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RWA FUNERAL FUND

About RWA Funeral Fund

The Retirees WA Funeral Fund has been operating since 1934. It was first established when the Australian Pensioners League wanted to provide affordable, dignified funerals at a low cost for its members.

In 1955, James Pollard who was the APL General Secretary, created a 5 year contract to include all of Perth’s Funeral Directors to extend the arrangement to include many funeral directors rather than the arrangement that was previously in place for all the funerals to be conducted only by Arthur J Purslowe and Co.

This meant that all funeral directors under the scope of the Australian Funeral Directors Association were obliged to provide a properly and decorously conducted funeral under the terms that Pollard had contracted. It was then changed so that the terms of the contract included metropolitan funeral directors as well as those in rural areas such as Albany, Bunbury, Busselton, Collie, Geraldton and Narrogin.

It is noted in the Annual General Meeting Minutes from the 12th September 1961 that the APL Benevolent fund and the Funeral Fund merged creating one fund in which members received a 33% saving on their funeral costs. (At that time a funeral cost was about $30.)

The Retirees WA Funeral Fund is still going strong today and its purpose is to give all fund members the opportunity to obtain, at a substantial reduction to the market price, a bundle of products and services that comprise a standard funeral through several different schemes.