Background
Brill was born in 1940 in Te Awamutu.
Brill was born in 1940 in Te Awamutu.
Brill was a parliamentary under-secretary in the Third National Government from 1978 to 1981. He is a climate change sceptic and chairs the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. In the 1981 election he was defeated by Margaret Shields.
He was Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Science and Technology in the Third National Government from 1978 to 1981.
Brill stood for ACT New Zealand in Northland in the 2011 general election, where he received 0.83% of the candidate vote. Brill was national president of the New Zealand Manufacturers Federation 1988-1991, and of the Electricity Supply Association in 1993-1994.
He was president of the Employers & Manufacturer Association (Northern) in 1998-2001 and founding Vice-President of Business New Zealand in 2002-2004. In the 1996 New Year Honours, he was awarded an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to manufacturing.
More recently, Brill has been active in challenging establishment climate scientists" views on global warming.
Since 2009, he has been Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. He was also involved with the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust, a charitable organisation that, according to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), appears to have been set up solely to take court action against them. The trust lost two court cases against NIWA and on both occasions, was ordered to pay costs.
NIWA has put the trust into liquidation and as of 2014 was considering to pursue Brill and another trustee for the owed money.
Brill was a member of the National Party.