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| Transnational, corporate welfare bludger, FINALLY goes |
Finally!
For as long as the Campaign Against Foreign Control (CAFCA)
has existed - 45+ years - we have called for the closure of Rio Tinto's Bluff
smelter (for example, see our historic Comalco comic ).
The reasons why we called for its closure have never
changed - it is a transnational corporate ripoff, the biggest bludger in New
Zealand.
It is a
liability to New Zealand, not an asset.
The smelter is the country's single biggest user of
electricity, consuming nearly one sixth of the total, 24/7 for nearly 50 years.
It pays a top secret super cheap price that is not
available for any other user and all it does is export electricity from NZ in
the form of alumina, while being subsidised by all other electricity users.
The smelter is the textbook example of corporate welfare in
New Zealand.
It has been receiving a massive taxpayer subsidy continuously
for nearly 50 years, in the form of the Manapouri Power Station built with
public money for its exclusive use (and let's never forget that a number of men
died building that); and the cheapest and most secret power price rate in the
country bar none.
Not good enough apparently, Rio Tinto still wanted more
from the Government.
CAFCA congratulates the Government for not bending to yet
more blackmail from this unrepentant transnational recidivist and, finally -
decades later than it should have - told Rio Tinto: "You say you're going
to bugger off if you don't get get even more handouts. Fair enough, bugger
off".
The Government needs to learn a lesson from this. It is
including a national interest test in its Overseas Investment Amendment
Bill.
The smelter would never have passed it.
Make sure that any similar schemes don't either.
Indisputably, the smelter closing will have a negative
impact on Invercargill and Southland.
CAFCA advocates a "Just Transition" for its
workers, just as for climate change.
The idea is to help them through that change, not just put
them on the dole and hope they will find another, typically poorer paid, job.
It involves both industry policy to ensure those jobs exist, ideally in
Southland, and greatly improved income replacement, retraining opportunities,
assistance with job searching, and relocation assistance if necessary if they
do lose their jobs.
Put the Provincial Growth Fund to work.
As a plus, the city will be able to shake off its
unhealthily dependent situation as a company town with its local government at
the beck and call of this transnational bludger.
And make sure that they (those recipients of corporate
welfare par excellence), and not the NZ taxpayer, foot the bill for cleaning up
their mess.
That would involve Labour facing up to the 2003 and 04
indemnities signed by Michael Cullen, Labour's Minister of Finance at the time,
accepting that the taxpayer, and not the smelter owners, would be liable for
the cost of cleaning up toxic waste produced by the smelting process.
That taxpayer liability remains in force today.
Make the polluter pay.
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