Brash jumps the shark

Written By: - Date published: 6:58 pm, June 30th, 2011 - 54 comments
Categories: act, don brash - Tags: ,

Yup, for anyone who had any faint remaining doubt, confirmation that Don Brash has completely lost it:

Don Brash hurls Nazi slur at bureaucrats

Act Leader Don Brash has used Nazi analogies to attack local body bosses.

In a speech today to the Federated Farmers annual conference, Brash said he is constantly hearing horror stories of the “little Hitlers” who he claimed populated the lower levels of local and regional government.

Given the huge surge in support for ACT following the Brash coup (oh no wait – that didn’t happen) and then nonsense like this, the National take-over of ACT is looking more and more like a really dumb plan.

The former National Party leader also suggested global warming might not be all that bad in the speech. … He said even if a case can be made that human activity is behind an increase in global temperatures, it is not obvious that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Brash said human societies thrive in both Singapore and in Finland, even though average temperatures in both places are very different.

Idiot.

54 comments on “Brash jumps the shark ”

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  1. Lanthanide 1
    30 June 2011 at 7:22 pm

    Clearly he just panders to whatever audience he’s speaking to at the time. So much for being principled and honest, etc.

  2. higherstandard 2
    30 June 2011 at 7:33 pm

    I thought it was a pretty common saying and hopped onto google to confirm my suspicions imaging my surprise when this popped up.

    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Little%20Hitler

  3. ropata 3
    30 June 2011 at 7:39 pm

    Global warming “not that bad” ?
    Fresh water supplies are going to run out

    Water tables are falling in many parts of the world. Himalayan glaciers will shrink massively in the next century, reducing natural water storage in the mountains. The shortfalls will have to come from groundwater and surface storage. Many great rivers have drastically diminished flows.

    Bangladesh is suffering from the diversion of Ganges River water and increased salinisation. Underground aquifers in many places are shrinking so rapidly that NASA satellites are detecting changes in the Earth’s gravity. The Water Resources Group has estimated that India may face a 50 per cent lag in water availability relative to demand by 2030 and that global availability may lag demand by as much as 40 per cent; the statistics have been questioned. Sixty years ago, the world’s population was about 1.25 billion people; few people, even in arid lands, worried about water supplies. Then came the Green Revolution, with its new, high-yielding crops, which depend on fertilisers and a great deal more irrigated farming. Global populations skyrocketed to nearly seven billion by 2009, with a projected nine billion by 2050. By the same year, the five hundred million people living in areas chronically short of water in the year 2000 will have grown by 45 per cent to four billion. A billion of us currently go hungry because there is not enough water to grow food. Much of the world’s water is still unpriced, but it is now the most valuable commodity in the world. To compound the problem, 60 per cent of the world’s people live in crowded river basins shared by several countries, often with daggers drawn.

    The problems are acute, especially in arid areas with growing populations, where boreholes and aquifers are thought to be the answer. Seemingly a miraculous solution, but not if the drawdown exceeds the replenishment rate, as is the case with the ground water beneath a now-sinking Mexico City’s 20 million inhabitants and with Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Jakarta, where pollution and rising salt levels combine with overdrafting.

    In China, deep groundwater levels have dropped as much as 295ft (90m) in places. We have perforated the Earth’s surface with boreholes to deplete a resource that we all, ultimately, hold in common. Now we stand at the threshold of what I call a third stage in our relationship with water; one where, apparently, cataclysm looms on every side. Vivid Doomsday scenarios espoused by numerous writers have Phoenix imploding as its water supplies fail, the Nile drying up, tens of thousands of people crossing national boundaries to find water.

    Futurist after futurist warns that water wars are a certainty in coming centuries. Alas, at least some of these cataclysms could descend upon us if we persist in denying the seriousness of the water crisis and deluding ourselves into thinking that uncontrolled growth and more dams are the solution. They are not.

    • Reality Bytes 3.1
      30 June 2011 at 8:38 pm

      … all of which, will put even more massive pressures on our energy needs. As the amount of desalination plants being built skyrocket in order to cope with the fresh water shortages. And thanks to mankind’s not-my-problem laissez fair style capitalistic ways, we can be sure that most of these desalination plants will use the cheapest (read dirtiest) forms of energy available in order to maximize profitability.

