. Then if you need to borrow money they will lend you money at better than bank interest rates.’ I had only recently been married, had all sorts of needs to be able to borrow money, so I said, ‘Well that sounds good to me. I will come to the meeting,’ and I did.
Was that the inaugural meeting of the credit union or not?
RS: That was not the inaugural meeting, that was the first public meeting. I think it was Clarrie Murphy at that stage of the game, who addressed a group of employees first up and explained to them what a credit union was, then posed the question, ‘Do you wish to persevere with it?’ Having listened to the discussion, and it was a fairly good meeting as I recall because a hundred or so people turned up.
Where was it held?
RS: In the old Queen Victoria Building. They had a cooking demonstration theatrette. It was down in there.
Under the library, I remember.
RS: That’s right. The thing took off from there. I sort of put my hand up and said I was in favour of it, the same as everybody else, then packed up and went home thinking someone else would do it. Well someone else didn’t do it, because I got a phone call about two days later saying, ‘Look Ron, we need some guys to sit down and steer this thing through and we would like you to be part of it, particularly where you are working out in the field with all the tradesmen.’ I was pretty reluctant to do so because I knew nothing about credit unions and I was fairly young.
Who said that to you?
RS: Stan Hatton. A fine fellow Stan. He ended up at one stage being Chairman of the Sydney County Council Credit Union. Anyway I went along to their formation meetings and got involved in their steering committee. We went through the formation meeting and I, together with a group of other people, were elected to their first Board. That was my introduction.
Can you remember who spoke at that formation meeting?
RS: No. The only person I can recall with any clarity is Clarrie Murphy. I can’t recall anybody else. I think there could have been some guys like Dermot Ryan and Owen Jones, because being in the Town Hall just across the way and there was some affinity between the two Councils.
Can you remember what year that was?
RS: 1965.
Yes it was just after the City Council had theirs.
RS: Yes. They gave us a lot of help in the early stages on how do we do this and why do we do that? Don’t do this, but do it this way. Some of that advice was adopted by the Board. A lot of it was not because we had a bunch of professional people who thought they could do it a better way. They didn’t, in fact.
When did you first meet Dermot Ryan?
RS: It would have been at that meeting. But in terms of getting to know Dermot Ryan it would not have been until I was employed by the League, at which time he was also a Director of the League. Then I got to know him of course, and a lot of other people as well.
So do you remember where they held the first Board meeting of the Sydney County Council Credit Union?
RS: There was a tiny little library they used to call it inside the dome of the Sydney County Council land that became our meeting room. I am pretty sure that is where it would have been.
Who was Chairman?
RS: Pendergrast. I can’t recall his first name. Pendergrast would have been the first Chairman.
Do you remember who was Secretary and who was Treasurer?
RS: Col Daide was involved as Secretary. The Treasurer, I can’t recall. Can see him. A short, fat fellow who stayed on as an honorary Treasurer, stayed on when they began to employ staff. They caught him with his fingers in the till and I think he was sentenced. But I can’t remember his name though.
Do you remember John Gormley?
RS: Very well. John, in those days, used to be on our Supervisory Committee and was also on the League’s Supervisory Committee. Then sometime further down the track he became a Director of that credit union. I think he may have ended up as a Chairman as well at one stage.
I don’t know whether he is still Chairman, but he is certainly still a Director of the credit union.
RS: I wouldn’t be surprised. John is a very loyal fellow and once he takes a cause on he usually sticks with it.
I think he has just retired, but he is still active with the credit union. I did two interviews with him, one here in the Board Room and one down there in their building just down the road. Can you remember was Stan Arneil involved in any of the early affairs of the credit union there?
RS: Certainly. I remember Stan very well, very well. It seemed to me that there were two very definite points of view about Stan Arneil, they either hated him, or they loved him. I didn’t hate the man, in fact I had a great deal of respect for him even though I know some of the things he did were not viewed as being in the best interests of the movement. But it was Stan who kindled my initial interest in wanting to do a lot for the credit union movement. That was at a School that was held down at Newport when I was still a Director of the Sydney County Council Credit Union. I must have only been there for about twelve or eighteen months and I was on holidays, as I remember, and I knew the School was on. Our Board said they couldn’t afford to send anybody, so I just went down on my own. That is when I met Stan, Carlos Matos, Compton, Beresford Calverley and all those sorts of people.
How about Father Ganey?
RS: I only every saw Father Ganey, I never ever spoke to him.
Was he at that School or not?
RS: I don’t think he was at that School.
Well that must have been the 1965 one then.
RS: Yes, it would be very early in the piece.
There were two in 1965 and one in 1966. I believe the first one was organised by the League independent of CUNA Mutual, but the second one was organised by Stan Arneil with CUNA Mutual.
RS: That would be right. I can remember Stan, about six foot six of him, standing up in front of the group being very emotional as only Stan could and impressing upon the audience who were there that if every one of us went out and formed a credit union we would double the number of credit unions overnight. I did that. I went out and formed one.
Which one was that?
RS: McPherson’s Employees’ Credit Union. It was a neighbour who lived up the street and I got him by the ear and dragged him down. John Porter came out to give me a hand with it. John guided me, but let me do the discussions with this fellow. We convinced him. He organised a meeting and away we went and I did it. I was very proud of that.
What happened to it?
RS: I would think it has either gone to the wall by now or it has been absorbed. I don’t really know. It is going back a long way now, twenty-five years isn’t it.
So you were a missionary for the credit union movement straight away.
RS: Yes I was actually.
Well Stan Arneil would approve of that.
RS: Yes.
He is still around of course.
RS: Yes, Stanley Foch Arneil.
Is that how you pronounce it?
RS: Yes, F-o-c-h.
When did you first meet him do you think?
RS: At that School, in 1965.
How long did you stay down there? I know it was for a week.
RS: I went backwards and forwards every day for however long the School stayed there.
Was Room 19 operational?
RS: Were they ever! They were wild and woolly days, my God. The police coming down. The next door neighbours putting on the lawn mower at six o’clock in the morning to get sweet revenge. We won’t talk too much about some of the things that happened down there. It had a magical effect in my view on binding people together. I have never come across such a hot house of emotion and enthusiasm and energy for people wanting to do good things for the right reasons. Even in those days there was political manoeuvres in the background, all those sorts of things, but they never bothered me I never became involved in them. I was just interested in the justness of the cause.
Did Beresford Calverley give you any assistance with the Sydney County Council Credit Union?
RS: Beresford would give assistance to everybody who would take it from him, I suppose. He was a funny man in many regards, but I always got on well with him. I remember Beresford very clearly in the time that I worked for the League, serving when he was a Director during those years, always coming backwards and forwards. Paying for people to attend Schools, paying for people to go overseas and always making outlandish promises which rarely came to fruition. But he was a hard working, hard toiling man. In spite of all of his faults, I think he did more good than he did harm.
How did you get your money in the first place? Did you have any difficulty in getting members or did you have plenty of members almost straight away?
RS: What in the County Council Credit Union, oh we took off like wild-fire. We had about twelve hundred members in twelve months. It just spread magically. They had quite some difficulty in those days in handling the administration of that particular credit union, because it was all done by hand there were no ledger machines or whatever. Because of the volume of work, and the Directors did the lot, we used to go in every Tuesday night to bring each individual member’s card up-to-date. They elected then and there that at any one time you could only have one account. You either had a savings account or you had a loan account and that was the end of the story.
Can you remember the interest rates?
RS: They would have been the going rate of one per cent per month on the loans and five, maybe six per cent, on savings.
Right, that was standard. Can you remember where your first premises were?
RS: For the County Council? The first premises would have been out of the old Social Club offices which were down in the bowels of the Sydney County Council at Queen Victoria Building. That would have been Col Daide’s office. When they finally reached the stage of needing full-time staff and all those sorts of things, they were given office space in what is called the Black Stump in George Street. I don’t know whether they are still there or not.
Yes. They have got two offices up there now. There is one about three buildings further down the street and there is one opposite as well. Did you take your turn? When did you open for business, during a lunch time, after work or both?
RS: All day. By Col Daide. I was called a Senior Depot Clerk, working in this depot out at Five Dock. I could do whatever I wanted to do virtually during the day, as long as the work got done. So that gave me a good opportunity to constantly talk to people and tell them the story about credit unions. I addressed meetings of the guys at half-past seven in the morning before they took off on the road and all those sorts of things. So I was very active in my own little back yard. I finally convinced the original Board that yes we should have a newsletter, we should tell people what this was all about. They said, ‘Well fine, if you think that strongly about it, do it.’ So I did.
