Sir Bob Jones
nopunchespulled.com
Kate Walsh is an American actress currently trapped in Perth by the virus lockdown, and evidently happy to be there.
She told the Australian Financial Review of the “massive opportunity” to build Perth and Freemantle into film studios, noting the two cities largely missed out in the Federal Government’s recent A$400 million funding to promote foreign film-making in Australia.
But note this; Kate also remarked, “Where there’s tax credits the Hollywood Studios will come.”
That sums up the situation accurately. From New Zealand to Morocco, Spain to Hungary, nations world-wide have in recent decades become star-struck and been seduced into offering cash incentives and tax exemptions to have bloody films made in their country. The usual benefit argued is employment but that applies to all commercial activities without exempting them from tax.
There’s an added inference of glamour attached to allowing this racket, exactly as has propped up another scam, namely the Americas Cup.
The world has absolutely no interest in the Americas Cup. It’s a periodic contest between an ever-changing small cast of wealthy males. Yet New Zealand taxpayers have forked out over a third of a billion dollars to have this often-excruciatingly dull event staged here, under the false impression it’s an international event of moment. I suspect the current rumbling about this scandal will see an end to it happening again here with taxpayer funding.
Let’s hope the same applies to propping up the film racket scam with public money which we’ve also succumbed to regularly in recent years.
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