  4. dad4justice 4
    30 June 2011 at 7:46 pm

    Question for Ms Annutte King; does the Shark jump over the full moon like the prisoners do? Only a fat flying cow would know. Are you the full quid? Have a fag inmate, as the country is stuffed.

    • Frida 4.1
      1 July 2011 at 9:20 am

      Damn. I thought you were gone for good.

      [lprent: Unlikely to happen. He behaves relatively well here (ie within our wide guidelines) or I make the effort to boot him off regardless which of his many access points to the net or identities that he uses. I haven’t had to ban him in years. And he always gets upset when I mention this – which is why I mention this 😈 ]

    • Deadly_NZ 4.2
      1 July 2011 at 2:18 pm

      No more like. Are you the full quid?? some of your posts here leave me to conclude that your mental faculties have taken an early summer holiday.

  5. Anne 5
    30 June 2011 at 7:52 pm

    Brash said human societies thrive in both Singapore and in Finland, even though average temperatures in both places are very different.

    If that quote has not been taken out of context – and I’m assuming it wasn’t – then the man is a neanderthal. Worse than that, he’s the original dinosaur and makes Alasdair Thompson look like a
    modern liberal intellectual!

    • Frank Macskasy 5.1
      30 June 2011 at 8:23 pm

      No, I heard it on National Radio’s “Checkpoint” this evening. He also added that warmer temperatures might make Rotorua more comfortable, which is where he was tonight.

      When asked how citizens of Kiribati might feel about rising sea levels, Brash dismissed the question as if the host was talking about which colour wallpaper he prefers in his toilet.

      Brash was unbelievable. He didn’t just have his head in a hole – he’s climbed down into it.

      Then I got to thinking: why haven’t we picked up radio/tv signals from other nearby alien civilisations?

      Answer: they all elected ACT governments; ignored rising CO2, sea levels, and temperatures, and eventually turned their planets into Venus-like hothouses…

      (Ok, that’s fanciful, I know. Advanced alien civilisations would never elect ACT-like governments.)

      • Anne 5.1.1
        30 June 2011 at 8:47 pm

        I was speaking with a woman recently who told me that Climate Change was all a pack of lies. She gave as an example how cold it had been in Auckland the night before. When I tried to gently remonstrate with her and explain that it was really about growing weather extremes etc. she told me to “listen to Leighton Smith because he knows more about it than anyone. He’s an expert on Climate Change”. I took a few deep breaths and bid a hasty retreat before the shit really started to hit the fan.

        • Anne 5.1.1.1
          30 June 2011 at 9:04 pm

          ouch… beat a hasty retreat.

        • Frank Macskasy 5.1.1.2
          30 June 2011 at 9:49 pm

          It seems that common ignorance runs in direct proportion to the growth of the internet…

          The great hope of sharing the sum total of human knowledge has, instead, become a gradual decline into idiocy. The infantilisation of the human race, running neck and neck with the incredible advances of the 21st century.

          I bet no science fiction writer saw that coming.

          • Colonial Viper 5.1.1.2.1
            30 June 2011 at 11:27 pm

            It seems that common ignorance runs in direct proportion to the growth of the internet


            Actually at least part of it is a deliberately engineered phenomenon

            http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/23/need-to-protect-internet-from-astroturfing?INTCMP=SRCH

          • Robert Atack 5.1.1.2.2
            1 July 2011 at 8:24 am

            It seems that common ignorance runs in direct proportion to the growth of the internet