So what did you become a floating bank?
RS: Almost.
Did you have to balance the books every day?
RS: No, we didn’t take it that far. We did have pay-roll deductions. That is one thing we got from day one.
Were you involved in the negotiations for pay-roll deductions?
RS: They were just part of the original negotiations at the time they were forming the credit union. Given the calibre of the people who were on the initial Board, the opportunity of getting pay-roll deductions was never in doubt. It was just a foregone conclusion, thank God.
So they put money in, but if they wanted to get it out in those days they might get on to you if you were sort of floating branch.
RS: No, that wasn’t part of the deal. I would simply handle the paper work for them and they would have to go into the Queen Victoria Building to get their cash.
I was talking to somebody at Bankstown, because I am doing Bankstown Credit Union as well as they have got their twenty-five years. Several of them who were out on depots, they used to just virtually work out of their pockets.
RS: No, I wouldn’t be in that. My God, there were five hundred men out there. I would not do that.
Well he was a ganger, a foreman you see. But you can imagine it can’t you.
RS: No, that would not have been part of the deal.
He reckoned he used to have to balance his books every night.
RS: Good luck to him.
He reckoned he never lost any.
RS: Oh well, that is his story.
I think that he used to do that before, anyway. So did you have a need for credit before the credit union?
RS: Oh certainly as a young married man who had just established his first home and all the rest of it.
Did you have difficulty in getting credit?
RS: In those days it was very difficult to get credit. The only access we had in those days was through the old Rural Bank, as it used to be called in those days. Because you were a State Government employee, an instrumentality, that gave you some entrance to a bank to get a personal loan at any time you might need it. But it was nothing very grand.
Over at the City Council there, somebody’s brother was the Loans Officer at the bank in George Street.
RS: Trust them. I can believe that. They were a wonderful bunch of guys over there, they really were.
You didn’t get introduced to him?
RS: No. I wish I had of, but no I didn’t.
Of course he could only lend to people who had stable employment and fairly well up the tree, not down the bottom. Since you were working out of the depot, did you see any problems that the ordinary blokes had with loan sharks and pawn shops and all that sort of thing?
RS No there was never any evidence of that in the area that I worked in. I was told that used to be the way in the City Council. The loan sharks would even go around behind the pay cart every week to get their share of the action. But I never heard of that or never saw any evidence of that with the County Council. I don’t know what the difference was, but no it didn’t happen.
What about the finance companies that were involved with the big shops, H G Palmer and Waltons and such like?
RS: Oh that was probably seventy-five to eighty per cent of our need for granting loans in those days, debt consolidation, particularly for Waltons, H G Palmers and people like that. They were quite vicious and we did a lot of debt consolidation early on in the piece. We saw a lot of that. But where else could you go for credit in those days, there wasn’t anywhere else.
Cash orders. I was a sailor. When you signed on a ship, they all used to go for a cash order straight away to go and get their slops ashore. Then of course they would have to go to somewhere to cash it and they would take a percentage and so you would go on. I remember one occasion when I was taking a ship we were flying to Singapore and these guys were turning up at the airport thinking they were going to turn up at a dock and go on a ship, when in actual fact they had to get on a plane. It was going to be several days before they got there so they were all getting their cash orders before they went. Of course before the plane left they had got nothing.
RS: Not a zack, as they used to say in those days.
Getting on the plane with a paper bag. The Loans Committee at the County Council Credit Union, were you on that?
RS: I was in the early stages with the County Council, I was on the Loans Committee. That was very interesting work I enjoyed that. That opened up my eyes to the sorts of problems that the average man in the street was constantly confronted with. Some of the stories you would come across were quite pitiful. But of course like all growing credit unions your capacity to lend money was also limited. I think we started off the first loan and it might have been two hundred dollars per person. Then gradually up to four hundred and then six hundred and ultimately it got up to a thousand dollars. It would have been about the thousand dollar limit when I left them.
Now when did you have your first dealings with the League, as it was then, the New South Wales Credit Union League?
RS: The strongest recollection I’ve got is a School they had at the motel up at Parramatta where a couple of guys came out from the States. I attended that. I found that to be very exciting and very interesting. It further stimulated my interest in the movement. From that I can remember becoming more and more involved as a volunteer with the things that the League was trying to do in those days. My first involvement was with the the old City of Sydney Chapter. From that becoming involved with what was then called the Chapter Development Committee. Through that I also met Lee Nash. A charming man. He was a mentor of mine in the early days. I just became more and more involved in a voluntary capacity. Then one day I got a telephone call from John Porter, who was then the Field Officer for the League. He said, ‘Come and have lunch with me in the park.’ So I did and he started talking about working for the movement. I finally got to the bottom of it and they were looking to put somebody on as a Development Officer. That task would be to go out and form credit unions. He put it to me would I be interested in taking the job and I said yes. I came in and had an interview with Les Robinson, who had been in the chair for a little while, not very long. We spoke about a few things. I liked the look of Les, Les liked the look of me, he offered me the job and I took it, even at a reduced salary. I just wanted to be part of it.
Was Clarrie Murphy still working at the League then?
RS: Yes, he was.
How long did he work there after Les Robinson came on as General Manager, do you know?
RS: It is a bit of a guess on my part, but I would say about eighteen months to two years.
Did he seem very disappointed about not getting the General Manager’s job?
RS: I should think that Clarrie would have been bitterly disappointed. But things were not pleasant in those days. It was a bit difficult for Les to be in one room and Clarrie to be in another room. Or Les, having usurped him if you like, Clarrie trying to do things his way and Les wanting him to do them a different way. John Porter trying to put oil on the troubled waters and me wandering around saying, ‘What is this all about?’
Yes, Clarrie had been there a few years. Before you went to the League you say you were involved with the Sydney City Chapter and also the Chapter Development Committee. Now when you first went to the Chapter can you remember who was running the Chapter?
RS: Ron Birch was at the City of Sydney Chapter. He was also a Director of the League in those days. I remember him very clearly. I remember Kevin Gleeson. I can’t recall other names at this stage.
Where did the Chapter meet?
RS: We used to have our meetings in an old pub in George Street. I think it was the old Adam’s Club before it got knocked down. There was a meeting room upstairs. A lot of good times there, a lot of good meetings. I remember going down to Wollongong and helping form a Chapter down there and doing a few things.
Where did the Chapter meet down there?
RS: Sorry, can’t recall that one.
Who was down there, Tom Deagen or was it Tom Hanson? Jim Wardle?
RS: No, they were all on the other side of the fence.
Tom Deagen, he was a Director of the League.
RS: Well I just can’t recall Tom Deagen at all.
Tom Blood?
RS: No.
He was a Director. He was living up here then I think. Lived in Manly. Let me think of who else. Neville Daniels?
RS: Yes, Neville Daniels. He worked for the Illawarra County Council I think. I remember Neville very well. He was a really fine fellow. Did a lot of good work, Neville.
He was involved in the Chapter that you formed there.
RS: He was involved with the Chapter and he was also on the League Board in the early days.
I haven’t interviewed him yet. What about the Chapter Development Committee? Can you remember at one stage Owen Jones was Secretary of the Chapter and he was also Secretary of the Chapter Development Committee. Can you remember that?
RS: He could well have been. I can’t recall with clarity. That then merges into the time when I resigned from the County Council to work for the League. So a lot of my time as a League employee was also spent attending Chapter meetings, encouraging those and then helping them do their thing as well. It tends to meld one into the other after a while.
What did you do in the Chapter Development Committee?
RS: Basically just give them the support they needed to get their programs running. Helped them get their advertising put together and on occasion to do little discussion sessions with them and to introduce outside speakers. I remember one little thing I used to do with a woman by the name of Joan Perrott, who at that stage headed up the New South Wales Marriage Guidance Council. Joan and I developed a little role play between us, where I would take the role of a fellow called Joe Blow who had been deserted by his wife, had two kids, one fell off a ladder and broke his leg and he was in all sorts of strife, financial difficulties and the rest of it. So I played the role of Joe Blow, while Joan, as a real professional, would counsel me. Not only for the personal problems I had, but also for the financial problems I had. That was one way we thought of having a real life situation that people could learn from when it came to counselling people for financial needs. That was the first beginning.
Did you go up to Orange and Bathurst and places like that for the purpose of trying to form a Chapter up there? Well they did eventually, but I don’t know what year it was.
