Rodney Hide

Rodney Philip Hide (born 16 December 1956) is a former New Zealand politician of the ACT New Zealand party.

In 1960, due to sickness, Philip Hide sold the small farm and moved to Rangiora, continuing to drive trucks until his retirement.

Rodney Hide attended Rangiora High School, before gaining a degree in zoology and botany from the University of Canterbury.

After completing his degree, he travelled overseas, eventually finding himself in Scotland.

He worked for some time on oil rigs in the North Sea.

Hide eventually returned to New Zealand by way of Romania, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, and Malaysia.

In Malaysia he re-met Jiuan Jiuan—with whom he had shared a house in Christchurch—and the two married in 1983.

In 1993, Alan Gibbs, an Auckland businessman, offered Hide a job as an economist.

He accepted, and also began working at a radio station owned by Gibbs.

Later, Hide also met Roger Douglas, a former Minister of Finance whose radical economic reforms Rogernomics had made a considerable impression on him.

When Douglas established the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (which later formed the ACT party), Hide had close involvement as the organisation's first chairman and president.

Hide was a Member of Parliament for ACT from 1996 until 2011, was ACT's leader between 2004 and 2011, and represented the constituency from 2005 to 2011.

Hide first entered Parliament in 1996 as a list MP.

Hide held the seventh place on the ACT party list for the 1996 election.

The tension between Douglas and Hide increased when Hide made a bid for the vice-presidency of ACT in 2000: supporters of Douglas interpreted this action as a challenge to Douglas' organisational authority within the party.

Both Douglas and Hide stood down from their roles as president and vice-president, suggesting an uneasy truce between these two factions.

In 2002, when Hide still sat on the back benches, one commentator described him the "leader of the opposition".

Hide's supporters often described him as one of the most effective opposition MPs, and praised him for his motivation and commitment.

ACT received enough votes for Hide to enter Parliament, making him one of the party's "founding" MPs. He gradually rose through the party's ranks, reaching second place in the ACT list for the 2002 election.

In his maiden speech, Hide made a specific attack on "perks" enjoyed by MPs, and this "perk-busting" became a characteristic of his political career until he was himself exposed for taking advantage of such perks, in taking his girlfriend on a tax payer funded trip to London and Hawaii.

Hide still however claims to have developed a substantial reputation for finding and exposing "scandals", whether they relate to MPs' perks or to other governmental matters.

Hide's critics often claim that his "scandals" rely on sensationalism and exaggeration, and have as their only purpose the gaining of media attention; but his supporters believe that Hide's constant scrutiny "keeps the government honest" and ensures that the administration does not waste taxpayers' money.

Roger Douglas himself has emerged as one of Hide's more prominent critics, referring to Hide's "stunts" as detracting from ACT's core economic message, shifting focus to populist issues of law and order and to provocative race relations policies.

At a party conference, Douglas condemned MPs "who run any fickle line capable of grabbing short-term votes and attention", a comment allegedly directed at Hide or at his supporters.

Hide acknowledges the criticism, but defends himself on the grounds that a focus on pure economic theory will not attract interest: "the problem is that the so-called stunts are particularly well-reported and my work explaining free market ideas disappears without trace."

He won the party parliamentary leadership role in a closely contested primary after the retirement of Richard Prebble in 2004.

He then went on to win the Epsom electorate from sitting National Party MP Richard Worth in 2005 with the campaign message "ACT is back".

He retained this seat in the.

Hide had a reputation for strong views, for his media profile, and for his confrontational style.

They were to separate in 2007.

After returning to New Zealand, Hide gained a degree in resource management from Lincoln College, Canterbury.

He then took up a teaching position at Lincoln, first in resource management and later in economics.

He completed his master's degree in economics from Montana State University with a thesis on New Zealand's transferable fishing quotas.

In 2008 the two men worked closely together with Douglas holding third place on the party list following Hide and Heather Roy.

Many people had known for some time that Hide saw himself as a potential parliamentary leader of the ACT party, and he himself showed no reluctance in saying so.

At several points, rumours circulated that Hide planned to challenge party leader Richard Prebble for his position, although such a challenge never emerged.

In the Fifth National Government, Hide was Minister of Local Government, Associate Minister of Commerce and Minister of Regulatory Reform until 2011.

He stepped down as ACT leader in April 2011 after a leadership challenge from Don Brash and retired from Parliament at the general election later that year.

Rodney Philip Hide was born in Oxford in Canterbury.

His father, Philip Hide, owned a small mixed-farm at Cust and also drove trucks.