PRESIDENTS REPORT 2017/2018

PRESIDENTS REPORT 2017/2018.

It is my pleasure to present the annual report of ANZROC Victoria.

Meetings

It was very encouraging to see substantial growth in support for our meetings in 2018. 230 individual members and partners have attended our 9 lunches so far this year with a total attendance number of 568. We have enjoyed hearing from Guest Speakers ex ANZ Banker Terry Earle, Owner of Without Pier Art Gallery and Antony Wilson Ex R.A.N serviceman at our City meetings. Regional meetings at Mornington and Geelong were also well supported as were the Suburban venues at Caulfield and Mulgrave. The Yum Cha lunch in Chinatown was also very popular with 79 in attendance. Although a bit cramped the food and company was very good. We continue to commemorate Anzac Day and support the Salvation Army at our April and May lunches. We tried out the William Angliss cooking school restaurant for the Salvation Army Lunch and intend to go back there again in 2019 after receiving very positive feedback from attendees.

Newsletter

Our monthly newsletter continues to be the main means of communicating with our members. Ron Adams as newsletter editor collates all the letters and anecdotes from members. Anne Wee then creates the reformatted newsletter now with captions on the photos to help members identify colleagues they may not have seen for years. Vicky Genius organises the mail out to our members who are not connected to email. Thanks to Ron, Anne and Vicky for the hard work which goes into the production of the newsletter.

Social Media

In July we published a brochure detailing the history of ANZROC Victoria over the past 65 years. John Brown did a lot of research to produce the colourful document. This was handed out at our Mulgrave meeting and published on-line. Copies will be sent to members who are unable to access the internet. We issued an ANZROC website and privacy policy in February to clarify how we deal with your personal information. We have now reached over 200,000 views of the ANZROC Website over the past 8 years of operation. Over 400 people follow our Facebook page. A short video taken at the 2017 Xmas lunch was published on the ANZ Bank Blue notes site and on the ANZROC Website. This was also posted on the ANZ CEO’s Facebook page to illustrate that the Bank does value the past contribution of our members. We continue to publish a range of articles relating to ANZ which we think will be of interest to our Members. We also post Tributes to our members who have passed away. We encourage all Members and their families to catch up with what we are doing via these Social Media channels. Thanks again to Elina Law, for maintaining our website.

Committee Activities

All Committee Members have worked hard during the year to make our events successful. This involves Secretarial duties, Social and Welfare Committees, Sourcing venues and guest speakers, Organising special lunches such as Williamstown and our golf days. We are able to do most of our communication electronically with the exception of the 200 hardcopy newsletters distributed each month.

Joan Nathan and Kathy Trace provide support to members who have had various issues. Thankfully not that many this year. Kathy sends Birthday cards to all members which are obviously appreciated given the feedback we see in the newsletter. Christmas cards are also sent to our members aged over 90 years.

Ken Crawford continues to insert obituary notices in the Herald Sun as a tribute to our departed members.

Peter Pritchard and Geri Macgregor have worked on arrangements for our Christmas lunch this year with the Arts Centre and sent invitations to the ANZ Executives. As you will know by now the demand for the 2018 Christmas lunch has been exceptional partly due to the strong increase in Membership. We have done our best to increase the available places but have had to resort to a waiting list at a very early stage this year.

We had two successful golf events this year at Torquay, 27 players in April and Cheltenham, 20 players in September. We plan to return to Torquay in March 2019. Pam Hocking and Con La Fauci were the Torquay winners with Barb Weston and John Inglis taking the prizes at Cheltenham. Thanks to Glyn Parry-Jones and Aldo Faella for organising Torquay and Ken Pattison for making the arrangements at Cheltenham.

The MYOB Membership Management System is well bedded in now and has been used during the year for targeted messages to our members. Carl Garley and Glyn Parry-Jones do an excellent job in maintaining the software and the related I.T. platform.

Further Committee duties were covered by Noel Beanland – Venue selection, Dan Kirtley – Xmas function team, George Cooper, Con La Fauci, Ken Crawford and Geri Macgregor – Events co-ordination.

Wolf Damshcitz ex- Secretary and David Knuckey, venue organiser retired from the Committee in 2018 so we thank them for their long and dedicated Service in the working of the Committee over many years. Vicky Genius is stepping down as Secretary having fulfilled the role very effectively over the past 3 years and we are pleased that she will continue on the Committee.

Christmas Lunch

Our 2017 Christmas Luncheon at the Arts Centre was fully booked with 300 members and bank guests enjoying the opportunity to get together. ANZ guests included Shayne Elliott, Graham Hodges, Kathryn van der Merwe and Bob Santamaria. We continue to be indebted to the Bank for their most generous financial support to ANZROC. At our Christmas luncheon Shayne Elliott, responded to the toast to ANZ given by Bernadette Lynch. This year Andrew (Jock) McGregor will propose the toast to the bank. As indicated earlier the 2018 Christmas Luncheon is now fully booked despite increasing capacity to 320 and a waiting list has been created.

Membership

We have been successful this year in attracting 39 new members in the year to 30/9. Another 28 new members have joined in October as a result of ANZ restructuring so we are heading towards a membership record of 1000.

Sadly during the year 23 members passed away.

Financial

The club is in good financial position thanks to the good work of our Treasurer Glyn Parry-Jones. Member’s subscriptions and the Bank subsidy allow us to provide the resources to enable the club to function. We thank Norris Gale for undertaking the role of Hon. Auditor.

Conclusion

I have been privileged to be your President for the past 2 years and have got to know many of our members through the various functions held over that time. I thank all committee members for their contribution. I am pleased that Ken Crawford will take on the role for the next 2 years. Ken has committed a lot of time to the Committee over the past few years.

On my and your behalf, I invite you to show our appreciation and thanks to the committee, for the achievements and results attained during the past year.

Eamon Veaney