Brash lobbies for ACT leadership

Don Brash is advancing plans to take over the ACT Party leadership, lobbying for support from caucus members in Auckland today.

The former National Party leader announced at the weekend his intention to make a bid for the leadership, telling media he had rejected a suggestion he become a co-leader and would only go into the party in the top job.

To roll current leader Rodney Hide, Dr Brash would need majority support from the caucus members.

Of them, Sir Roger Douglas and Heather Roy are likely Brash backers, while deputy leader John Boscawen and newbie Hilary Calvert have indicated support for Mr Hide.

Dr Brash, 70, met Ms Calvert and Sir Roger today to discuss his reasons for wanting to lead the party.

He hoped to speak in person with Mr Boscawen at some stage, he said.

"I've encouraged them to make a final decision after the market research which I have commissioned is available some time next week," he told Radio New Zealand.

"I'm taking a risk in that because I don't know what the market research will say, if it says I can't do any better for ACT than Rodney Hide does then clearly I'll have egg on my face and I'll go back to pruning kiwifruit.

"If the market research suggests that I can do significantly better, I'm hoping the ACT Party caucus will take that into account."

Dr Brash said he did not want to speak for the MPs about who they had indicated support for, but agreed there had been a lot of speculation Sir Roger would support him.

"Everyone has assumed that. Everyone has assumed that Hilary was supporting Rodney Hide, people have made a lot of assumptions and what I'm saying is I met them both and had a cordial discussion."

Dr Brash said he was still a National Party member, and would be looking at joining Act "shortly". He indicated he wouldn't join ACT unless he had the support of caucus to lead the party.

"I don't want to put a date on it. There's no tearing hurry," he said.

In an open letter posted on Facebook earlier today, Mr Hide said he was surprised by Dr Brash's weekend announcement, and that Dr Brash had refused to join the party when he was asked.

"We reviewed various options on how we could work together in a collaborative way to build a strong party for the future," Mr Hide said.

"Don then wrote me a letter setting out his decision to turn down the opportunity. The letter alarmed me because I thought it was a letter designed to be leaked, as it was especially one-sided."

Prime Minister John Key said he did not want to speculate on the ACT Party's situation.

"All I can say is, to be a minister, you have to be a member of Parliament, and even if Don Brash was the leader of the ACT Party he, by definition, wouldn't be a member of Parliament at that point."

Mr Key said he could not see any reason why Mr Hide would not be able to keep his ministerial roles if Dr Brash took over as leader.