RS: No. I can’t recall going up there for that. I remember going to Bathurst and Orange doing training courses. That was one of my responsibilities a little bit further down the track, the education program for the League. At one stage of the game I think we got up to about thirty or thirty-two week-end residential courses per year. We not only had those in Sydney, we also took them into the country. I remember going to Tamworth, Lismore, I remember going to Wollongong, Bathurst, Orange. They were very successful. Most of the other courses were held out at Little Bay and they were highly successful.
End Tape 1A: 5136 Words: 1 hour 50 minutes.
13 AUGUST 1990: ANSWCU77: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO RON SWANSON
So what were the interstate Schools that you took your education courses to?
RS: They were great. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the other States. New South Wales had always been that much further advanced than the other States. We did a couple of courses down in Tasmania, which were just the wildest situations you can ever imagine, with about one hundred and fifty people in a room all thirsting for knowledge, all wanting to ask questions and all the rest of it. Which was quite different from the way we were used to doing things in Sydney, because we would limit the number of students to about thirty so you could manage them and talk to people, bring them out and all that sort of stuff. Talk to a group of one hundred, or one hundred and fifty people you know about the philosophy of the movement or about family financial planning, or Directors and their responsibilities and all those sorts of things was quite good. You couldn’t answer all the questions, because there were too many people trying to ask you questions in a limited time. As soon as the day’s work in the classroom had finished they would then ambush you out in the corridor, in the bathroom, in the toilet, didn’t matter, thirsting for knowledge, asking questions all the way through. They had a lot of enthusiasm. A similar sort of situation down in Victoria, a couple of Schools down there. John Porter, by the way, was with me on both of those occasions in Tasmania and in Victoria.
Where was the Victorian one?
RS: Out in the country somewhere.
Not at Warburton was it?
RS: Yes that’s it, Warburton. I remember Graham Benson organised them. I also shared one of those Schools with a fellow from South Australia by the name of Brian Cate. Brian and I just hit it off tremendously.
Did Dermot Ryan go down to any of those Schools?
RS: No.
Jack Coyne?
RS: No they were for the interstate people and they invited us to come down as their guest lecturers. It was New South Wales League staff doing lecturing on behalf of the interstate leagues. We had some very successful Schools over in Adelaide as well. I also did a lot of developmental work, particularly in Adelaide.
There again did you have any of the Sydney credit union people down there?
RS: Some of the Sydney County Council people went down to Adelaide. They thought they would be able to do some good with the sister Electricity Authority in Adelaide. They certainly laid the groundwork for that. Then they asked if I could be released to them for a week or two. They set up a whole series of meetings for me and I went round talking to all sorts of groups of employers and employees. I remember having an interview with the then State Premier, whose name escapes me. But that was highly successful and that really gave them a good launch, which Brian Cate very capably capitalised on.
Did you meet Cam Lawton down there?
RS: Oh yes, Cameron was a fine fellow. Cam was set up in a very nice charming way at one of the Schools that John Porter and I were running and Brian Cate was there then Secretary-General Manager. Here was this little Scotsman sitting at this table and Brian Cate is pointing to him, giving the sign zero in on him, zero in on him. We were talking about credit committees, loan processing and family financial counselling and all that sort of stuff and we really gave him a hard time. But the lovely man that he was he took it all in good part and recognised what it was we were talking about. I think from that moment on Cam then really fell in love with the credit union movement and from there of course became certainly a Director of the South Australian League and I think Chairman also of the South Australian League and he was also on the AFCUL Board.
Yes I think you are right. He has recently been up in Sydney and I recorded him when he was up there. He has been around recording all his own people and he has transcribed all they said as well. But he hadn’t been recorded himself. So Tom said to me, ‘Get him,’ so when he came up here we did. We laid ambush at the Railway Institute.
RS: A lovely fellow.
He has got a very bad back now. He is off work and can’t sit down a lot. Yes a really lovely man. He was staying at Meg’s place. Dermot was dead. What baffles me is the fact that you were doing Schools in the same places I know that other people were invited to Schools. They must have been different Schools.
RS: They could have been different Schools. It is not the kind of stuff I have committed rigidly to memory but I can just remember some of the things we did down there.
So what years are we talking about from your point of view?
RS: Oh when did I join the League, in about 1968? So it probably was about 1970.
That is later than the people I am thinking of had been invited to Schools down there. I think Dermot was down there in 1964. They went down in 1965, 1967. I think they had already got out of it by that time.
RS: That would make sense. That is probably the way that New South Wales was able to make a contribution to the movements actually being formed down there. That would be logical.
Did you go over to Perth to?
RS: No, I never made Perth.
Well Dermot and ????? went over to Perth once and Jack Coyne and Jack Bannister I think went over another time. I identified those. But they were earlier than when you were going down there. What about Canberra?
RS: Canberra, yes. I have been down to Canberra a couple of times. The memory I have of Canberra most of all is when I went down to introduce them to the Credit Union Resources Kit which I put together. That was the movement’s first opportunity to put something about credit unions into the high schools. It went through every State and private school in New South Wales which taught economics. Canberra also wanted to pick that up as well, so I went down and addressed a great big Chapter meeting they had down there one night and introduced the Credit Union Resources Kit to them as well. That was very successful.
Now how long did that go for, introducing the kits to schools?
RS: Oh once we started it went on for years after that. Part of the kit, which we issued, was a booklet for use by the students. Somewhat like a comic book, a lot of jokes and light-hearted stuff in it as well as a lot of good information about credit and credit unions themselves. Every year for a number of years we had to re-issue thousands of things to the incoming classes.
I thought the Government at some stage stopped you going into schools?
RS: Not in my time.
So when was the end of your time there?
RS: I left the League in 1976 and the Credit Union Teaching Kit was still very much the go in those days.
I was under the impression that Askin stopped it at some stage in the proceedings.
RS: No, not in my time. I remember a very glowing letter which came out from the Director-General of Education thanking the League for its contribution. The number of letters of appreciation we got from schools, particularly in the private sector, was overwhelming. We got hundreds of responses to it. It really went over very well. I know it got replaced later on, as it should have, with a much more sophisticated teaching resource kit. I never saw that, but I heard about it. I don’t know if that still persists today, I have got no idea.
Did you have any run-ins with the Commonwealth Bank?
RS: Nope.
Because they were supposed to have a free to in the schools weren’t they?
RS: No, had no run-ins with those at all.
They actually ran a banking system within the schools. They used to run one in the factories as well.
RS: They were mute. They had nothing to say about it.
So can you remember any stories you can tell about any of these particular Schools that you were at? Stories that are memorable.
RS: I remember one incident which happened down in Victoria. Brian Cate and I were doing a School for them. It was my turn to be on the podium so I am standing up there, I am fairly tall as you can see, and I use my arms a lot, throwing my arms out and all this sort of stuff. We are going along like a house on fire, having a fine time. I had got the audience involved and they were asking questions and this lady put up her hand and I said, ‘Yes love, what can I do for you?’ She said, ‘Well the first thing is, please don’t call me love.’ With that I flung my arms out and Brian Cate from the back of the room said, ‘There goes a six inch nail in either hand, Swano you’ve just been crucified.’ That was a rather embarrassing moment. I answered her question and the next person to put a hand up was also a lady, and she said, ‘You can call me love, darling or dear any time you like, Mr Swanson, we very much appreciate you being down here.’ The embarrassment continued over dinner where I was sitting at a table with Brian Cate and a few other people, and all they did all damn night was say things like, ‘Pass me the salt, love. Pass me the sugar, dear,’ and all this sort of thing, because this woman was sitting at the table right alongside us. You win some you lose some. But I won more than I lost that weekend.
You went around all over the place. For instance is there anything you can tell about Pat Eagen up around Orange way?
RS: Pat was a guy that I had an awful lot of time for. He never believed us, but he was quite convinced that John Porter and I engineered his election on to the League Board and we had absolutely nothing to do with that at all. What we did do, of course, was to very strongly encourage him to stand for election. We said, ‘Pat if only you will put your hand up. If you will simply nominate yourself as a Country Director from Orange, we would feel very sure that you would get elected because of the style of person that you are.’ He did get elected, quite handsomely. But he always believed after that John and I organised the voting for him. I didn’t and I never did for anybody, I never would. It would be entirely improper to do anything like that.
What other job did you have? Was that the only job you had during your time at the League?
RS: No. Basically I started off as a Development Officer with the brief to go out and form credit unions. Then eighteen months, maybe two years, after that, time gets a little bit hazy, Les said I now had responsibility for the education program as well. That started to fire. The League was growing at a faster rate. We then decided to put a second Development Officer on. So Les then made me the Senior Development Officer.
Who was the other one?