            If you have half a brain and can think independently, then the net is great.
            I started my informed life 11 years ago by going to this site http://www.vhemt.org from there I went to http://www.dieoff.org , then I’ve used the net to show how fucking stupid our so called leaders are ie http://www.oilcrash.com . BUT because most people, 99% anyway, do not want to know it is all pointless.
            ACT is kowtowing to its far right agenda, that growth will continue for ever, so Brash has to appeal to that thinking, even though he has publicly stated that “the world is running out of oil” and “it wasn’t Don Brash walking the plank it is the world, frankly” he can’t actually expand on what ‘the world running out of oil’ means, because politicians of all colours are dependent on keeping the truth out of full public awareness, hence the environmental destructive ponzi scam that the Greed Party voted for – Kiwi Saver. Which is dependent on the Hide/Nact type ideas, like no problem with global energy supplies so no problem with economic growth, just like the Greeds, Nact is telling the 18 year old that it is a good idea to invest what little money they have in a scam that will not be around in 47 … yes Forty Seven Years time when the sucker is thinking of retiring … KS is total bullshit, and they all sold it to you … well the 500,000 utter fools that are chucking there money into it now.
            Every wanker that voted for KS, was saying climate change is not happening, and global energy supplies will keep going up at 2-3% a year … for the next 50 or so years.
            They are ALL lying to you.
            Politicians are a true representation of us all that is for sure . Garbage in garbage out. We are ignorant trash and we deserve our coming extinction.
            Fuck hope, don’t vote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk

            George Carlin -“Who Really Controls America” / New Zealand http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI&feature=related “The cock suckers don’t give a fuck about you”

            • Colonial Viper 5.1.1.2.2.1
              1 July 2011 at 8:38 am

              Why you still picking on KiwiSaver? Not anybody else’s superschemes, the ACC fund, the Cullen Fund, etc.?

              I mean it is such a lame thing to pick on, if KS was disbanded tomorrow what difference would it make to the resource scarcity issues we face as a country and which you outline?

              • Robert Atack …
                1 July 2011 at 6:25 pm

                CV, not that someone without a real name rates a reply, BUT how many saving scams did Labour and the Greeds vote for in the past 10 years?
                I was talking to a young guy this morning he worked out how much of a scam KS is, (before I spoke to him) and now can’t get his 2,000 bucks out.
                KS is based on destroying the environment, the greeds are meant to be pro the environment ?
                That alone shows what sort of lying scum they are.
                The simple fact that an 18 yo contributor will never see a payout must be WRONG FFS,
                someone is bullshitting someone?
                And yes the Cullen fund is a joke as well, BUT again it is not directly taking hard earned money from someone under false pretences.
                Borrowed money (to maintain the CF) doesn’t count as ‘we’ will never have to pay it back. Other super schemes are not promoted by the govt or the greeds.
                It is just the lying to the people I get pissed at.
                But if this is the sort of trash you wish to defend, then I don’t blame you for staying anonymous .

                How more clear can I make it?
                Our politicians don’t give a fuck about us.

              • Draco T Bastard …
                3 July 2011 at 5:22 pm

                As money is nothing how do you save it?

    • Frida 5.2
      1 July 2011 at 9:21 am

      Nope Anne, he said both those things. Heard it on the radio driving home last night and nearly drove off the road……….

  6. Tiger Mountain 6
    30 June 2011 at 8:04 pm

    @ dad4justice: So twin of “Rodbeater”, you have managed to flip that damned rock over again.

    “Little Hitler” is probably a generational thing for Brash, being an old fashioned dismissive term for pesky public servants, but still not that appropriate from a ‘coup meister’ who mistakenly thinks he still matters in modern politics.

  7. Reality Bytes 7
    30 June 2011 at 8:33 pm

    He’s lucky Steven Spielberg isn’t his boss.

  8. HC 8
    30 June 2011 at 8:38 pm

    I am sure that Hitler would have delighted in ethnically or morally cleanse society of a capitalist madraver like Brash. How dare he compares administrators to Hitler, he has no idea about what he is talking about. What an idiot. But I am delighted, because this even more discredits the abominable ACT party.

  9. Jim Nald 9
    30 June 2011 at 8:42 pm

    Quite frankly, what does he care?
    Give him a few years, and he won’t be on this planet.

  10. Ianupnorth 10
    30 June 2011 at 8:43 pm

    Alzheimers is setting in early.
    BTW – he has taken the local Nat lemon’s electoral agent, Mike McVicar, under his wing and he is going to contest the Rotorua seat for ACT.
    Anyone local to here knows that there only about 12 ACT voters in the constituency, Garth George (the red neck that alleged ‘writes’ for the Herald) and Cliff Lee, a Canadian who hates Maori and has unsuccessfully tried to get on district council.

