100 Day plan a good start but cuts to corporate welfare missing

The Taxpayers’ Union welcomes the Government’s 100 day plan as a good start but is calling them to add issuing stop work notices for all corporate welfare programmes to the list.

For a start, this should include the EECA and Callaghan Innovation which currently have a large number of applications for funding open and closing soon. Once this money is committed, it will be wasted.

Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, says:

“Funds such as many of those from EECA have the stated goal of decarbonisation and reducing emissions yet don’t make a shred of difference due to the fact that the industries these grants are provided to are already covered by the Emissions Trading Scheme. This means that any reduction in emissions from recipient companies will simply free up credits to be used elsewhere.

“Schemes such as these pile all of the costs onto taxpayers with bureaucrats picking winners for no environmental benefit.

“Corporate welfare schemes such as this are a complete waste of taxpayer money and should be a prime target for a government that claims to care about cutting waste. At the very least, an order should be given that no further funding should be committed to until a review of the effectiveness of these corporate welfare schemes has been conducted.

“We are pleased to see the new Government taking positive steps towards cutting waste and repealing bad law, we hope that the exclusion of cuts to corporate welfare is simply an oversight, not a foreshadowing of another three years of continued cronyism.”