Post-2005 General Election
Under Hide's leadership, the vote in the September 2005 elections severely reduced ACT's party parliamentary representation. ACT's share of the party vote dropped from over 7% of the total to around 1.5% and its representation in Parliament fell from nine MPs to two. 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.
In response to the reduction in the number of ACT MPs, Rodney Hide shut his high-profile electorate office in Remuera and consolidated his electorate office with that of the ACT Party's head office in Newmarket.
As a post-election strategy, Rodney Hide has 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. With Hide winning the Epsom seat, all party votes for ACT counted and the party saw a substantial increase in votes in 2008 election and increased its representation in parliament from two seats to five. Hide commenced his political year in 2006 by voicing speculation on the leadership cadre of the National Party, a strategy which gained him headlines but which has raised the ire of National parliamentarians, complicating the once co-operative relationship between ACT and National.
Hide announced in late April 2006 that he would appear in the celebrity-based Dancing with the Stars television series, paired off with a professional dancer and competing against other celebrities, with the funds raised through his performance going to St John's Ambulance. Hide stated that he appeared on the show as a personal challenge, having never danced before.
Hide danced his way to fourth place on the show, despite harsh criticism from the show's judges.
Hide has also sought to reposition the party. While not moving away from ACT's key tenets of freedom, choice and personal responsibility, Hide has said that provided the governing Labour Party promise (amongst other things) significant tax-cuts, ACT could provide the centre-left party with support. Many see this as a departure from ACT's position of providing the National Party with staunch support. Others see ACT as a centre-right liberal party (as opposed to National, a conservative party) and, as such, sharing many areas of agreement with Labour (seen as more liberal than National).
This new approach by the ACT Party has emerged, at least publicly, since Rodney Hide and deputy leader (and fellow MP) Heather Roy returned from a privately funded tour of Europe. During this trip, Hide and Roy met with a number of political parties, including the Irish Progressive Democrats and the German Free Democrats, both parties with similar ideologies to ACT but substantially better electoral records.
Read more about this topic: Rodney Hide
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