The Green Party has unhelpfully pointed out that National’s dirty deal with Warner Bros to strip Kiwi film workers of their rights as employees didn’t deliver all those jobs we were promised.
If ‘Save the jobs!” was the catchcry in 2010 then the government’s moves have failed. Jobs in the film industry have since declined, not increased – and that’s the case even though we have thrown money at the Hollywood studios, increased the boodle available to them under the Large Budget Screen Production Fund and handed them the effectively de-unionised 19th century working conditions they demanded, for their allegedly 21st century industry. Away in their Dark Tower, the Warners chieftains must still be laughing about their raid on Hobbiton.
We got played, as a country, so men like Peter Jackson and James Cameron with net worths of hundreds of millions of dollars could avoid giving their workers sick leave or letting them bargain collectively.
And just to rub salt in the wound, the Hobbit movies are bloody terrible anyway.
Yeah they are.