close
MENU
1 mins to read

Hide returns to NBR


Unrepentant small government advocate re-launches his blunt and highly popular column Hidesight.

NBR staff
Fri, 16 Mar 2012

Former Act leader and unrepentant small government advocate Rodney Hide re-launches his blunt and highly popular column Hidesight today.

The column will re-appear for the first time for several years in The National Business Review from this morning and also feature in the NBR ONLINE’s Weekend Review section tomorrow, behind the site's paywall.

The hard-hitting former Parliamentary “perkbuster” has kept a low profile since the November General Elections but he will come out swinging tomorrow.

Hide was an NBR columnist before he was elected to Parliament where he went on to become the leader of his party and a Cabinet Minister in the first term of John Key’s coalition government.

Hide says he has been lying low since he lost the Act leadership to Don Brash, who later resigned when the party’s touted rejuvenation failed to materialise, but he was looking forward to being a columnist who no longer had to convince readers to vote for him.

Now he was free to have fun, he said, and write about the political “nonsense” that entangled New Zealand politics.

“I don’t purport any high purpose in exposing the nonsense. My aim is not to educate, improve political discourse or shift public policy,” he says. “My aim is simply to enjoy myself.

“It’s fun to find myself again that small boy able to declare that the prince is prancing about without any clothes.

“I have the added advantage that I no longer get overly stressed by Big Government sucking the life out of our country. It is –again owing to political circumstance – no longer my problem.”

NBR staff
Fri, 16 Mar 2012
© All content copyright NBR. Do not reproduce in any form without permission, even if you have a paid subscription.
Hide returns to NBR
19457
false