Has Environment Minister Nick Smith finally gone mad?

By
Martyn Bradbury
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46
23

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The latest joke statement from the Government is from Nick Smith who is desperately trying to find something to blame other than farming for water pollution.

His latest brain fart is hilarious.

Nick says that water pollution is really caused by birds (NOT COWS) and that to get swimmable water we would need to kill all the birds.

I’m not joking.

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He’s really said this…

Swimmable lakes would require a bird cull – Smith

It’s impossible to make all New Zealand lakes and lagoons swimmable without a massive bird cull, the Environment Minister Nick Smith says.

…right.

So the industry that has National in its pocket isn’t the problem. Oh no, it’s birds.

This…

the-birds_2105331i

…NOT this…

cow_shit

46 COMMENTS

    • I am ashamed to be a Nelsonian! I am in no means defending him, but he has the finger in the pie everywhere, very active and approachable to the public. Nelson is a quite conservative place. And he knows how to defend his outrages policies in a way that makes it palatable to Nelsonians. Again I am ashamed!

  2. agree Kyle why do these people vote for such a b add to this why do people continue to vote for national b’s

    • People put Nazional in power because their Leader looked like he could do the job. The same sort of charisma that got Hitler into power. They stay there because those same unthinking sheep keep thinking “let’s give him another chance”. Wake up NZ. Same ingredients, same result – garbage in, garbage out.

  4. Some politicians are criminals and some are just clowns. And some politicians manage to be both criminals and clowns at the same time.

    All are professional liars.

    What will be the next milestone on our incessant corporation-led march towards inanity, insanity, fascism, planetary meltdown and self-annihilation?

    ‘September will feel like summer instead of spring

    Forget spring – it’s summer that has sprung, with meteorologists predicting yet more record-breaking temperatures for 2016.’

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/312110/september-will-feel-like-summer-instead-of-spring

  5. No, no not a bird cull. A Nick Smith, John Key, Bill English, Steven Joyce et all cull instead. A whole National cull. That will fix the issue of water pollution, amongst other problems blighting NZ, like a filthy disease. Because then we might get some political sense into addressing and hopefully correcting issues dragging NZ down.

    After his latest pearls of wisdom statement, Smith it seems is as nutty as a fruit cake and should not be allowed to be in charge of wiping his own nose, let alone being responsible for the environment, housing etc!

    Get this man out, along with his equally disgusting and corrupt cabinet cohorts!

  8. Wait, weren’t the lakes and rivers swimmable previously? I guess there were there no birds in NZ back then, right?

  9. “It’s impossible to make all New Zealand lakes and lagoons swimmable without a massive bird cull, the Environment Minister Nick Smith says.”

    Come on Nick, this is so wrong and we will show you know better than this!!!!

    We remember when we meet you at the Gisborne Environment Centre in 2012, and asked for help to re-open our damaged rail service and we then strongly stated that truck freight causes bad “road pollution runoff” and that it is recognised globally as a serious problem.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/82843084/roof-and-dirty-road-runoff-blamed-for-pollutants-in-heathcote-river
    council says.

    “Dirty roads, heavy traffic and uncoated zinc roofs are to blame for the bulk of contaminants that end up in the city’s stormwater, which is then discharged into rivers.” says this local article also.

    To you Nick, we said it was especially bad in HB/Gisborne as we had many trucks polluting our rivers, streams and lakes especially from stock trucks as they were overfilled with effluent and spraying the stuff all over our roads and windows and we needed rail to take some off the roads and you agreed. We still are without rail and things are dire now.

    We said that road freight takes over 90% of our NZ wide freight today and we want half back on rail again as used to be, a no brainer wouldn’t you agree?

    You agreed then.

    Anyway if you now have just forgotten or doubt that “road pollution runoff” is not a big polluter of our rivers, streams, lakes and water supplies you had better come to Napier because at the Clive river now HB Regional Council as warned the public here last year of this issue, and have placed a warning sign on the river warning that road runoff is now among all things causing “quote” Contaminants from land, roads, car parks, industry, & households wind up here,” unquote.

    So Nick if that public HBRC warning also advise “Caution” this river is frequently unsuitable for swimming & recreation” why don’t you place more restrictions on truck freight industry and more freight back to rail.

    We also worked with you in Nelson in 2002-3 when we started to oppose the transit NZ “southern road” a truck route to the port of nelson then with you as you then recognised that the air quality was poor already and adding more trucks to the air quality problem would push it over the limit remember that?

