"The resignation of the Chair of NZ Green Investment Finance puts a bitter cherry on top of a six-year corporate welfare debacle," says ACT Finance spokesperson Todd Stephenson.

"ACT has long warned against the perils of government picking winners and losers in the market, and in 2018 we warned NZGIF was just a different shade of corporate welfare.

"The collapse of SolarZero, backed by significant taxpayer funds through NZGIF, is an unpleasant 'we told you so' moment. When government meddles in business, it's the taxpayers who are exposed to risk and who now foot the bill for failure.

"Having politicians invest in a solar panel company was always ridiculous, because if SolarZero was a viable investment it could have attracted its funding from willing private investors. Instead, New Zealand taxpayers are $115 million in the hole and made complicit in a business collapse that's wrecked the livelihoods of the venture's employees."

In 2018 when Labour and the Greens set up the Green Investment Finance Fund, David Seymour warned:

“This kind of policy inevitably leads to government waste and corruption. The Fund will be picking technologies that can't attract capital in an open market. It will pick them precisely because they fit the Government’s own particular political preferences."

"If only someone had listened back then," says Mr Stephenson. "Now, it's time to learn the lessons and reconsider whether we want to keep throwing precious public capital at business ventures, or if we're better off investing in genuine public goods like roads, schools, and hospitals."

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