Taxpayers propping up state bank
The taxpayer injection of $40 million into Kiwibank today blows apart all the warm and fluffy rhetoric about the great
success of the state-owned bank, says National State Owned Enterprises Spokesperson Gerry Brownlee.
"If the bank is growing so fast and if the bank is doing so well then why didn't they simply stand in the market on
their own feet to raise this additional capital as any other business or bank would?
"Within 18 months of its launch it is already needing taxpayers to prop it up.
"All this proves is that this is a state-owned bank which has customers subsidised by the taxpayer. No customers or
taxpayers can take any comfort from the need for this prop-up injection today," Mr Brownlee said.