Don Brash
From Freepedia
Dr Donald Thomas Brash (born 24 September 1940), New Zealand politician, is the Leader of the Opposition and leader of the National Party, the country's main opposition party. Before entering politics, Brash was 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. Final results placed National two seats behind the incumbent New Zealand Labour Party. Most of its gains 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 minor parties to form a government.
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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 the 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 a 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 was won by 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). 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 strictly controlling inflation, though the Reserve Bank legislation and policy targets specifically establish price stability (i.e. low inflation) as its primary goal. 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 emphasizing public disclosure by banks regarding the nature of their assets and liabilities. There were also major changes in the currency used in New Zealand during his tenure, with the two most significant changes being the introduction of polymer bank notes, and the replacement of Queen Elizabeth's face on most of the bank notes. Most notes in circulation still carry the signature of Brash from his term as governor.
Entering politics
In April 2002, shortly before the general election, Brash resigned as Reserve Bank Governor to again stand as a National Party candidate for Parliament. He was ranked fifth on National's party list, which is exceptional for a newcomer from outside the House of Representatives. He was one of the few National candidates to stand as a list candidate without running for an electorate seat. Though National had its worst performance ever, gaining only 21% of the vote, Brash's high position on the party list assured him of a seat in Parliament.
Brash immediately became National's spokesman on finance, placing 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 were critical of his inexperience in terms of political leadership.
In October 2003, Brash publicly challenged Bill English for the leadership of the National Party. English had gradually lost vital support from within the party, but Brash's victory in a leadership contest against English was 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 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 what has been perceived as "Maori 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 Maori 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, these comments quickly gave National a boost in the polls and apparently indirectly provoked changes of emphasis in Labour's policy agenda.
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.
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 there were 109,000 sole parents on the DPB, costing taxpayers about $1.5 billion a year. He noted that since its inception in 1974, the population of New Zealand had increased by 30% while the number of parents on 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, join job-training schemes or perform community service, once their children have 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. Furthermore, he mentioned mothers who had additional children while already on the DPB but did not explicitly say whether there would be any penalties for this. From the general tone of the speech it was clear that he considered this a significant part of the problems of the DBP.
Shortly after this speech, the National Party Welfare Spokesperson Katherine Rich lost her position due to a policy conflict.
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
- Main article: New Zealand general election, 2005
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. This was attributed to a series of announcements of new spending programs by Labour, and to confusion as to whether National would be able to form a stable coalition government with either New Zealand First or ACT New Zealand.
Brash's advertising strategy: Winning the centre
The National Party advertising campaign was aimed at rebutting arguments brought up by Labour about a variety of themes: Brash's stand on national security issues (he favours greater cooperation with the United States), his commitment to social security programmes (including healthcare), as well as his ideas on the perceived drift towards "racial separatism" dividing Maori from other New Zealanders.
In his first party political broadcast, Brash mentioned a number of events in his life that he believed made him someone more attuned to the political centre ground in New Zealand:
- Registering as a conscientious objector at age 18
- Being the patron of Amnesty International Freedom Foundation
- Partipating in demonstrations against the racially selected South African rugby team touring New Zealand and the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team touring South Africa without Maori team members.
- Doing his own laundry while on foreign trips as Governor of the Reserve Bank.
- Voting for Labour in previous general elections.
The 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[1]. However on the day of the announcement Brash engaged in a televised debate with Clark, where he failed to assertively sell the tax cut message. 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 because it was seen as an excuse and patronising, although his supporters argued that he was merely being courteous.
On 27 August a stolen email showing advice given to Brash during his leadership bid by members of the ACT party and the Business Round Table caused embarassment. Furthermore, National was beset by confusion about its coalition options: New Zealand First was relucant 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 embarrassment for Brash when he initially denied any knowledge of it, but then admitted they had told him they were planning a pamphlet campaign at a meeting some weeks earlier.
The election on 17 September was close 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%, and when the special votes were counted, the gap had widened with Labour taking 41.1% of the vote to National's 39.1%. Dr Brash conceeded defeat on 1 October.
