I reckon this is a pointless discussion and is being used by...

I reckon this is a pointless discussion and is being used by people to muddy the water.

Simply put, the govt will fund things if there are votes in it. The people who are generally on the negative side with MSB argue long and hard that the govt should do nothing to help the company, and those on the positive side argue the opposite.

Look at it from the govt's point of view - are they more likely to get members elected if they fund this - that's all that matters. Look at decades of funding the car industry, until in the end it cost too much and there were no longer enough votes in it. Look at the funding the agrarian socialists in the Country Party manage to get in terms of subsidies, rebates, special tax concessions etc.

And on it goes across the economy in all sorts of special interest areas and general interest areas (superannuation tax concessions, first homes CGT free etc).

I'm not saying any of this is right or wrong, merely that the govt makes a decision based on the votes they'll gain or lose, particularly in marginal seats.

One example where the pollies act against the interests of the country purely due to the impossibility of changing the system without bleeding votes is taxation policy on housing. The country would clearly be better off not skewing so much investment into non-productive housing stock, particularly where it involves consolidating more than 1 property in the most expensive suburbs and calling it one house. The tax system encourages people to upgrade into the most expensive house they can leverage in to so they can make their fortune tax free. How does taking our national savings to invest in travertine marble palaces with gold taps benefit the national good? We may as well use the money wasted on these tax benefits to build an inefficient NBN which will be sidelined by new 5G technology - yet the govt poured 10's of $ billions into the NBN.

So, it's not as if the govt doesn't already blow huge amounts of money on ineffective programmes.

Many would argue MSB actually provides a public benefit. The cost can be argued, but it's got to be cheaper than Joint Strike Fighters that can't be used in lightning storms, or if the temperature on the Tarmac is above 30C; or noisy subs that can be tracked.

It's up to MSB to use existing programmes to their own advantage, and they've got every right to lobby for more.

The govt will make the decision based on whether they think they'll get votes- God knows, they blow far more money on far worse things than helping dying kids.