RS: Harvey Dickenson. You should interview him. We just went from strength to strength. John Porter was still a Field Officer. Peter Symmons came on as a Field Officer. Brian Dooley came on as a Field Officer. The staff gradually expanded and it would be about 1974, 1975, I was approached by Graham Benson from Victoria to take on a job as General Manager of the Victorian League. I thought about that long and hard, talked it over with Les and said I would prefer not to go Victoria, but if that was the only way I could get advancement within the movement I would do so. Les went away and thought about that and came back and said, ‘No don’t go to Victoria, you can be my Assistant General Manager in charge of all field operations.’ That is what I did.
When you were forming credit unions around the place, can you remember some of the ones that you formed?
RS: I formed eighty-three.
You were second.
RS: Who is first?
Well Stan Arneil reckons he is over a hundred. You reckon eighty-three. Clarrie Murphy reckons fifty-eight.
RS: That must be more than the combined total.
No it isn’t. At one stage in the proceedings there were over four hundred in New South Wales.
RS: Yes, there well could have been I suppose. Eighty-three. I concentrated on the industrial credit unions, which had an employment base of one thousand or more. I remember doing the Postal-Telecommunications Credit Union, I remember doing Alcan Employees’. If I stopped and thought about it seriously for a while I could come up with a lot more names, but they just escape me right now. But that was the thing that I did well. I concentrated on that very hard whilst the other development staff looked after community credit unions, parish credit unions and industrial credit unions with a smaller base.
What about the ones that were going mutual? Did you have anything to do with that?
RS: They were a unique experiment in their own right in those days and although I was involved in them, I was not totally responsible for them. Les was very much involved in those as well because we had a lot of difficulties with the Registrar. He had great difficulty in accepting the concept of a mutual credit union. How could you run it, and who would run it, and all those sorts of things. So it was political as well as practical.
David Nelson reckons he invented them.
RS: I guess he would have gone very close to being the first one down in Wollongong. I remember clearly going down and spending a couple of nights in David’s house in Wollongong, going around, talking to various groups of employees and employers in Wollongong. We got it up and running. Eventually I think it came to Sydney. No, he came to Sydney and got himself involved with another mutual credit union in Sydney, as I recall.
He is a barrister in Sydney now.
RS: That’s right. He is a barrister.
I am seeing him next week.
RS: A fiery man.
Yes, he told me to do my homework.
RS: Yes you have got to have all the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed.
I hope to do my homework in Wollongong on Wednesday.
RS: Oh yes that should be interesting.
Can you think of any more, any particular meetings? Who did you take with you? I mean you didn’t have Stan Arneil to trot around?
RS: That was my job. That was my profession to go out and do it. The way you would do it, and there were a number of avenues, you could do it either through the trades unions and the representatives in various establishments, or you could go direct to management. I chose in just about every case to go to management. I would always talk to the boss first, be it the General Manager, or the Managing Director or his Financial Controller or Personnel Manager. Explain to them what credit unions were, because they had a very mixed and biased views about them. But they were something that could very well enhance the welfare of their employees and that the only thing that we would ever ask of them would be to provide pay-roll deductions, somewhere to call an office, and we didn’t even care where that was as long as it was on site, and the use of the company’s name so that the employees could identify themselves with it. Indeed there were a number of occasions where the senior management said, ‘Yes, this sounds really great. We would like to have one of these things for our employees. But of course none of them are capable of running it. Therefore my Pay Master, my Accountant, my Sub-Accountant will run it, operate it and do all those sorts of things.’ I used to pull them up very sharply by saying, ‘That is fine, gentlemen, if that is what you want to do, so be it. But you will do it without any help from me or from the credit union movement. Because that is not the way to success. These things can only succeed if the employees themselves want them, understand what their responsibilities are in running them and do the work involved. The League’s role is to stand behind them and show them how to do it.’ I won the argument in every case.
During that time you were setting them up, that was through the 1970s. That was when a lot of them were in trouble and the Common Board was operating. They were amalgamating credit unions at a great rate of knots weren’t they?
RS: Well first you had to have a developmental stage in which you created a base of credit unions. Remember the ones that I concentrated on in the main were one thousand or more employees, potential members. Inevitably when you have a rapid rate of growth and you look at those credit unions down the bottom end of the spectrum in terms of their size and their potential, inevitably they get into trouble. Mainly because I think the original people who take on the enthusiasm of doing the work, for whatever reason, pass out of the scene. Because you have only got a small membership to call upon for replacement Directors, that is when they started to get into trouble. I wouldn’t know how many of the eighty-three credit unions I formed still exist. I haven’t been in touch with the movement now for about twelve or thirteen years so you tend to lose track of them.
I will check that out with the Registrar. I have got Registrar’s lists for a number of years, you see. So I can check when they started and when they disappeared again and where they went to.
RS: We had it down to a fine art. Having convinced management, I would then ask them to point me in the general direction of the natural leaders within the workforce. Be that the social committee, the shop stewards, or whatever. I would talk to them as a small group and if they were interested in it and displayed sufficient enthusiasm to convince me, then we would take the next step of calling an inaugural meeting from which a steering committee was elected. Then I would take the steering committee through the whole process of the formation, up to and including the formation meeting. Probably sounds very egotistical, and it is not meant to be so, but I was always very much on my guard in those days to make sure if anybody stood out as being a person whom I didn’t think would serve the best interests of the credit union, but was looking for a place on its initial Board, I would do whatever I could to keep that person off the Board. There were a number of instances, for instance and I shan’t name any names, where quite militant trade union shop stewards would try to gain control over the credit union because they saw that as a way of further enhancing their influence over their trade union members. Some of them also saw it as another weapon they could use against management. I refused to play that game. It wasn’t hard to set somebody up in a situation where if you gave them the opportunity to open their mouth they put their foot in it. When it came to people voting for their Directors they knew who to vote for and who not to vote for. It was fairly important in those days.
You weren’t involved in forming any of the municipal council employee credit unions. They were already set up by the time you got on as Development Officer, is that right?
RS: Not all of them.
Can you think of any municipal employees? For instance did you work with Peter McMahon?
RS: I didn’t work with Peter McMahon, but I knew him quite well. He used to work for the Sydney County Council in the Pay Office at the time I worked for them as a clerk. So we knew one another on a nodding basis in those days. If I wanted the name of somebody in a particular council I could ring a person like Peter up and say, ‘Give me a name Pete and I will go and talk to them.’ But I formed a few credit unions within local government instrumentalities, particularly in the country.
Can you think of any of them?
RS: Boy, up Lismore way. Tamworth, Armidale. What we tried to do in those days was get all of the councils to combine in the one credit union. It was very difficult to do because they were all parochial.
There was one council up there, or a shire of course, that had a credit union. They succeeded in turning it into a mutual credit union for the area and they were also trying to bring in Aborigines. Walgett.
RS: Oh Walgett. I was very much involved with the Walgett Credit Union, yes.
In the formation of it. Were you out of it by the time they tried to draw the Aboriginal people into that? It was mainly AFCUL of course, Dermot Ryan and company.
RS: Lee Nash went up to Walgett and I went with him to talk to some of the Aboriginal community leaders in Walgett about forming a credit union. It was an action initiated certainly by AFCUL and by Dermot Ryan. Leigh and I had to come back and report to the Board on whether or not we thought it was a viable thing to do. My view was that it was a necessary social experiment. We had to give it a shot. I didn’t ever have much hope for its success actually, given the problems which those dear people have. Of course the passage of time proved that to be so. They just didn’t have the necessary skills and they have an entirely different culture and an entirely different social outlook in terms of their responsibilities one to the other. So it just didn’t work, but we did everything we could to make it work. I remember they ended up with an office down Fincham way.
That was Boomerang.
RS: The Boomerang Credit Union that is right. That is the fellow.
That was imposed sort of. Surely they could have made it work if they had worked it their way not your way?
RS: That’s right, but we didn’t know that. We are still learning that about our Aboriginal brothers aren’t we? But the Walgett Credit Union had nothing to do with that exercise. That was quite different. That was a Shire Clerk and his name was Baker.
Did you ever have anything to do with Ted Field and Ted Wymara? Ted Wymara was an Islander I think.
RS: Yes. They used to work out of our office down here at Burwood and it was up to us to give them the training they needed to be able to do their job. I remember working for them. I remember Ted Wymara, a brown moon-faced Islander. Ted Field was a big strapping fellow and he went in as their first Secretary-Manager I think of the Boomerang Credit Union.
I was talking to Les Robinson the other day and he said that he said to them afterwards, ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself for this, it was really our fault, not yours.’