    We lost our fight in Napier to stop the HB Expressway that now carries 2000 trucks a day and poisoning all the water there.

    Nick do the right thing, & get real rail freight back again before all NZ water is unsafe to drink let alone wade in or touch.

    Here’s another Waikato Council brief showing roads runoff also problem.

    http://www.waikatoregion.govt.nz/Environment/Natural-resources/Water/Rivers/Waikato-River/Runoff-and-leaching/

    Globally there are so many to prove this is an “Elephant in the room” yet to be recognised by this government, will you enlighten them please?

  10. I really struggle as to why Nick Smith is even in parliament. He is shockingly bad.

    On housing he is worse than abysmal and so thoroughly unconvincing it’s sad. I suppose the assignment given to him by the PM namely to pretend to do something and to deflect blame is mission impossible for any human. Imagine being told not to tell the truth whatever you do about this problem. You’d end up drinking yourself to death in an effort to live with yourself. But nevertheless like the good servant he is to Nationals millionaires out he goes every week and trots out some inane crap to pretend everything is just peachy. Albeit it took John Key to blame Helen Clark for the housing disaster.

    But this latest thing is beyond ridiculous. It ain’t the 10,000’s of cows shitting and pissing everywhere, expelling massive volumes of methane gas, no, …..it’s sparrows and maybe even budgies too! How the fuck does he get through the day talking shit like this? How does he receive a pay cheque, how?

    To cure this problem are we going to do a “Great Leap Forward” and kill all birds? Who the fuck knows with National anymore!

    • Wait for Maggie Barry’s imminent announcement that we’ll be commencing a nationwide avian cull within the year. We must, at all costs, preserve the myth that we’re 100% pure!

  11. Introduced pests like swans can foul waterways and it is perfectly fine to cull them. Of course it’s a deflection – because fouling by birds is a tiny minority of the cases of polluted water.

    More importantly, the tactic is to defend the ‘wadeable’ standard by saying that a ‘swimmable’ standard is unachievable and pointing at really foul, extreme cases of pollution as proof.
    So – because there are some extreme cases where ‘swimmable’ would be a massive and probably expensive effort over a very long time, we abandon the ‘swimmable’ goal altogether and settle for ‘wadeable’. And that abandonment is a licence to Nat cronies to pollute waterways that are currently healthy right up to the point where all you can do safely is wade in them.
    It is a very shameless and cynical use of the common or garden ‘reductio ad absurdum’ trick.
    Unworthy of any public official – actually unworthy of any adult – to use these rhetorical tricks.

    • Dave it is called Cornucopia. The real answer is don’t pollute – real simple eh!

      Hard for some with a toxic plan to grasp.

    • Science may will provide the answer at some point, but Key & his mob will condemn it as rubbish, they will commission their own reports & answers until they get one that says what they want it to say

  16. …where do they find these people? Come on Nelson – YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN NICK – do it for your country – VOTE HIM OUT!

  18. Perhaps Nick Smith should stick his head under the arse of a cow and a bird when each processes it’s bowel movements. But then the burning question remains, would Nick Smith be capable of telling the difference between two different sized outputs of bodily function?

  19. No, he’s simply a Raggedy Andy doll come alive and encouraged, by his Tory Necronomicons, to run amok amongst real human beings.

  21. So Nick Smith says that we can’t have swimmable rivers, but National is doing all it can to improve their state?

    If they can’t be made swimmable, what are National’s “improvements”?

    • what are national’s “IMPROVEMENTS” TO WATER QUALITY?

      COULD BE MADE EASILY, BY REMOVING THEMSELVES FROM OUR COUNTRY!!!!

      Nick would really make over a million bucks being a comedian!!

      He really is a funny guy, I have met him.

      One we would imagine having a real laugh with, going on the piss with, believe me!!!

      I just think it’s a case of what mum always said to me “Son don’t mix with the bad boys or you will get a bad name” and Nick has been fowled by this scenario.

  24. The madness that is Nick Smith is: “It looks like paint thinner. It smells like paint thinner and therefore it MUST be paint thinner. Lets swig it to find out for sure.” Abit like it looks like available land for housing and therefore it MUST be available land even if it’s a roundabout.
    I am sure we can hardly take one word that Key & co say seriously anymore as much from spews from their mouthes obviously is a load of crap.
    Arrogance breeds insanity in a government like Key’s that has been there far too long and has become complacent in their attitude and response to matters. And when caught in a corner of their own making they resort to the usual childish habit of blaming a previous government of almost a decade ago.

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