Don Brash - 2005 General Election

2005 General Election

In July 2005, Prime Minister Helen Clark announced that a General Election would take place on 17 September. At that time Brash and the National Party led by a slim margin in the opinion-polls. But by mid-August both Brash and National had declined in popularity. Commentators attributed this trend to a series of announcements of new spending programs by Labour, and to confusion as to whether National could form a stable coalition government with New Zealand First and/or ACT New Zealand.

The National Party advertising campaign aimed at rebutting arguments brought up by Labour about a variety of themes: Brash's stand on national security issues (he favoured greater co-operation with "traditional allies"), his commitment to social security programmes (including healthcare), as well as his ideas on the perceived drift towards "racial separatism" dividing Māori from other New Zealanders. One of Brash's most significant and widely publicised policy announcements foreshadowed the introduction of tax-cuts for working New Zealanders. Brash's party embarked on a targeted billboard-advertising programme, which later (post-election) won two advertising-industry awards.

In his first party-political election-campaign broadcast Brash mentioned a number of aspects of his life that he believed had attuned him to the political centre-ground in New Zealand:

• registering as a conscientious objector at age 18
• serving as the patron of Amnesty International Freedom Foundation
• participating in demonstrations against the racially-selected South African rugby team touring New Zealand (1981) and the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team touring South Africa without Māori team members
• his frugal approach, most famously washing his own laundry in his hotel-room basin while on taxpayer-funded overseas trips as Governor of the Reserve Bank
• voting for Labour in his early years