corporate welfare

Peter Dunne has announced the IRD systems need a $1.5 billion upgrade.  We all know this means $3 billion+ needs to be spent because the IRD has become a centralised collection agent and the taxation system has become too complex for the old IT systems.  So we are told.  We also know that like Novopay, everyone sitting in front of a computer seems to be an expert on how to fix it.

Fresh to react to  a plunge in his stocks, Rod Drury was quick on the bludge and Clare Curran, quick to suck up to anyone with the slightest knowledge of IT parroted her support in opposing Dunne’s plans.

As usual, Cactus Kate brings some good old common sense to the debate and asks why we need to spend the money in the first place when the focus should be on simplifying taxation and with it all the credits and welfare the IRD now has to manage.  A good start would be eliminating Welfare for Families and creating a tax free threshold for single and married people and those with children.  Other countries do it and their tax returns take 10 minutes to complete, why can’t New Zealand?

Michael Moore is a corporate bludging hypocrite and windbag:

Filmmaker Michael Moore received $841,145 in tax incentives from the State of Michigan to make Capitalism: A Love Story, a documentary against corporate welfare, the New York Times reports.

I hate subsidies and I fail to see why movie moguls, who make billions, need us to subsidise their movies. It is just corporate welfare and they need to stop bludging too. Bludgers are bludgers no matter what they look like:

The Government is under pressure to raise the 15 per cent subsidy it offers to lure foreign film and television companies, to compete with an Australian proposal raised by Hollywood heavyweights who dined with the Prime Minister this week.

John Key met the heads of Fox, Disney, Warner Bros, Universal, Sony and MGM studios at a dinner hosted by Avatar director James Cameron and his associate John Landau on Thursday with actor Cliff Curtis and Weta supremo Sir Richard Taylor.

The meal followed a day of meetings in Hollywood for Mr Key, including a visit to the set of TV show Body of Proof, where he was introduced to the cast, including former Desperate Housewives star Dana Delany.

Up for discussion at Thursday’s dinner at the Landau home were alleged internet pirate Kim Dotcom, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the 15 per cent subsidy NZ pays film companies to secure their business.

Taxpayers have spent more than $500 million in the past decade subsidising Hollywood productions, including Sir Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. Subsidies for The Hobbit are expected to reach $60 million.

Cactus Kate has decided she is sick of smacking up Mark Weldon and instead decided to turn her beady little eyes onto corporate welfare bludgers. Cactus kate hates bludgers, all of them, from the heaving, pathetic underclass through to the metrosexual, media darlings of the technocrati.

So here we have a man who has creamed $4 million in corporate welfare raise his best argument in receiving it -everyone else does and it is their “responsibility” to take it.

He then attacks me with an emoticon attached for wanting the paltry odd $150k that a backbench MP earns. I scored $150k NZD pa equivalent the day I left New Zealand in 2004 as a 28 year old. Earning $150k a year turns me on about as much as watching re-runs of Helen Clark’s maiden speech as I am force-fed Lindauer Rose.

Rod Drury like all CEO’s and shareholders listed for the most recent example of entitlitis, runs a business for shareholders. The New Zealand taxpayer is not a shareholder in his business. They are not the largest beneficiary of his business succeeding. Sure, jobs are created but $4 million to create jobs? Come on!

$50 million was recently lauded as New Tech Development Grants by one of National’s laziest Ministers, Wayne Mapp.

I ask how many grants were applied for simply because everyone was getting them?

These New Tech Development Grants are a bunch of touchy feely ballocks. Their benefits are intangible. These companies should stand or fall without the taxpayer needing to borrow even more money to fund their welfare.

$321 million is being tipped down this new-age hole. Because you know, everyone’s doing it…..$321 million to create jobs? Come on.

Thank God Rod Drury, worth an alleged $72 million is honest enough to just come out and say so

I think Rod Drury has just learned what NFWAB means.

On another note Rod Drury also says he doesn’t have women on his boards because he has never recieved a CV from one. How intellecutally and physically lazy to use that excuse. If he truly believed in having tunnels on the board then he would actively go out and get them instead of whining that he hasn’t been sent any CVs. Why hasn’t he started a directors “foocamp” to recruit and train young directors with his $4million in corporate welfare?

Here’s an idea for Rod Drury since he rates himself as wunderkind entrepreneur, how about taking on kids from the winning teams of the Young Enterprise Scheme as trainee directors in his taxpayer funded businesses. In a kind of real world Apprentice situation. He could train them how to fill out corporate welfare forms so they can get ahead.

Or will it just be mouthy platitudes and no action?

Cactus Kate is at least consistent in her opposition to welfare at all levels.