Poof! There goes Callahan's excuse for Oracle R & D funding

19 JULY 2017
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Team New Zealand’s proposal for the 36th America’s Cup yachts to be built in home countries undermines the $5 million a year of Callahan Innovation corporate welfare available to America’s Cup teams, including American team Oracle (owned by billionaire Larry Ellison), by sending all of the intellectual property overseas, according to the Taxpayers’ Union.

Jim Rose, Research Fellow at the Taxpayers’ Union says, “The whole justification for Callahan Innovation’s R&D grants to Oracle was to create a specialist New Zealand industry for boat building at the higher level. Team New Zealand’s recently announced protocol for the next America’s Cup appears to totally undermine the funding and means taxpayers will get little, if any return, as the Taxpayers’ Union have been saying for many years.”

"R&D subsidies are supposed to pay off through eventual sales, exports, royalties on patents, and spillovers to spur on neighbouring innovators. Instead, taxpayers have helped build a single boat with no export market."

“Professional yachting is one of the world’s wealthiest sports. Callahan Innovation and any other Government agency shouldn’t be using taxpayer money to subsidise it under a guise of ‘economic development’."

“While there is an argument for taxpayers contributing to the cost of infrastructure to host a cup, corporate welfare for sports teams isn’t why we pay our taxes.”

ENDS

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