Don Brash

Dr Don Brash

Dr Donald Thomas Brash (born 24 September 1940), New Zealand politician, has served as the Leader of the Opposition and parliamentary leader of the National Party, the country's main opposition party since October 2003. Before entering politics, Brash worked as Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

At the New Zealand general election on 17 September 2005, National under Brash's leadership made major gains, and achieved the party's best result under the new MMP electoral system, compared to their worst result ever in 2002. Final results placed National two seats behind the incumbent New Zealand Labour Party. Most of its gains apparently came from minor right-wing parties rather than from Labour. In the days after the election it seemed unlikely that Brash would be able to win the necessary support from other parties to form a government.

Contents

1 Early life
2 Reserve Bank governor
3 Entering politics
4 National Party leader

4.1 Five main priorities

5 2005 general election

5.1 Brash's advertising strategy: Winning the centre
5.2 The 2005 election campaign

6 After the 2005 election
7 See also
8 Biography
9 Notes
10 External links

Early life

Born in Wanganui, the son of a Protestant minister, Brash moved with his family to Christchurch at the age of six. He attended Christchurch Boys' High School and the University of Canterbury where he graduated in economics, history and political science. He then continued his studies in economics, receiving his master's degree in 1961. The following year he began working towards a Ph.D. at the Australian National University.

In 1966, Brash went to Washington to work as an economist for the World Bank. In 1971, however, he returned to New Zealand to serve as the general manager of Broadbank Corporation, a merchant bank.

Brash's first entry into politics came in 1980 when the National Party selected him to stand as its candidate in the by-election in the East Coast Bays electorate. Brash's attempt at the seat, however, failed — some believe that this resulted from the decision by Robert Muldoon, National Party Prime Minister, to raise tolls on the Auckland Harbour Bridge, an important route for East Coast Bays residents. The seat went to Gary Knapp of the Social Credit Party. Brash again failed to win the seat at the general election of 1981.

In 1982 Brash became managing director at the New Zealand Kiwifruit Authority, which oversaw the export of kiwifruit (he still grows kiwifruit as a hobby). It was during this time that he started a relationship with his Singaporean secretary Je Lan, although they were both married at the time. Eventually he left his wife Erica to marry her. Later, in 1986, he became general manager of Trust Bank, a newly-established banking group.

Reserve Bank governor

In 1988 Brash became Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, a position which he held for the next 14 years. Most commentators praised his performance in this position. Others said that Brash paid too much attention to the strict control of inflation - though the Reserve Bank legislation and policy targets specifically establish price stability (i.e. low inflation) as the Bank's primary goal - leading to increasing unemployment as a result. Other critics argue that poor monetary policy contributed to an excessively strong exchange-rate during the mid-1990s.

Aside from monetary policy, Brash presided over significant changes in banking supervision, with the New Zealand approach emphasising public disclosure by banks regarding the nature of their assets and liabilities. Major changes also took place in the currency used in New Zealand during Brash's tenure, notably the introduction of polymer bank notes, and the replacement of Queen Elizabeth's face on most of the bank notes. Many notes in circulation as of 2006 still carry the signature of Brash from his term as Governor.

Entering politics

On 26 April 2002, shortly before the general election, Brash resigned as Reserve Bank Governor to stand once more as a National Party List candidate for Parliament. He was ranked fifth on National's party list - exceptional treatment for a newcomer from outside the House of Representatives, and all but assuring him of a seat in Parliament. Most unusually among National candidates, he stood as a list candidate without running for an electorate seat. Though National had its worst performance ever, gaining only 21% of the vote, Brash was able to enter Parliament.

Brash immediately became National's spokesman on finance. This placed him opposite the Labour Party's Michael Cullen, the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. Commentators generally praised Brash for his knowledge of economics, but expressed criticism of his inexperience in terms of political leadership.

In October 2003, Brash publicly challenged Bill English for the position of Parliamentary Leader of the National Party. English had gradually lost vital support from within the party, but Brash's victory in a leadership contest against English seemed by no means guaranteed. Brash's decision to make his challenge public caused considerable criticism, as party supporters perceived an open leadership dispute as highly damaging to the party's image. The challenge also appeared as a break with tradition, and according to critics, an indication of Brash's political naïveté.

Eventually, however, dissatisfaction with English, coupled with the perceived policy-making competence of Brash, enabled a change of leadership. Brash won a caucus vote on 28 October 2003, making him head of the National Party Caucus and Leader of the Opposition after just a year in Parliament. He remained National's finance spokesman as well, but surrendered that role to newcomer John Key in August 2004.

National Party leader

On 27 January 2004 Brash made a speech on "nationhood" at the Orewa Rotary Club, expressing opposition to perceived "Māori racial separatism" in New Zealand:

The topic I will focus on today is the dangerous drift towards racial separatism in New Zealand, and the development of the now entrenched Treaty grievance industry. We are one country with many peoples, not simply a society of Pakeha and Māori where the minority has a birthright to the upper hand, as the Labour Government seems to believe".[...]

