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Rodney Philip Hide (born 16 December 1956) is a former New Zealand politician of the ACT New Zealand party. 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. 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.
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 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 had a reputation for strong views, for his media profile, and for his confrontational style. In 2002, when Hide still sat on the , 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.
In his maiden speech, Hide made a specific attack on "" 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." The tension between Roger 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 2008 the two men worked closely together with Douglas holding third place on the party list following Hide and Heather Roy.
When Prebble announced his retirement, Hide quickly indicated that he would seek the caucus leadership. Prebble, however, appeared unenthusiastic about the prospect of Hide succeeding him, and in a speech praising each of the new leadership contenders, pointedly dwelled on the others. The succession method chosen by Prebble also appeared to disfavour Hide: rather than a simple caucus vote, which a conventional leadership challenge would have called, a four-way election involved all ACT party members (although the election remained only "indicative"). Many people consider that the party organisation, in which Douglas has considerable influence, dislikes Hide.
Hide campaigned against Stephen Franks, Ken Shirley, and Muriel Newman for the ACT party parliamentary leadership. In the race he claimed that his high public profile and his image of strength would prove crucial to ACT's political survival. Stephen Franks, seen as the primary "anti-Hide" candidate and a social conservative, had the backing of Roger Douglas. In the end, however, Hide prevailed, and the party introduced Hide as its new leader on 13 June 2004.
Under Hide's leadership, the vote in the September 2005 election severely reduced ACT's party parliamentary representation. ACT's share of the party vote dropped from over 7% of the total in to around 1.5%; its representation in Parliament fell from nine MPs to two. Despite this reduction, the party remained in parliament due to Hide winning the Epsom seat. As a consequence of its reduced share of the vote, ACT received a significant cut in taxpayer-funded Parliamentary resourcing and Hide shifted his electorate office in Remuera to Newmarket, the same location as that of ACT's head office.
As a post-election strategy, Rodney Hide focused on his high-profile attacks on prominent Labour Party MPs. His campaign against alleged abuse of schoolchildren by Labour Party minister David Benson-Pope, which was verified by the now grown children involved, continued to make headlines in late 2005. In 2006, Hide voiced speculation on the leadership cadre of the National Party (then led by Don Brash), a strategy which gained him headlines but complicated the once co-operative relationship between ACT and National.
One of the main focuses of Hide's work in cabinet was the Auckland Council proposal for unification of the various local authorities of Auckland. This initiative was started by the then-Labour government in 2007, which set up a Royal Commission to investigate the local government arrangements in the Auckland region. Auckland governance inquiry welcomed – NZPA, via 'stuff.co.nz', Tuesday 31 July 2007. Retrieved 29 October 2007. The Commission reported back in 2009, but Hide and Prime Minister John Key announced that several of the commission's recommendations would not be accepted. In particular, the proposed six district sub-councils would be replaced by a local structure of 20–30 community boards. The recommendation to have separate concept Maori representation was also not accepted.
Hide faced criticism from various parties over the local authority amalgamation. Issues of satellite city boundaries, assets, financing & political consolidation were raised by North Shore City mayor Andrew Williams in 2009. That same year, the Labour Party accused Hide of mismanaging the Auckland reform process and criticised Hide's advocacy of privatising council assets and services. Labour also alleged that a bad process had led to the centralisation of power in the hands of a privileged few. In 2010, a New Zealand Herald editorial made five further criticisms of Hide's implementation of the 'super city' amalgamation:
On 28 April 2011, he resigned as leader of ACT after a successful challenge from former National leader Don Brash. Hide indicated to Brash he would not be standing in the 2011 general election. When he left parliament he chose not to give a valedictory speech.
In 2010, in a speech to Parliament, Hide compared government-funded climate science to the Spanish inquisition. He also accused the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research of being involved in a scandal with its temperature data and claimed that its scientific credibility was shredded.
In 2012, Hide continued to write opinion articles in the press questioning climate science and emissions trading schemes. In the National Business Review, Hide claimed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 was 'infamously wrong' and contained schoolboy errors and had been written by people who had to 'believe the human-induced global warming nonsense before they start'. In the Herald, Hide said that the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is a 'scam and a waste'. Hide agreed that CO2 from fossil fuels is a greenhouse gas that has caused warming, but that the warming wasn't worrying until the effect had been multiplied with computer models that are programmed to cause scary climate change.
Hide wrote a political column for the New Zealand Herald for a time, and has also worked as a casual labourer. Following news of Operation Yewtree in Britain and the subsequent trial of Australian entertainer Rolf Harris, a member of the New Zealand Parliament, Maggie Barry, described a groping by Harris during a studio interview she conducted in her previous broadcasting career." Maggie Barry: I was groped by Rolf Harris". New Zealand Herald, dated 2014-07-04, viewed 21 July 2014 Hide taunted her in his newspaper column, urging her to use her parliamentary privilege to breach the name suppression order protecting the defendant in the Queenstown suppressed indecency case." Rodney Hide: Forget Rolf, Maggie. We have our own sexual predator to name and shame". New Zealand Herald, dated 2014-07-13, viewed 21 July 2014
As of 2014, Hide is now married to Louise Crome, and the couple have two girls and one son, and Hide has a son from his previous marriage.
In February 2022, Hide expressed support for the Convoy 2022 New Zealand protesters who had camped outside Parliament. In an open letter, he supported the protesters' opposition to the Labour Government's vaccine mandate and expressed disappointment with ACT leader David Seymour, who had distanced himself from the marches while stressing his belief in the right to protest. Hide also criticised the ACT party's support for the Government's lockdown and vaccine mandates, citing his belief in "human freedoms."
By 2022, Hide had joined The Platform, an online radio station founded by veteran broadcaster Sean Plunket. By March 2023, Hide had left The Platform and became a host on the anti-vaccination group Voices for Freedom's online radio station Reality Check Radio.
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