Especially if you would compare a "Modern Perl 5" startup sequence, which would involve using the `Moose` module (as Perl 6 has that built in). Then startup times are basically the same.

So the argument against Perl 6 being slow is "if you use it properly, Perl 5 can be just as slow" ?

It's more like saying "the conventional P5 runtime is about as heavy as the distributed P6 one", seems fair to me.