RS: I would agree with that. We just didn’t understand the way they needed to operate. It was quite foreign to us. Of course with the legislation and with the Registrar with his Inspectors and all the rest of it, to do things differently was very difficult too.
Credit to live.
RS: Probably.
Did those two men, who employed them. Was it Dermot who employed them?
RS: I think Dermot employed them through some form of Federal Government Grant.
Did you train them at all?
RS: Yes.
Right from scratch? Did they know anything about credit unions before that?
RS: No, didn’t know a thing. I can remember Les doing a lot of interviewing for those field positions originally. There was one chappie who came from Queensland originally, I think. But while he was waiting outside Les’ office, waiting to be interviewed, he had an emu egg in his hand and he was engraving on it. It was a beautiful engraving with these shades of colour through the egg shell. It was quite off-putting to walk in and see this Aboriginal fellow sitting there with an emu egg in his hand, doing this engraving, waiting to go in and talk about being appointed as a Field Officer. I don’t know who he was. He didn’t get the job.
Maybe he should have.
RS: Maybe. If he was that creative.
Where was the League office when you were first employed at the New South Wales League?
RS: In Burwood Road, down towards Parramatta Road.
What was it like?
RS: The building originally was two flats. A flat downstairs and a flat upstairs. The owner lived upstairs and we had the building downstairs. It had four rooms plus a general office area. Very cramped, but it suited the needs for a while. As we expanded we got a bit more space upstairs from the landlord. We outgrew that and then we moved up Burwood Road to some offices on top of the old shopping centre, which has since been burnt down, that building across the road. We grew out of that very quickly and from there we moved in to where you are today.
Do you remember the controversy over them using the Savings Protection Fund money for this building?
RS: There were lots of controversies in those days.
Dues. All of you people having cars?
RS: I don’t understand, I am sorry.
Some people used to say that the dues were too high and you all had cars.
RS: How in the hell they would expect you to get from Burwood to Hornsby, to Manly, to Parramatta and back in a day, I don’t really know. Or how you would get to Orange in a day and do a day’s work I don’t know either. I know one of the big things that sent a ripple through the credit union movement was when I put my hand up and said, ‘Please Sir can we have air-conditioning in our cars?’ In those days, that was a brand spanking new thing. ‘Air-conditioning in your bloody car?’ We won through on that. That was OK. The Savings Protection Fund was put to many good and fruitful uses. I don’t think anybody should hold their head down in shame over that.
I am not suggesting they do. I am just saying that I still get criticisms.
RS: Oh sure. There will always be criticisms. You can’t please all the people all the time, you have just got to do what you think is right.
By the way, when did you first meet Malcolm Samuels?
RS: Way, way back. Very early in the piece. 1965, 1966.
Was he working here then?
RS: No. That would have been at one of the Newport Schools, would have been the first time I met Malcolm. Then through the City of Sydney Chapter. Then he got a job working in a couple of credit unions. He was at the NRMA Employees’ Credit Union at the time I approached him and said, ‘Hey how would you like to work for me?’ or work for the League, I should say. He came on Board as our Development Manager.
What were you doing then?
RS: I was the Assistant General Manager in charge of all the field operations.
What other field operations were there then?
RS: Oh there was the day-to-day provision of services to credit unions. Balancing their books, interest rates, ‘how do I do this and how do I do that?’ ‘I have got a problem here, how do I handle it?’ ‘I have got a new Treasurer or Secretary and he doesn’t know what to do.’ So you would send a Field Officer out there to show them what to do. Or, ‘The Secretary has been off sick for six months and nobody knows what sort of condition the books are in. Can you come out and help us?’ So we would bring all the work back and write it up, balance their books, and do those sorts of things. There were also a lot of night time meetings. An awful lot of work done at night. In the early days I don’t think people really appreciated how much effort was put in by so few people who worked for the League. It was quite normal to work a sixty hour week and you would think nothing of it. I remember at one stage of the game I went twenty-one days straight without seeing my children. You would get home at midnight, two o’clock in the morning absolutely exhausted. You wouldn’t wake up until ten o’clock, by which time the kids would have gone to school. On the weekend I would maybe fly down too.
End Tape 1B: 5044 Words: 2 hours.
13 AUGUST 1990: ANSWCU78: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO RON SWANSON
RS: I joined the League in 1968 and Miller came in 1967 to 1974.
Right, so it is Ken Miller in the first instance who was the President when you first joined the League. Now you attended Board meetings at some stage in the proceedings. Can you remember any of those Board meetings?
RS: Some of them were fairly bloody boring I have got to tell you. The part that used to get on my wick more than anything was when because of political considerations from the movement’s point of view at one stage of the game the League Board got up to something in number like fifteen I think. The thing there were twelve metropolitan Directors and three from the country. Of course people being human and people being people, everybody had to have their say on something or another. The Board meetings would go on for hour after hour after hour. The guts of the matter has already been discussed after two or three people have expressed their view. It should go to the vote then and get on with it. But politically those sorts of things couldn’t happen. It used to be very interesting to watch how the Board would split into groups. There were usually three groups. There would be the left-wing, the right-wing and the fence sitters as I would call them.
So where does for instance shall we say Ken Miller, Dermot Ryan and Tom Kelly come in those particular groups?
RS: Oh boy. That is a hard one. Dermot is definitely a left-winger. A real wheeler and dealer was Dermot Ryan.
He was right-wing of the Labor Party, you know that.
RS: Real left-wing of the credit union movement in my view. Ken was an extremely astute very clever man. I had tremendous admiration for Ken Miller, particularly with the way he withstood all that pressure over the CUMIS insurance fiasco. A tremendous respect for Ken. Tom Kelly, I don’t know. Tom being one of the very original members of the credit union movement and Universal Credit Union and all those sorts of things, was very much the keeper of the keys, if you like. The pure essence of the philosophy of the movement must never be watered down at any stage. I remember at one stage of the game when he was managing the Railway Staff Credit Union, he still had his members only receiving five per cent on their savings in order that he could keep the loan interest rate to one per cent. He was the only credit union probably in New South Wales at that stage who still persisted in that, because that was the pure essence of the movement and you weren’t to water that down. Now I admired him for his principles and the way he stuck to it, but I think it held his credit union back a great deal.
Do you remember the row over the co-operative bank proposal?
RS: Oh yes that went on for a couple of meetings. I mean that was never a goer. Even now in this period of de-regulation I shouldn’t think it would be the go for the credit union movement. It is far to hard a road to go down. I have got some knowledge of that because when I left the League I ultimately got a job with the NSW Permanent Building Society who changed to the Advanced Bank. So I have got some knowledge of how difficult it is and what is involved.
You don’t think Tom was right in that situation?
RS: I think his principles were fine, but it was just not the time. I mean we were barely able to walk financially, let alone able to take on a most sophisticated operation of that nature, it was just purely beyond our means.
Do you remember the starting of Quest?
RS: Yes. Tom was very much in that too. Again that was another brilliant piece of principle and I think it had its place, but again it was beyond the capacity of the League to be able to continue to maintain it. It was costing us money and we just simply didn’t have money that we could afford to dissipate in that way.
Well you were getting a lot of free writing in the early stages. Top reporters working from the Sun-Herald. But after they insurance split they were not prepared to.
RS: That is right and the production costs were just beyond all reasonable levels. We just couldn’t recoup the cost of running the damn thing. They had to be mailed and all sorts of things. It was not a cheap exercise. I was glad to see the end of it because it takes an inordinate amount of time to put something like that together. You just don’t decide that today we will put out an issue of a newspaper. It doesn’t happen that way. Our job was to form credit unions, maintain credit unions and further their interests, particularly at a political and legislative level.
Were you involved in any lobbying at all, or any work with the Registrar or the Minister?
RS: Not in lobbying per se that was more the brief of Les and the Executive of the Board. But I did an awful lot of behind the scenes work with the Registrar and his senior officers in terms of whether or not they would agree to the credit union being formed. Whether or not they would agree to this credit union expanding its bond of membership. Whether or not this credit union could increase its loan limit. All this sort of stuff. The sort of day-to-day issues at that level were very much in my brief. I did a lot of arguing and a lot of debating and I think we were good for one another. I think it was good sometimes the Registrar said, ‘No, I don’t care what you say you are not going to do it because we don’t believe the movement is ready for that.’ So I think a bit of conservatism at that stage might have been the nasty case of the medicine you take when you don’t really want it.
Which Registrar was it?
RS: Horton, David Horton. I liked him. I got on well with David.
Did you have any trouble with him?