  11. HC 11
    30 June 2011 at 9:03 pm

    Brasholism is the precursor of Alzheimer’s disease. We are witnessing nature and science AT WORK now. Wonderful this is for any medical student to witness. Great sample study on a real life specimen.

  12. IrishBill 12
    30 June 2011 at 9:35 pm

    “Little Hitler” is an old phase that has been used many times without offense. When I was younger I knew quite a few men who fought against Hitler who would have happily used that term.

    By loading the word “Hitler” with such great taboo the language police are only imbuing it and the man himself with power it/he doesn’t deserve.

    The irony is “little Hitler” used to be reserved for jumped-up, humourless and self-important twats like Brash.

    • The Voice of Reason 12.1
      30 June 2011 at 9:49 pm

      Yep. And Blakey from On The Buses.

    • Nick K 12.2
      30 June 2011 at 10:15 pm

      There is hope for the world – I agree with Irish. Save the last sentence.

    • Deadly_NZ 12.3
      1 July 2011 at 2:22 pm

      So in other words he is comparing the middle management and slightly lower to himself ?? And he calls them Little Hitlers. What about the blitzkrieg that he used on Rodders to wrest control of the ACT party from him. Damn talk about pots and black kettles.

  13. gnomic 13
    30 June 2011 at 9:58 pm

    NZ’s greatest living former Reserve Bank governor hasn’t lost it; he never had it. This is the man who purported to believe that NZ wage levels could be raised to match those in Australia. Manifestly a buffoon. Seems John Key didn’t believe in Don’s phantasies, he scrapped the taskforce.

    ‘ “He (Dr Brash) was running it but I don’t want it anymore anyway, so it’s gone. I don’t think it achieved a lot,” Mr Key said.

    The 2025 Taskforce made several recommendations the Government ruled out adopting, such as slashing spending by $9 billion, cutting taxes, reducing beneficiary numbers, raising the pension age, selling state-owned assets and vigorously encouraging foreign investment.’

    http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/9304977/government-ditches-2025-taskforce/#

    And to think the great man (Don that is) completed his Master’s thesis under the influence of Wolfgang Rosenberg and was then opposed to private foreign capital. However he soon realised what side his bread was buttered on, and thus we have the lackey and running dog we see today.

    Too bad he has had to spend much of his life with his nose in the public trough, and now can’t wait to take a salary from the taxpayer yet again. One might have thought such a masterly fellow would have founded a vast business empire, perhaps dragged New Zealand out of the doldrums single-handed.

    • Drakula 13.1
      30 June 2011 at 10:36 pm

      Like the great Atlas’s, John Galts, Dagney Taggarts of Ayn Rands phantasies nobly providing us all with our daily sustainance.

      Yeh right!!!!!

  14. jackal 14
    30 June 2011 at 10:00 pm

    I’m wondering if Act is playing the extreme card to make National look sane in comparison? Probably just reading too much into it though, and they really are that stupid!

  15. Georgy 15
    30 June 2011 at 10:21 pm

    I bet many of those who want the RMA changed want to ride roughshod over the environment so that they can buid whatever they want without without any thought about the negative impacts. These “little Hitlers” may be doing us a great favour.

  16. Drakula 16
    30 June 2011 at 10:24 pm

    I will say this, that dispite all his bafoonary Brash is right in one respect in that there are a lot of little Hitlers in local committees and councils and furthermore they seem to be cultivated by the executive heirarchies of councils.

    I know this from very personal experience and observation with our local body. The Selwyn District Council.

    Those who are currently pulling the strings are definately NOT from the Labour left, or the unions or the conservation/Green movements.

    Perhaps Brash should be looking in the mirror!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  17. millsy 17
    30 June 2011 at 11:20 pm

    People who oppose the RMA forget who devised and implemented it.

    It was devised by our first Environment Minister, Mr Geoffery Palmer, and approved by a cabinet that included such hardcore dries as Richard Prebble, Roger Douglas, David Caygill and Michael Bassett.

