Of all the things the government has had trouble with; the one thing I thought went pretty well, turns out to be the biggest ongoing headache: the wage subsidy.

Tuesday’s edition was the “revelation” around companies such as McDonalds and Coca Cola.

I only use the word ‘revelation’ to carry on the verbal hysteria some of the media seem  obsessed in using around who and who hasn’t paid back their chunk of change they took - according to the aggrieved and angry, under false pretences.

Of course there were no false pretences. If you closed your doors and your sales dropped to a certain extent, you qualified for money to save jobs.

Did those jobs get saved? Yes they did, the system worked.

The argument at the time was the rules were simple because they needed to get the money out the door fast and indeed out it went at a rate of knots. $13 billion, massive numbers of jobs were supported because of it.

Tuesday’s hyperbole involves McDonalds, Asahi, Tesla and Coca Cola. For convenience sake they were labelled as “international giants”

The fact they’re local, employing local people, paying local tax at local head offices was conveniently forgotten for the headline would not have screamed quite so loud.

They join the likes of the Warehouse and various other large operators who took the money, may or may not have laid people off, but committed the more generalised crime of being perceived to be rich and therefore able to pay the bills themselves.

Companies that have since reported profits have been targeted too - how can you profit and still get tax payer money?

The answer in all these cases is simple: because there was one rule. Did your business nose dive as a result of the lockdown? Yes or no.

There was no rule that said, by the way, are you loaded so the subsidy is pocket change for you?

Equally, profits reported are annual. The lockdown was limited to a small period of time. The money made was made in another part of the year when doors were open and life was normal.

Now some people say Briscoe’s have decided to pay their money back. Good on them - if they feel good about it brilliant. But that doesn’t mean the rest should, or have to.

Any more than just because you happen to be a local version of a multinational, someone in London or Atlanta should foot the bills of someone in Wellington.

If you’re obsessed with waste, let me line up a series of examples for you sometime.

Starting with the winter warmer payment made to people whether they need it or not. Or the $100 million just last week to marae reconstruction from a slush fund called the PGF - now disowned and dismantled.

There is plenty of waste if you want to see it. The wage subsidy doesn’t fit the charge. The wage subsidy had one job, and it did it.