| Reg Smeaton opened the proceedings and tendered apologies for Allan Aylward, David Brassington, John Burg, John Cairns, Roy Crawford, Bob Grant, Geoff Hamilton, Roger Hickman, Ken Keen, Graham Kenney, Denis Lickley, Con Lucas, Bob Naismith, Henry Pilarski, Phil Timms, Terry Stapleton, and Sebastian Zammit. In almost every instance, either the member or their partner is ill and all apologists asked Reg to convey their best wishes to all who attended which he duly did. Mark Monaghan, who needs no introduction after many years of supporting ANZROC (NSW), then gave a talk which has in part appears below. "Welcome everyone! As always, there are people here I have known a very long time, including the first day I joined the bank, and others I have not known very well, and there is a bunch of you here from whom I learnt both good and bad habits. The good habits were ANZ professional ones and that has been good. I was thinking of John Farrugia as the one that I have known the longest because I met him on the first day in the Bank but John Russell Punch just walked in and he took me up to the Branch. In those days they used to take the graduates to the Branch; thank you, John, for doing that! A Happy Christmas to you and all your families and apologies from Maile Carnegie who is the head of Digital for ANZ and had a meeting with Shayne Elliott and Exec Committee today and could not be here. As always, President Phil and the Committee, well done for all that you do for this wonderful organisation of ANZROC, and all of you but I won’t single any of you out, but as always there is Ken (Dighton) and what he does in the welfare sense which is terrific. I read that bulletin every month; so, well done all of you on the Committee and thank you. Yes, I love reading it. Reg tells me he just presses a button and various other people put it together. I am not sure who is doing it now, but Reg, thank you for pressing the button and sending it all the time.” Mark then gave some insights into the FY 2018 results and the objectives of the Bank moving forward which were interesting and informative for all present. He then invited questions from the floor and was very thorough in his responses which was most appreciated by all present. Finally, Mark concluded with “That’s all I wanted to say. I wanted to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family. I am sorry I can’t spend my normal hour or so wandering around and sharing a drink and a chat as I have a prior appointment to meet clients." The function was very successful, with 100-plus guests, many members never seen before as well as the regular attendees. The hospitality was excellent, and all seemed to be comfortable and well sated at the conclusion of the day. Mark’s input was greatly appreciated by all and his continued support and preparedness to embrace ANZROC (NSW) and all we stand for is very welcome, and it is very humbling that such a busy person with such a key role in the Bank’s operation makes the time for our group. President Phil Cohen concluded the day by welcoming everyone to this year's Christmas function: “To those who don’t know me, I am Phil Cohen and I have been President for the last year and I just want to thank everybody here for coming today. I certainly had the pleasure of meeting a whole lot of people that I worked in the Bank with years ago way back in the 70s and 80s and it’s been great to catch up, and hopefully that situation will continue in the future. We also have a lot of visitors here, a lot of people from outside of Sydney and I welcome them to our function. I won’t mention names because there are quite a few here. As Mark said, he was here and usually comes in any case but he is also here this time to fill in for Maile Carnegie whose actual title is Executive for Digital Banking and also our Patron for ANZROC (NSW). As Mark said, Maile apologised for not being able to be come. She was originally coming but Shane Elliott called her down to Melbourne. We were lucky Mark was able to attend to help us out and provide all that information for which I thank him. I just wanted to say a couple of other things: I wanted to thank Marlie and her assistant Julie Coleman along with Amanda Clarke who helped put together this function today, and of course to Reg Smeaton our Secretary who has worked tirelessly over the last few months in putting this function together in conjunction with them, and Reg we wish to thank very much for all he does and wish him good health in the future. I’ll finish off by pointing out that our next luncheon is on 21 January 2019 at the Castlereagh Boutique Hotel (CBH) and all are welcome. There are drinks on the second floor to kick off the lunch and then the lunch is served at level 4. Please come along to that, and of course everybody is invited this afternoon after the function is finished to the CBH to continue their reunion with fellow workers. All the best and a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year to everybody, and thank you again for coming.” |
