Don Brash

Winning the war of hearts and minds mustn’t be important to MUNZ. Clearly, they are failing to win the workplace argument, and now MUNZ and the Hobbit Hater are trying to whip up the privatisation bogeyman.

Not content with having their leader Garry Parsloe ruin their PR, MUNZ wheel in the one woman who represents threats over job destruction, union ineptitude and excessive union arrogance – the woman who became known as the “hobbit hater”, Helen Kelly.

It is ironic that the “boys” on the wharf, where they have allowed just two women to work out of 212, are now having to turn to skirt to assist them. I hope Helen Kelly is insisting that the price for her help will be 50% of the new wharf workforce will be women.

For POAL to commit the same kind of error in toxic representation, they would need to appoint a consortium led by Roger Douglas and Don Brash to go on TV and look cranky and magooish.

Fortunately for POAL, they don’t look to be committing that kind of error.

Ok the nominations are in for the Worst Politician of 2011:

Don Brash – for sheer amount of money he wasted alone.

Sue Moroney – The only thing she wins at is losing. She’d lose her carkeys if it was a competition. Any Nat MP wishes, nay, prays that Moroney is their opposition, because when she is their majority increases massively, this is known as “The Moroney Effect”

Carmel Sepuloni – She isn’t known as the Septic Tank for no reason.

Darien Fenton – already the winner of Worst SMOG, she epitomises the nastiness of labour. Her attack on the Mad Butcher in the middle of the election campaign just shows how truly nasty she is.

Trevor Mallard – an inept campaign strategist and a man who when given the chance of speaking always utter a lie as his first option. This veteran trougher will have to be more creative in rorting his parliamentary expenses carting his sad, crippled, arse around the various sports venues in order to blag a root from desperate women.

Simon Power – known as FIGJAM, he is singularly responsible for the retention if MMP with his numpty referendum set-up. He bollocksed up several law changes and needed to call on Judith Collins when he lost the bottle to do truly meaningful things in Justice. The mark of his ineffectiveness for National was all the love showered on him by labour when he was leaving. FFS, David Shearer even mentioned him in his yawn-fest address in reply debate.

You all get two votes on this because there is so much mediocrity, nasty.

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I see that the usual stooges and shills for Labour are already preparing the ground for David Shearer’s shellacking at Question Time by suggesting that it is not that important to perform well in the house. But if question time doesn’t matter – why did Labour make such a song and dance about it when Brash was the National Leader? This is one of many examples.

from Lianne Dalziel:

The bottom line is that Dr Brash does not like asking questions in Parliament, because he finds it demeaning. He thinks it is a bit beneath him to come to Parliament and ask questions. Here he was today in Parliament, large as life, and there was not one single question on the Order Paper from the Leader of the Opposition.

I think there is a reason for that, too. When he gets up to ask a question, he is not very good at it. Own goals are his particular forte.

They even lined up former Clark staffers to write opinion pieces in the Herald:

Dr Brash, it seemed, had everything on his side – a rallying cry over racial issues that resonated with voters, the promise of more barn-burning speeches to come, and a Government threatening to haemorrhage over the foreshore and seabed issue.

Yet in the most public face of our democracy, he was conspicuously absent.

In March, Parliament held 10 question times. During that month, and at the height of his post-Orewa prominence, Dr Brash contributed less to question time than Winston Peters, Peter Dunne, Rodney Hide or Jeanette Fitzsimmons.

He spoke less than his deputy, Gerry Brownlee, his predecessor, Bill English, or the person many pick as his successor, Simon Power.

March was a tumultuous time for the Government, but Dr Brash asked the Prime Minister only two primary questions and five supplementary questions. In total, she answered 75.

Further, since the Budget speech in May, Dr Brash has been responsible for only four of the 156 primary questions to be asked and a mere 14 of about 780 supplementary questions.

Nobody could accuse him of hogging the limelight, though some would wonder why he hasn’t.

Dr Brash’s “where’s Waldo” act is certainly not typical of other Opposition leaders in New Zealand – remember the commanding performances of Jim Bolger, David Lange and Mike Moore – or overseas.

…Dr Brash can reduce (though not eliminate) the risk of looking bad in next year’s leaders’ debates. Practice makes perfect, and he has a ready-made practice ground waiting for him in Wellington most Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

He may have to swallow some pride and take some hits from the Prime Minister, but that is the price of taking responsibility for his party’s fortunes, especially in the rough and tumble world of New Zealand’s increasingly presidential election campaigns.

If Don Brash doesn’t get used to the cut and thrust of Parliament’s question hour now, he runs a significant risk of consigning his party to three more years in opposition during the next election campaign.

And Peters used to rib Don Brash for his house performances describing him as ‘fearless’ and ‘the great debater’.

Via the tipline:

I was drawn attention to David Shearers election time appearance on Otago University’s Vote Chat.

It would appear David Shearer’s in the Don Brash camp on dope reform. Favours decriminalisation and regulation.

Perhaps Shearer will be able to hire Don Brash to consult now he is at a loose end.

I have clipped out the important part.

Cactus Kate has written an article for NBR on her view of the demise of ACT and where to now:

You could reach several times around the world with nonsensical column inches written over the years about the impending demise of ACT.