RS: Oh we often had a differing point of view, but he was prepared to listen to your argument. I usually found that if you could get to David with a logical and well-presented case you could probably come out a winner. If he deferred it to some of his other officers, you knew that your case was gone for sure because they were not in any way interested in what it was we were trying to do. From their point of view it was just another bloody burden on their work load. Charlie Butler was good. I got on well with Charles. You could always talk reasonably with Charles. But some of his other staff were not in our best interests, so I avoided them wherever I could and dealt only with Butler or with Horton.
The argument over deficit budgeting and the way lots of credit unions got in trouble deficit budgeting, who actually started it?
RS: That was a concept put forward by Les. Where we used it initially we got the movement to support a community credit union development fund. They gave us a fund of money and our job was to go out and use that fund of money to form community credit unions, because we believed that really and truly that is where credit unions belong. But it is very difficult in the Australian society to get a community to co-operative on that level. It was Les’ idea that we should stimulate the formation of these credit unions and give them staff from day one. The only way we could do that would be by way of deficit budgeting. Now whilst we had that program under our control, and it came very much under my control reporting directly to Les, it worked quite well. We had three-year budgets which were reviewed every six months. You would keep rolling your projections forward and all the rest of it. The first eighteen months, two years, we came right in on line. Other people then heard about it and said if it was good enough for the League to use deficit budgeting for our purposes it was good enough for them to us it for theirs. But they didn’t have the same degree of control or understanding of what they were doing and they just blew it. It was just a bad move.
How much do you think that that contributed to the disasters which became the wholesale amalgamations?
RS: I think it was the most singular cause. There were a few, one particular credit union which we wound up for purposes beyond its control and was the best example I ever had of the true use of the Savings Protection Fund. That was the one out at Leyland, the British Leyland Motor Car Company, the ones that used to make the P76. The British company just decided to close up. They couldn’t make a quid selling cars in Australia, so they just closed the factory and there we had a credit union, I can’t remember its size but probably about $350,000, $400,000, which was quite reasonable in those days. But all the money was out on loan to other members so what do we do. That was my first introduction to the use of the Saving Protection Fund in winding up a credit union gracefully, conscientiously and to the point where nobody lost any money and that went very well.
Do you remember the push to establish the Savings Protection Fund?
RS: Yes I do. There was a lot of controversy over that.
Was the controversy over whether you should have it, or how it should be paid for? Whether it should be compulsory?
RS: All of those things. I mean it didn’t matter where you turned around you would find another differing point of view. But in my view, and I was very much involved in this in the practical sense, I think it was one of the greatest constructive steps the League ever took because it displayed certainty to government instrumentalities that we were fair dinkum about looking after our own. That we were capable of looking after our own. When we reached that stage of credit unions being forced to wind up, no, they weren’t forced to wind up they were forced to come under our day-to-day management, it certainly saved the bacon of a number of credit unions. I remember Les going out and addressing the membership of the first credit union that got itself into financial difficulties, and that was the ICI Employees’ Credit Union, Dave Palmer’s old one. After that I did the rest of them. Not a happy job. It is difficult to stand up in front of a group of one hundred and fifty people, two hundred people and say, ‘Look I am sorry in spite of the best efforts of your Directors it is just not on, they’ve blown the ball game. The only way we can offer you out is to come under our control. If you do that you have got to sign that agreement and that agreement says the League has got complete control over the credit union and we will determine its future.’
That is when the Common Board was started?
RS: That’s right.
Whose decision was it to start the Common Board?
RS: The League Board.
What about the Administrators you put in?
RS: They were selected by Les.
Geoff Cambridge was one. Who were the others do you know?
RS: Geoff Cambridge was one. In partnership with Geoff Cambridge was Pat Taylor. Pat is still employed within the movement. I don’t know which credit union she manages, but I know she is still around somewhere. That happened after I left the League. The time of the Common Board I was, if you like, the Secretary to that Board. My task was to keep them as up to date as I could in terms of how we were coping with the problems we actually had on our plate. How those individual credit unions were performing, whether or not they were going to make the grade and all those sorts of things. As well as forecast to the Board, or to the Savings Protection Fund Committee originally, those credit unions which we believed were heading down the wrong path and what we could do about them. It is amazing how many credit unions we covered with that $2 or $3 million in the Savings Protection Fund. All we had to cover, if people stop and think about it logically, was the likely loss. We didn’t have to cover the whole of the funds on deposit with the credit union, it was only operating losses which you had to cover. An awful lot of work went into that and it was a very demanding time.
Who else was working on that?
RS: I remember Clive West from the Electricity Commission Credit Union was Chairman of the Savings Protection Fund Committee for a while, followed by Brian Charlton who was on it for a while. The really sticky period was the time when Les had his heart attack. It sort of left me holding the bag and I had to run the League coming up to the end of the year. I had to close the books off, and I am not a bookkeeper and never have been. Thank God Stuart Gillie was here to do all that. I said, ‘That is how we did it last year Stuart, do them the same this year whatever that might mean and get the report written, get it published.’ At the same time, all these problems and pressures were building up for the Savings Protection Fund and it became quite unbearable, quite unbearable. That is what pulled me undone.
What do you mean?
RS: Oh at the conclusion of that period when Les came back I was just a complete wreck. I didn’t know which way was hope. I was completely exhausted mentally and emotionally.
Is that when you left?
RS: Yes. Les and I had a bit of a talk over the telephone one day and he said a couple of things, and I said a couple of things and then I said, ‘Well, there’s not much point in coming back.’ It was a difficult period to go through. I had always considered that I had been an exceptionally effective person within the credit union movement. Not everybody loved me, they weren’t asked to. Same as I didn’t love everybody either and they didn’t as me to. As long as we got on with one another that is all that mattered. We were all working for a common and very just cause. I put in a tremendous effort in terms of all my skills, my ability, my emotions, my energies and all the rest of it. I just simply ran out of steam, I mean my battery was completely flat, I didn’t know which way was up. But it also did considerable harm to my marriage. I still get repercussions of that today. Every now and again the kids will say, ‘Do you remember Dad when I was ten years old and so and so happened.’ I will say, ‘No, got no memory of that at all sport, because I wasn’t there.’ I can remember clearly that year when Les was off having to write the Annual Report. I took all this work home one weekend to try and get it done and my young daughter Helen came to me saying, ‘Daddy can I show you this?’ and I just brushed it to one side because the credit union was far more important than whatever it was my ten year old daughter wanted to show me. That is the silly sacrifice that you make, because she is far more important than anything else, but I didn’t realise that at the time. Anyway, I don’t regret what I did. I think what I have done will stand the test of time.
Brian Weatherby took over on the Savings Protection Fund Committee and then John McIntyre. You were still involved then weren’t you?
RS: Yes, I would have been involved right up to John McIntyre’s time, for sure.
Well at that time Kevin Bain had taken over from Ken Miller.
RS: That is right. Kevin had taken over from Ken. Kev was another very clear thinking, strong personality. He did a good job as League President as well. He was a good man, Kev.
But there was one area, and I don’t know if you were involved with it, that is the insurance issue and the whole shenanigans that went on.
RS: A lot of that went around and above me. It was very much a big dog-fight at the Board level and at Les’ level, between us and CUMIS, CUNA Mutual. My involvement was really monitoring what was happening among credit union people. How they felt about it, answering their questions and doing those sorts of things. It was a dreadful time, absolutely dreadful time. But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the League’s view was the correct view and I think they won that fight and won it very well. It always amazed me that here we are, this, in international terms, tin pot little movement who took this view about CUNA Mutual, CUMIS, which was viewed so seriously by the American headquarters they flew all the way out from America to talk to us. It was Richard at the time, Punchy, who said it seemed to him they were using a sledge hammer to crack a peanut, why were they going to all this trouble. I remember that Board meeting was held up here at Burwood, our previous office to this one. They sat round a table and they chewed it all over, they argued the toss and all the rest of it. Then I was asked to take these American gentlemen back to their motel in Sydney, which I did. It was quite interesting on the way back, they all started to pump me to see where I was coming from and all that sort of stuff. The guy who was leading that group, I have got no idea what his name was, he said, ‘Ron, by the way what sort of car is this?’ I said, ‘This is a Ford.’ He said, ‘That’s an American product isn’t it?’ I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ He said, ‘Well we have got an American product too which we are trying to sell you. Why won’t you guys take it? You’ve taken the Ford and you’ve got General Motors Holden and all the rest of it.’ I said, ‘Well that’s very true old fellow but what you have forgotten is that both Ford and GMH happen to design a car which was acceptable to the Australian public. We don’t like those big Yank tanks, as you call them, that you have got back in the States. That is why you haven’t got a snow flakes chance in hell of ever winning your argument over here. We will do what we want to do for our good reasons. If you can come up with a compromise and tailor an offer which would be acceptable to the League Board, you might get somewhere. But whilst ever you hold that and continue to do things the way you are doing them, forget it. I have got no influence in the joint, I just sit on the side-lines and watch what is going on.’ That was the end of the discussion in the car.
