Slane, Christopher, 1957-:"Never fear, matey. We've got plenty of buckets for bailing out." 21 April 2011

In the stern of a rapidly sinking boat sits a large grinning businessman with a glass of champagne in one hand and a bottle in the other. PM John Key flings buckets of money overboard and says 'Never fear, matey. We've got plenty of buckets for bailing you out'. In the prow of the boat sits Minister of Finance Bill English surrounded by empty buckets and gloomily watching as his hopes for any kind of sweetening in the May budget recede even further. The fourth man in the boat is ? who is happily tipping money into the sea also. Context - the bail-out of AMI. it appears the Crown will underwrite any loss from the failure of a large enterprise. BNZ (twice), Air New Zealand, finance firms, leaky homes, AMI. Sir Roger Douglas called for the AMI support package to be conditional on the Government declaring that this will be the final such act of largesse. But if the Government were to make such a declaration it would have the credibility of a chronic drunk swearing off the booze. Repeated bailouts have created an environment where poor decisions are not punished but rewarded. The AMI board and management need to account for their performance, and prudent insurers should benefit from an influx of customers. This is what is meant to happen in a capitalist economy. (Damien Grant - AMI bail out rewards poor business practice in NZ Herald 24 April 2011)

Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).