    In 1990 while the then Resource Management Bill was meandering its way through Parliament, National won the election, and included in its cabinet, more hardcore dries such as Simon Upton, Bill Birch, and of course, Ruth Richardson. This cabinet decided to continue with this bill and it passed in 1991.

    (It is worth noting that the same cabinet also brought in the Human Rights Act, and Privacy Act, and of course the NZQA Unit Standard system/NCEA)

    This legislation passed the desks over every one of those who unleashed neo-liberalism.

    Brash forgets that.

  18. mickysavage 18
    1 July 2011 at 7:39 am

    It appears that the electorate have realised too that Brash has lost it.  The latest opinion poll has ACT at 1.9%.

    Now if only the good people of Epsom can do the right thing …

  19. Peter 19
    1 July 2011 at 8:23 am

    The unpopular Prime Minister of Australia and Brash have one thing in common. It’s difficult to see his popularity rising.

    • Jim Nald 19.1
      1 July 2011 at 9:31 am

      Brash bashing RMA folks = In search of a political viagra to resurrect his flaccid, shrinking poll

      No amount of climate change would make him hot enough for voters.

  20. Rich 20
    1 July 2011 at 9:43 am

    Brash isn’t really after votes, as in ones actually cast at the election.

    As long as Banks wins Epsom and he gets enough for three MPs, he’s in parliament next time. When it comes to the time for Key to retire a year or so out from the election, Brash will be in there offering a merger between ACT and National with him as leader. With the money men will lined up in favour he’ll have every chance of getting the numbers in caucus.

    I reckon he’s got every chance of being PM by the end of 2012.

    • pollywog 20.1
      1 July 2011 at 10:10 am

      If his last clumsy electioneering moments were anything to go by, I reckon Brash will barely make it through a hard fought campaign without coming close to having a full on heart attack live on screen.

  21. ianmac 21
    1 July 2011 at 10:07 am

    Perhaps Steven Joyce’s master plan is to use the weirdness of Act to further denigrate MMP?
    If Act survive under MMP then their function is to carry the can for the right extremes and be used as an example of the hazards of MMP..

  22. Richard Christie 22
    2 July 2011 at 7:52 pm

    What’s the surprise?
    Brash is just spouting the climate-science denial line of his financiers, such as Alan Gibb.

    • Ianupnorth 22.1
      2 July 2011 at 8:06 pm

      There was a bit of debate about Brash on Facebook following his visit to Rotorua this week. From someones comments

      I went along for a look, about twenty people there. He gave a short intro and speech and the rest was questions from those that attended. Had a chat with him after. Nothing wrong with old Donny.
      Working hard to make NZ a better place.

      The comments before that were largely around what people wanted to throw at him, those afterwards there were comments about his popularity, or lack of.

  23. Kiwiiano 23
    2 July 2011 at 9:44 pm

    Hopefully he’s suffering from some form of dementia. It would be terrifying to think someone THAT ill-informed was in charge of the Reserve Bank. Of course, that bodes ill for Act.

  24. Craig 24
    3 July 2011 at 2:59 pm

    I suspect that time will tell that Banks was the wrong choice for Epsom. Granted, he might well have established a profile as a fiscal conservative during his Auckland mayoral terms. However, the electorate is an upmarket urban liberal one, and Banks is a social conservative. Epsom has little patience for such types, voting them out when they start to misbehave. And Banks comments about Smoking Pornography and Looking at Drugs while on welfare (yawns at cliche) probably indicates the populist tenor of his campaign.

    Prediction: If the Nats select someone mainstream like Bhatnagar, it’s a clear sign that they want the seat back and are willing to put someone winnable up to take it back.

    Reason: ACT are a pack of dysfunctional baboons who are rapidly becoming unelectable due to their extremist ideology. And some Nats still left from the Shipley era still wake up screaming when they remember Banks antics in that Parliament…

    • Reality Bytes 24.1
      3 July 2011 at 7:45 pm

      ACT are becoming unelectable due to their untrustworthiness, backstabbing and sheer hypocrisy. If they were simply ideologists and not such hypocrites, then they would easily be in contention for the next government coalition (assuming the Nats need them to form a majority). At the rate they are going, Winston Peters has triple their chance of getting in that they do, minimum.