Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge
Ryan Bridge: We don't have the money for corporate welfare
A $60 million corporate welfare cheque for Golden Bay Cement is fixing a symptom but not the disease.
It's taxpayer money. It's not a loan – it's free money. Owner Fletcher Building has agreed, in return, to keep the thing open till 2040 and invest $150 million, phased over time.
No doubt cement is important for building the country, but so was refined oil. We offshored that. So is milled timber, which we let go. So is food production, which we're letting fall over too.
This is the problem with welfare: once you start handing it out, everyone wants a piece of the pie.
Fletcher Building is a…
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