Responding to the Government’s decision to give around $300 million to Amazon as a sweetener for filming a TV series in New Zealand, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says:

“As a matter of simple waste, this is striking, equal to $161 for every household. Who would seriously name Amazon as the most deserving recipient of our hard-earned tax dollars?”

“But there’s something more disturbing about these subsidies, supported by both National and Labour. They fuel the dodgy practice of multinational companies playing different governments off against each other in order to secure the largest handouts possible. Even if we’d failed to secure the TV show, the Government’s participation in this bidding war would still have screwed taxpayers in some other country.”

“The fairest way to attract business to New Zealand is with low taxes across the board, rather than ad hoc handouts for photo-friendly industries and businesses.”

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