Did he say anything?
RS: No. Perhaps he said, ‘I guess you’ve got a point,’ but it didn’t make any difference.
You can’t remember who that was?
RS: No, I have got no idea.
Wasn’t Carlos Matos?
RS: No, it wasn’t Carlos and it wasn’t Compie. It was guys from their insurance headquarters. I don’t know who they were.
Wasn’t Rodd Glen or Owen Schriffer?
RS: No wasn’t Rodd Glenn, he was a Canadian.
Do you remember the argument that Dermot had with the Board generally over the Savings Protection Fund and how it would be funded. Apparently they had before CUNA Mutual, CUMIS came to Australia they had actually been holding back the insurance rebates that they had been getting from the Australian insurance company, and they had built it up to where there was actually a million dollars there. It was suggested that it should be distributed back to the credit unions. Dermot wanted to use it to start off the Savings Protection Fund. How did the argument go, do you remember?
RS: No I don’t. I was not involved in that. At that time that whole argument really split the movement in to two complete camps. There were people who religiously followed Stan Arneil, they would walk over broken glass for him and that is fine if that is the way they wanted to go. Then there were other people who had the same views about the League’s attitude towards him. Because it became so highly political, a lot of those discussions were held, if you say in camera it gives the wrong connotation, but certainly without the need for people like me to be there. We were simply told the results afterwards and as a loyal employee of the League you followed what the League Board wanted you to do.
Were you involved in the planning for setting up the Savings Protection Fund?
RS: No I wasn’t. That was all done by Les and the League Executive.
What about the setting up of the Collection Service?
RS: No, I had nothing to do with that.
What about the personalities around the Board at that time. Dermot was working with Ken for a long while there wasn’t he?
RS: They had a strong working relationship.
Les as well?
RS: Oh sure. Les was very much the centre of the things that happened in the League. A lot of people after a while took exception to that. Maybe I look at it with a jaundice view, but it seemed to me to be the appropriate thing to do because Les was the number one employee within the movement. He was on top of it and he was coming up with suggestions and recommendations. He never did anything unethical or under the table. He was always very above board in terms of what he wanted to do and why. But he developed, as any Chief Executive does, a very strong and sensible working relationship with the Board Executive. If you don’t have that you have anarchy, so it went very well. I also held the private view to that there were probably people on the League Board who were there for political reasons more than anything else. I think sometimes those who were in a position to do so, made sure that when it came these particular people standing for re-election that the votes were guided and cast in their favour. There was a real hard core of people you could name besides Dermot and Owen Jones, Colin Daide certainly, anybody else who was on the Board from the Sydney County Council, Helen McIntyre was a strong personality, she was on the League Board, is she still on the League Board?
No.
RS: She was a very strong personality. She was certainly not in Dermot Ryan’s camp, no question about that. She was a fearless presenter of her own views and would very strongly, very forcibly put forward her own points of view. I admired Helen a great deal. To be the only woman among what was essentially a group of male chauvinist pigs was not very easy in those days. I think she did herself proud, did herself proud. John Gormley, of course, who was there on the League’s Supervisory Committee, he came on to the Board. You could rely on a group of about five of them to go the way the Executive wanted them to go.
Can you remember the discussions about cutting down the size of the Board? Who actually did that?
RS: They gave me a farewell dinner when I left the League and they asked me if I had any final views to put forward. I don’t claim credit for what actually happened, but I do claim credit for saying to them quite forcibly and very vocally, ‘For God’s sake when is commonsense going to rule in this place? You’ve got to reduce the size of that Board. You are running around in bloody never ending circles hour after hour after hour talking about the most nonsensical bloody things and not getting on with the job you were elected to do. If you want to have a Board which is representative, fine. My view of the world says you want the nine best people you can get and I don’t really care if they only come out of three credit unions. If that is what the membership elect on to the League Board, then democracy is being served. But to have fifteen people sitting around the table for some warm, glowing feeling that this is representative of the credit union movement is just a nonsense.’ Pretty soon after that they reduced the size of it.
Do you know what has happened now?
RS: No, I have got no idea.
Well, the League has abolished itself, although there is a new one sprung up in New South Wales and another one in Victoria again, they have scrubbed themselves. Queensland isn’t going to be in it, but there is going to be one body. Forty members on the Board.
RS: Oh my God. If you don’t learn from history you are bound to repeat it.
Two hundred councillors.
RS: Oh dear God.
Each credit union has only got one vote. You can imagine the lobbying that is going on now.
RS: From the smallest to the largest. That always used to be a contentious issue in the old days too. The Sydney County Council saying we’ve got six thousand members and only two votes, and this bloody credit union has only got a hundred members and two votes. That is not fair. What price democracy.
Well there we go. That is what is happening now.
RS: Well I wish them the best of British luck.
What is more they are very dubious if anyone sort of says it hasn’t got any chance of being workable. I can’t see how a Board of forty is going to be workable.
RS: Something like a snowflake in hell.
It is going to be an Executive otherwise. The Executive will do it.
RS: Well they will end with an Executive of twelve out of forty.
Well what about the insurance business. Do you remember any of those big meetings, half-yearly meetings when the insurance split actually happened? Can you remember when Ken Miller employed Peter McMahon as his parliamentarian at the meetings?
RS: No I can’t I must admit, I can’t.
Do you remember Dave Palmer criticising that as a one man Supervisory Committee?
RS: No I don’t. I don’t have any memory of those at all. I have a memory of Stan Arneil turning up at one of the meetings, whether it was a six-monthly or Annual one I can’t recall. Very dramatic Stan, a man of a lot of emotion. It was out there at the University of New South Wales in their big meeting room and Stan came in. He walked through the door and then you go down three or four steps on to the body of the floor. Stan very gracefully folded his great long frame on to one of these top stairs with his head on his hands saying, ‘Oh, I think I am dying from the flu, I think I am dying. But I have got to be here to do my bit for the cause.’ You know this great dramatic entrance. It was quite funny. But he was a man of emotion and that is the way he did things. That was one of Stan’s last great public appeals to go his way on this issue and he lost that battle and that was the end of it.
Do you remember him being refused further time to speak?
RS: Yes, I do. I do remember that happening but I can’t remember what the consequences were.
Do you remember him walking out?
RS: No I don’t.
With his whole ABC delegation?
RS: Yes I do. Clarrie Stewart was there at the time. Yes they all got up and walked out like a bunch of sheep. Yes. If we did this again I would probably remember a lot more.
End Tape 2A: 4878 Words: 1 hour 40 minutes
13 AUGUST 1990: ANSWCU78: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO RON SWANSON
Was there any expansion of co-operative services planned when you were last in the employ of the New South Wales League? I mean they already had their central banking system, were they thinking of investment services and travel and all that sort of thing?
RS: I think there might have been some general talk in terms of these would be nice things for us to do one day. But at the point of time when I left the League they were too much immersed in holding it all together, the Savings Protection Fund, the Common Board, mutual credit unions and all those sorts of things. They couldn’t have taken on anything else, I would imagine, at that stage. What happened immediately after I left the League I don’t know, because I lost all touch. I have never been in touch with it since, nor they with me.
I found you though, Steve Birt it was that told me where you were.
RS: Yes, Steve. Good boy Steve.
There is one thing I haven’t asked you which I suppose I should. After the insurance split, I mean there had been previous splits and such like particularly with the Southern Association, did you know the Southern Association people, were you aware of the various splits that occurred?
RS: No. I was aware of the Southern Association, but I never had any face to face contact with them. I always used their methodology, the way they ran credit unions down there, as a typical example of what not to do if you wanted to have a good credit union.
What about the idea of mutual credit unions? David Nelson?
RS: David Nelson wasn’t part of the Southern Association.
I was actually talking about Wollongong generally. I mean there was the Southern Association but there were also a number of groups that drifted in and out.
