Subsidies and special deals for favoured firms/industries seem to have been becoming increasingly common in New Zealand. There is Tiwai Point, the Sky City convention centre, the forestry industry, the export education industry and probably others I’ve forgotten. There are the R&D tax credits the Prime Minister touts at every turn – the only substantive item in her (very short) list of things the government is doing to reverse the atrocious productivity performance.
And then there is the film industry, into which many hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured over the last couple of decades. There is an industry there, but one which official advice to the government makes clear has no prospect of viability without heavy subsidies. That should be a good test as to whether there is any robust case for the subsidy. Barring something like national defence considerations, any industry that has no credible…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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