The Tiwai industrial subsidy
Bleh, it was bad enough that Tiwai was being effectively subsidised to start with – but a $30m sweetener. Urg.
I would say something – but I’ll leave it up to my work colleagues. On Tiwai and electricity and on the Southland workforce and a managed exit.
My additional point, I see no justification for this deal – helping the plant wind-down in an orderly fashion could be justified, but propping it up is not. This is a transfer of resources to many in Southland (the workers and those they interact with), the firms owners, and buyers of aluminum … and by the sounds of things financial analysts – it is unsurprising that the people being given things from everyone else in New Zealand are supportive of it.
Update: Paul Walker from Anti-Dismal also comments. And Seamus Hogan from Offsetting Behaviour here.
It’s not a subsidy, it’s a ‘one-off incentive payment’.
😀
I am appalled, but not surprised
Politics, bah. Look at how people talk about power prices here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9017693/The-backstory-on-Tiwai-Point
WTF, there is no real analysis with these thing, sigh!
A subsidy by any other name would smell as bad…
Not having followed the news in NZ, this reads like a Civilian article: “Government donates $30m to struggling multi-national mining giant Rio Tinto”.
Alternative spin: at least it’s less than we gave Emirates Team New Zealand.
This might be bad, but we’ve done worse – that is an election slogan!
Strongly reminiscent of Muldoon’s intervention – with taxpayers’ money – in the 1977 freezing works disputes.
Industrial intervention is a hard thing for politicians to hold back on sometimes 🙁