They haven't left NZ. Every couple of years they go "we're super serious guys, this time we're REALLY going to leave for realz", then Meridian or the government offers them some sweetener to stick around with a new termination date (in this case, "ok well we will hang around but only until 2024 when we really will leave, mark my words").

> then Meridian or the government offers them some sweetener to stick around with a new termination date

NZ government owns 51% of Meridian, so really in either case it's the government offering them a sweetener :)

Rio Tinto (and the complicit governments of Australia and New Zealand) should give the land back to the indigenous people it was stolen from. An apology is clearly not enough. They have proven to be poor stewards of their holdings.

So, it sounds like they were responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of job creation.

Do you really think the country doesn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars of better jobs to create if “clean up toxic waste” wasn’t sucking up that money?

It’s not “job creation” if the “creator” didn’t bring the money to pay the workers from capital that would have been otherwise inaccessible as a wage source in that country. Government=Taxpayer money is not that.

That's an amazing justification. I'm going to use that next time I go on a “throwing bricks at windows” spree.

Yeah in the medical industry treating all the cancer victims who are exposed to their hazardous waste when they illegally dump maybe

This is an incredibly naive and ill-informed view of the value Tiwai brings to parts of NZ, especially Southland. As for the Dross, they had sold that to a company which went bankrupt before it could turn it into fertiliser.

Not so much.

For the resources they use (the entire out put of a huge hydroelectric plant and serious pollution) they provide about 1,000 jobs.

The opportunity cost of putting all that energy to make aluminium is huge.

They financed the construction of the dam and helped make NZ more relevant when it was even more of an insignificant island that it is now, they've provided stable, high paying jobs for a whole region for decades (when meatworks were closing right and center), these stable jobs have allowed families to send their children to university and have a decent life. Pollution wise they havent done so poorly, there is maybe some nastyish stuff buried on site, but other than that smelting bauxite is rather clean.

They produce the most 'green' aluminiy in the world, would you rather it be made with coal fired electricity?

As for providing 1000jobs, yeah, maybe directly, but those people spend money in town, not to mention the contracts Tiwai would bave with other companies in town.

The economic value has been huge.