Many supposed political “experts” had numerous self-absorbed reasons for planting the spin.

Dr Brash went one step further than just talking about it and led ACT to a record thumping. A 1% list vote and barely scraping through in Epsom in a tactically contrived win where Don and John managed to almost grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

Her comments about what is an ACToid are fascinating in their simplicity:

ACT has ground itself down with obsessive branding labels such as libertarian, classical liberal and conservatives.

The over-indulgence has caused me confusion such that right now even I have no idea what faction I belong to.

I think she misses out the key feature of ACT supporters. To a person they have always been part of a cult of personality. Firstly it was to Roger Douglas, then to Richard Prebble and finally to Rodney Hide. Their fascination with labels like classic liberal etc shows a deep misunderstanding that the New Zealand electorate hasn’t a clue what that even means.

It is the same mistake that Labour makes when they label National as Tories. It is from the politics of elsewhere that these label come from. ACT was spawned from Labour, they even call National supporters Tories like their parent party does. The people who originally came to ACT were the right of Labour spurned by a resurgent union wing. Along the way they picked up the young who had never known compulsory unionism and the liberal economic believers. But they all still have an inherited an abiding loathing for the National party and so never comfortably could work with them.

I asked a long term ACT supporter what they would do if the party ceased to exist and they told me that they would get an interest in something else. They had no interest in joining any other party than the ACT party. That told me right there that ACT supporters didn’t really understand or grasp that politics is a long game. Their ideas are still valid but because of a tribal adherence to some amorphous “core values” they can’t and won’t engage in any other party. Cactus KAte explains the despondence:

I realised I wasn’t really quite that interested in politics. I perhaps had grown up to see just how horrible it is and politics was sitting in priority in my life by Sunday evening with watching lawn bowls.

The ironic thing is the ones who show their loyalty the loudest and proudest to the ACT party have all shown their belief in the market and liberalism by fucking off overseas and them telling everyone else what the party should be and act like.

They are remembering a party that no longer exists, the party they left behind when they went overseas failed to change with the times and the electorate voted accordingly. ACT supporters talk of core values but I doubt any of them could even tell me what they are.

Just as pinkos like David Farrar can exist inside the National party then so too can classic liberals and libertarians. Better in a tent than outside wondering where to pitch their pup tent.

Lesson 1: Parties without good infrastructure do poorly on election day.

Labour had their worst result since they were a third party in the 1920’s, mainly because of Andrew Little and Phil Goff neglecting the party. Little raised not a cent from non union sources, and is probably Labour’s worst president ever. He left Moira Coatsworth with an impossible task. Goff needed to show leadership and build a strong, well funded party, but he never even tried. The height of Labour’s stupidity was winning almost 150,000 candidate votes than party votes.

ACT was a disaster from the moment Don Brash didn’t clean out all the troublemakers that were undermining him. He needed to build a strong infrastructure around him, even if it meant a bit more blood letting. He didn’t and as I said for many months before the election, ACT is doomed. Paying a $3000 a day Australian consultant plus a staffer to baby sit you in the green room after an election loss probably isn’t good use of ACT fundraisers money either.

In 2005 Don Brash was caught walking the plank…Russel Norman has just had his plank moment.

MP steering a boat. That's about the only caption I can write. http://t.co/qpSmY3kY

November 23, 2011 12:04 pm via TwitpicReplyRetweetFavorite

@hdpaONENEWS

H du Plessis-Allan

Today the media has continued to focus on an 8 minute recording where John Key and John Banks unsurprisingly slag off Don Brash. There is a shorter list of people who say nice things about Don Brash, why the fuss.

Still it has proved once again that it is the media who like the attention and who think they should control the issues of the day. The public however think otherwise.

Today the media has continued to focus on an 8 minute recording where John Key and John Banks unsurprisingly slag off Don Brash. Hell all of the media, Labour , the leftwing and most of the Act party have been doing that for months if not years but all of a sudden this is more important to the media than anything else.

Today I again highlighted continued Green party aligned vandalism despite promises from Jolyon White that there would be no more attacks on National’s billboard on Wednesday.

Lying Greens by whaleoil

You can’t trust a word they say.

Overnight we know more signs were attacked with Green-linked stickers.  If they were telling lies about it being a one off, they most certainly are capable of lying about the Green Party’s involvement.

More to come on this. Stay tuned.

There has been more Green party-linked hoarding attacks last night in West Auckland.

Despite being busted and Russel Norman fessing up in the face of the evidence released on this blog they have not stopped.

National should lay complaints formerly with the Police and with the Electoral Commission.

Russel Norman’s executive assistant was donkey deep involved in this she needs to assist Police in identifying all the green operatives behind the continued vandalism.

I wonder too if Parliamentary Services needs to be involved to ascertain that their email servers weren’t used to facilitate this orchestrated, corrdinated nationawide attack on National’s billboards.

The Green party and the media went after the Exclusive Brethren and tracked down the printers and obtained invoices, why are they not doing the same here. Seems they are more interested in whether or not John Banks called Don Brash a “strange fellow” or not.

Meanwhile wanton, organised, expensive vandalism is being perpetrated but 50 or so green aligned activists with little or no media scrutiny.