Disagreeing with Damien

Stuff reports:

We are beginning the perennial dance between the Crown and Rio Tinto, majority owners of the Tiwai aluminium smelter.
Last time we did this tango John Key ignored Treasury advice and tipped $30 million from the public purse into the welcome mittens of the smelter’s owners.
Now, we have the usual hand-wringing from the great and the good decrying the threat of more corporate welfare.
Even my comrades at the Taxpayers’ Union have started a petition against propping up this foreign-owned smelter.

They are wrong. Tiwai is important and if we need to swallow a dead rat to keep it we should sprinkle a bit of sugar on the deceased rodent and make the best of it.

I disagree.

First of all, we should not assume some corporate welfare is what will keep Tiwai open or not. Rio Tinto are masters at pressuring money out of the Government, but I personally do not believe they would have closed the smelter last time without the $30 million.

What matters most to Tiwai is the price of aluminium. We have no control over that. It is not up to taxpayers to subsidise Tiwai when the global prices falls, anymore than we subsidise other global commodity companies.