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Speaker 1: In a week, two hundred and thirty New Zealanders were

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Speaker 1: given confirmation Kinleith Mill was over. The Australians, facing the

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Speaker 1: same scenario at a place called Wala in South Australia,

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Speaker 1: did something completely different. The steel mill is owned by

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Speaker 1: a British billionaire. It's in a world of financial trouble.

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Speaker 1: It may well go to the wall that employs a

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Speaker 1: thousand people in a town of twenty two thousand. So

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Speaker 1: the state government back now by the federal government has

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Speaker 1: bought it. Even for a labor government in Australia, it's

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Speaker 1: an extraordinary move. But the assessment is in a small

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Speaker 1: town you can't afford to lose that many jobs. They'll

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Speaker 1: look for a buyer, they'll look for a finance, they

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Speaker 1: will look to rejig the place. Solved the problem that

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Speaker 1: in the meantime the places open, the jobs are saved.

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Speaker 1: First question you ask, of course, is would this decision

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Speaker 1: be made if it was not about a month or

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Speaker 1: so out from an election. An election the government who

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Speaker 1: just bought the steel works as in serious danger of losing.

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Speaker 1: The precedent, of course, is also shocking. If you save one,

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Speaker 1: surely you save them all. And if you don't because

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Speaker 1: you can't. The locals will quite rightly ask why not. Also,

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Speaker 1: the government owning things and the long term has never

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Speaker 1: really been a recipe for efficiency or success. As much heat,

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Speaker 1: for example, as Labour got in the eighties for selling

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Speaker 1: the railways here helling Clark buying them back has hardly

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Speaker 1: been one of life's great business decisions. In a small

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Speaker 1: town though, at the pub or the dairy or the

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Speaker 1: sports field on Saturday, who cares. They've got jobs, the

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Speaker 1: bills get paid, the kids day and the local school

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Speaker 1: they'll take it. Where the money came from doesn't really matter,

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Speaker 1: does it. As much as Shane Jones espouses the value

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Speaker 1: of the regions, the regions here still lost the mill

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Speaker 1: and the problem that's sunk in or sunk it at

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Speaker 1: the price of power that still hasn't been addressed either

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Speaker 1: as an issue. We go into yet another winter with

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Speaker 1: a mess of a system in Australia. The place is opened,

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Speaker 1: the jobs are saved, no one's leaving town. So which

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Speaker 1: approach is better? For more from the Mike Asking Breakfast,

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Speaker 1: Listen live to News Talks at b from six a m. Weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.