Though the sentiments expressed in the Orewa speech differed little from established National Party views (as voiced previously by Bill English, for example), these comments quickly gave National a boost in the polls of up to 17%, which was said to be unprecedented, and apparently indirectly provoked changes of emphasis in Labour's policy-agenda.

Shortly after the delivery of this speech, the National Party Māori Affairs spokesperson Georgina Te Heuheu lost her spokesperson position due to a policy conflict.

National then suffered a fall in the polls, leaving it 10 to 15 points behind Labour at the end of 2004. Many commentators put this down to Brash's vagueness on issues of policy and his alleged "flip-flops" resulting from this.

In 2004 in a letter to the Dean of Christchurch Cathedral Peter Beck, Brash criticised Helen Clark's views on marriage and religion, saying she was indifferent to the institution of marriage. Clark replied, pointing out that she at least had only one marriage. Brash later agreed his comments were inappropriate. .

On 25 January 2005 Brash made another speech to the Orewa Rotary Club, where he focused on welfare dependency. He pledged to reduce the number of working-age beneficiaries from the current figure of 300,000 to 200,000 over ten years. He dedicated about a third of his speech to the Domestic Purposes Benefit. At the time of his speech 109,000 solo parents received the DPB, costing taxpayers about $1.5 billion a year. He noted that since its inception of the DPB in 1974, the population of New Zealand had increased by 30% while the number of parents on the DBP had increased almost nine-fold.

Brash proposed a number of ways to reduce the number of parents on the DPB and to return it to its original intent of giving aid to single parent families in need or in danger. These proposals included enforcing child support payments, and requiring solo parents to work, to join job-training schemes or to perform community service once their children had reached schooling age. Furthermore, he suggested penalties for women who would not name their children's father: "acknowledging adoption as an acceptable option, particularly for teenage girls", and intensive case-management. Moreover, Brash mentioned mothers who had given birth to additional children while already on the DPB, but he did not explicitly propose any penalties for this. From the general tone of the speech it seemed clear that he considered this a significant cause of the problems of the DBP.

Shortly after the delivery of this speech the National Party Social Welfare spokesperson, Katherine Rich, lost her spokesperson position due to a policy conflict.

Paul Goldsmith wrote a friendly biography about Brash. Currently, there are no balancing critical volumes available about the political views and economic and social policy stance of the former Reserve Bank Governor and current National Party leader.

Five main priorities

Shortly after becoming leader of the National Party, Brash outlined five main policy areas:

Dealing with declining New Zealand incomes
Education - dealing with too many people leaving school with poor literacy and numeracy
Ethnic Welfare dependency
Security - law and order
The drift towards racial separatism in New Zealand

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 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.

Brash's advertising strategy: Winning the centre

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 favours greater co-operation with the United States of America), 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.

In his first party-political broadcast Brash mentioned a number of events in 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
Partipating 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.
Doing his own laundry while on foreign trips as Governor of the Reserve Bank.
Voting for Labour in previous general elections.

The 2005 election campaign

On 22 August National unveiled its much-anticipated $3.9 billion dollar tax-cut policy. The first polling conducted after the announcement suggested that National gained some support with the annoucement[link]. However on the day of the announcement Brash engaged in a televised debate with Clark, where he failed to sell the tax-cut message assertively. Brash indicated that he had not countered Clark's rather confrontational style during the election debate because he did not like to raise his voice to women. This attracted criticism: some voters saw it as an excuse and patronising, although his supporters argued that he merely demonstrated courtesy.

On 27 August an email showing advice given to Brash during his leadership bid by members of the ACT party and the Business Round Table caused embarrassment. Furthermore, confusion bedevilled National's potential coalition options: New Zealand First showed reluctance to reveal whether it would ally with National or Labour, whilst ACT (often referred to as National's natural coalition partner, due to the similarities of their policies) criticised National for not supporting ACT leader Rodney Hide's bid to win in the electorate of Epsom.

An anonymous pamphlet distributed by members of a Christian sect, the Exclusive Brethren, in early September caused further embarrassment for Brash when he initially denied any knowledge of it, but then admitted that the Brethren had told him at a meeting some months earlier that they planned a pamphlet campaign. Brash claims neither he or his party had any part in the design or producing of the pamphlets.

The election on 17 September produced a close result, with initial results from rural areas favoring National; but by the end of the evening Labour had won 40.7% of the vote to National's 39.6%. Following the counting of the special votes the gap widened, with Labour taking 41.1% of the vote to National's 39.1%. Dr Brash conceded defeat on 1 October. Essentially Brash had failed to make up enough ground in the cities. Apart from in Auckland, National's support was centred mainly in rural and provincial areas.

After the 2005 election

Since the election, Dr Brash has indicated he intends to stay on as the leader of the National Party and to contest the next election in that role. But pundits expect that before the next scheduled general election in 2008 a challenge to Brash's leadership will come from Deputy Leader Gerry Brownlee, from Finance Spokesman John Key or from former National Party Leader Bill English.

Biography

Paul Goldsmith: Brash: A Biography: Auckland: Penguin: 2005: ISBN 043019678

Notes

External links

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