Page 184 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 18 - INDUSTRY AFFAIRS, ICA AND MY BOARD CAREER TAKES OFF
The Great Walk Out
One story that sticks in my mind is when we were trying to get everyone on side to establish the Insurance Ombudsman Service. George Pooley, the Head of the Insurance and Superannuation Commission which was the forerunner of APRA and ASIC today, organised a meeting with the consumer groups, the Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs, the Trade Practices Commission, ICA and the GIO to discuss the Code.
The consumer movement was strenuously opposed to industry involvement and wanted a statutory ombudsman. Believe it or not, the consumer representatives walked out of this meeting. This gave the industry the opportunity to formulate the ultimate structure and design without the involvement of the consumer representatives, who later on came to their senses. One of those who walked out of the meeting was Denis Nelthorpe who is a consumer advocate. Surprising as it may seem after the walk out, I developed quite a relationship with him as we both followed the same football team, Essendon. To this day, he and I watch every game possible together. Denis describes it as “Adversary to Friend”. He said “Peter was always supportive of my work and interested in cases of disadvantaged people. He was happy to advocate for some of my clients and always willing to listen to an alternative point of view.”
Running ICA as I have mentioned gave me a unique opportunity to meet an enormous range of people from all levels of government: , Local State and Federal. We also weren’t politically aligned so we were able to develop relationships and get great support from both sides of politics.
One person who I got on really well with was George Pooley. He wrote me a great letter on his retirement which also alluded to the great “walk-out” as follows:
184