RS: Yes they had splits among themselves. I mean there was groups within groups within groups after a while. It all became too bloody confusing. I think that the Board rightfully reached the conclusion at one stage of the game as to why bother wasting any more time on them. We had put in as much effort and as much time and as much logic as we could into our argument. If they still chose not to see the sweet light of reason, then let them go their on way. We had many other things to do with our limited resources. I think that was a right and proper thing to do. I have never held to the view that they obviously had down in the Southern Association. I think if you want to be part of a co-operative movement, then you have an obligation to be part of it and not just pay lip-service to it. Not just take out the good bits that you want and leave the rest for other people to worry about. You are either in it or you are out of it. I know Les got a bit of a shock with me one day when there was a credit union in the electronics industry, can’t quite remember its name, who was a member of the League. I formed the credit union, it went along quite well but because we put our dues up from twenty-five cents to thirty cents, or some bloody thing, they pulled out of it. But they were using our standard accounting system and as they ran out of supplies they would ring us up and say they would like to buy six of that, or half a dozen of the other. We would sell them those supplies at a bit of a premium. But after awhile I got really shitty on this and I said, ‘Look, enough is enough. They are either part of the League or they are not part of the League. They have deliberately chosen to no be longer part of the League, therefore we will not longer supply them with any goodies. Now if that gives them a headache I am sorry. The simple way to solve the headache is to re-join the League.’ Les thought that was a bit hard-nosed. But I said, ‘No, this is what the League is all about, surely. Otherwise every bloody credit union could leave the League on the same basis and just choose to buy bits and pieces of us as they see fit. That is wrong, that is wrong in principle.’ He went along with me. It upset the Chairman of their credit union quite considerably and that put a smile on my face too.
Well that is very interesting. There is one aspect that I don’t know whether we have discussed either, in actual fact it might have been afterwards. Do you remember the Southern Association got itself a Central and a Northern Branch right. But then they fell out and it became a Northern and Central and a Southern Association.
RS: That is right there were three associations. They all split off from the Southern Association. In the meantime we were still ploughing ahead like the Queen Mary with all boilers full steam, forming credit unions and doing our thing. It used to annoy the hell out of me that we would spend so much time and energy and all those sorts of things in getting amendments made to legislation and getting a Credit Union Act enacted, developing a Savings Protection Fund which from the public’s point of view they would legitimately or reasonably expect would cover all their membership and they were getting the kudos on the side without making one cent contribution to the common good. I think that is immoral. I don’t hold with those views at all. I get very stroppy about that.
What about the point of the CBOA Credit Union, who weren’t in the League, but they reckoned they contributed as much in their way as other credit unions that were in?
RS: One of my famous sayings that I have introduced to the Advance Bank, where I now work, is that just all bullshit and fairy tales. You are either in it or you are out of it. Don’t try and dress the window to make it look as if the shelves are full when they are empty.
All right. Now passing to your opinions further.
RS: I have a couple. But you can always edit them out.
I am not going to edit anything unless somebody pays me to. We are on the collection side now. How has the credit union movement influenced your life do you think?
RS: The philosophy of the movement and my own philosophy were in parallel, but I didn’t know that until such time as I was brought into the fold of the credit union movement. I learnt a great many things in the credit union movement, most of which I learnt from Les Robinson and I will always be indebted to him for that. The greatest lesson I take away with me from the credit union movement is to never be judgemental about other people and their problems. There but for the grace of God go I. I have seen people in all sorts of diabolical financial straits as a result of my experience in the movement, and I think that has given be a far more heightened awareness of the individual’s responsibility back to society. This is not a political speech by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe there needs to be a social security net. I believe that people should pay their taxes so that those who are less fortunate in life, through no fault of their own, can at least be maintained in some form of dignity. I believe in the dignity of mankind. That is the biggest lesson I think I will always have with me.
Do you think your involvement with credit unions has affected you politically, or vice versa?
RS: I wouldn’t say it has affected me politically. It has reinforced the views I have just stated that I think each man has a responsibility to his fellow. I really do. If everybody paid their fair share, and if everybody did a reasonable thing by those who are in trouble it would be a far better world.
Do you think if you hadn’t of been a Catholic, that you would have been as involved in the credit union movement as you have?
RS: Religion was never a powerful influence over me. I really would have difficulty in answering that question. No I don’t think the religious part of it would have. It was more the influence of my parents than anything else, that developed these concepts of doing the right thing by your fellow man. I mean we lived in a working man’s suburb in Leichhardt, which in the old days was just a wonderful place to be. You don’t realise it until after you have lost it. But in those times, when I was a kid, and my mother had a fair degree of illness, the neigbours would hear about that and you would here pitter patter down the side passage and someone would come in and do the washing. Pitter patter down the side passage and someone would come in a do the ironing. You would open up the front door and there would be a big pot of soup, or stew, or something sitting on the front door step. That was the working man looking after his own. It seems to me that all those sorts of things have now disappeared in society generally. But they are very much reinforced in my psyche.
Yes, I understand that. I asked you before whether you though the credit union movement had taken a toll on your health and your family life and you said it had. Who do you think are the outstanding people you have met in the credit union movement?
RS: There are so many that I am loathe to name them because I would offend those that I don’t name. John Porter, certainly, for introducing me to the credit union movement in the first instance and helping me over the first twelve months of my work with the League. Lee Nash, who was my mentor and John’s mentor as well. Beresford Calverley in his own strange way, I had a lot of time for Beresford if for no other reason than his enormous energy. Stan Arneil because he stoked the fires of my enthusiasm. He might have done a lot of other things to upset me, but he certainly set me on fire with the appeal of doing something. Ken Miller for his ability to be able to absorb pressure, for his ability to be able to handle very complex issues in a very pragmatic and head-on fashion. Les Robinson for his innate decency. I have never met a man more decent than Les. Helen McIntyre and the way she would always stand up for her own point of view and wouldn’t let anybody put her down. I have seen some awful things happen to Helen over the years and I have been a great admirer of her for her inner strength.
What exactly do you mean?
RS: I can remember at an Annual General Meeting Helen, who was a Director of the League as well as being the Manager of her credit union at that time, stood up to make a point during a debate or something or other and a guy, who is now dead so we shan’t mention any names, said in a very loud voice something to the effect of, ‘Sit down you stupid bitch who wants to listen to a silly woman like you?’ I thought that was very wounding and you could see that that hurt Helen very much. But she also had enough guts to be able to carry on and make her point and her point won the debate. So in spite of all this awful crap which was thrown her way, merely I believe because she was a woman who had a strong view in a chauvinistic movement, it says a lot for her. It really does, I am a great admirer of hers. I don’t think she ever knew how much I admired her actually.
She and Les Robinson got on very well.
RS: Very well. She worked for Les in the old days. Pat Eagen was another fine fellow.
Did you know Kevin Yates?
RS: No. I have spoken to Kevin once or twice over the years, but I don’t know him no. Mustn’t forget Dermot Ryan by the way. Dermot was also a man of great capability and native skills and native talents. I learnt a lot from him in terms of how to win a seemingly lost cause. He was very skilful, very skilful.
So how did he do it?
RS: Persuasion, caucusing, politics, argumentative, perseverance, just about anything that wasn’t illegal or immoral. If it would win the cause for him he would do it.
What about fighting?
RS: I have seen him strike the odd blow, but that was part of the culture from which he came.
Where did you see him strike the odd blow?
RS: Down at a School in Newport. Walked over to one of his compatriots and went thump and smacked him right on the chin. The guy who received it said, ‘What in the bloody hell did you do that for?’ He said, ‘Because you did such and such and so and so to me the other day and I told you I would get you back and I have.’ Then got back on to the conversation and drinking beer and carrying on. I was glad it was the other bloke and not me that took the punch.
I have heard a lot of those stories too.
RS: Yes, they really sorted themselves out. They were great guys.
Did you hear how Mr Richards got his name, John Francis?
RS: No. I know his name is Punchy, but I don’t know how he got it.
Well that was him and Dermot.
RS: Well I wouldn’t be surprised.
Do you think the credit union movement has stuck by its principles?
RS: I don’t know. I have been too far removed from the movement for too long. I don’t know what it regards as its principles any more. I just don’t know. All the changes are going on and doing away with Leagues and coming up with National Boards seems to be a new era and a new ball-game. One thing it does remind me of though, is something that Les Robinson said many years ago, and I think he is right when you go back in history, once the hell fire and the brimstone goes out of any movement and the professionals take over, if you are not careful you can be well on the road to the end of the life of that movement. Very historical. A very strong example of that was in Germany where Raiffeisen, who is regarded as being the father of the credit union movement at the time of his death there were five hundred credit unions in Germany, there are now none and there haven’t been for years. It has died. The philosophers have moved on. They have done their bit and other people have come in with different views. Society changes, needs and wants change and I think as a result of that movements change, they evolve into something different.
End Tape 2B: 2613 Words: 1 hour.