By Jeremy Elwood

Oh, how joyful it is to witness the spectacle of two people fulfilling part of their destinies and entering a new, uncharted stage of their lives.

I’m not talking about the Royal Wedding, either - frankly I find weddings dull even when I personally know the participants, never mind when you throw in a few hours of watching a horse parade – but rather the show put on this week by Don Brash and his blushing Hide.

Comically, Hide has been a source of so much material for so long now that I genuinely feel a little sad to see him go. 

The proudly dancing, perk-busting, perk-taking, perma-tanned wonder was a beacon of character in the post-Winston wasteland, and his ability to dig out bit players like David Garrett and Hilary Calvert only made me like him more.

So it’s with a sense of loss that I farewell him, whilst acknowledging that he has inadvertently provided me with, at least on paper, a more than capable replacement, Dr Donald Thomas Brash. In terms of creating the kind of headline-grabbing political furore which has sustained ACT for so long, Brash’s past indicates that he is up to the challenge. Orewa, the Exclusive Brethren, race-based immigration, 2025, extra-marital issues, “The Hollow Men” – if he’s got anything to compete with even one of these, he’ll do fine.

If you want a bit of insight into the man, you can do worse than watch the Campbell Live interview he did on April 27th.

In it, he makes two statements that seem to indicate the kind of beliefs he holds. Firstly, in lambasting the current Government for spending $300 million per week, he breaks that down to “$300 per family.”

So, given our population of $4 million, he’s indicating that a “family” consists of 4 people, presumably Mum, Dad and one of each offspring? That’s not even the norm in TV sitcoms anymore, never mind the real world.

Giving him the benefit of it simply being a catchy comparison, he went on to talk about his chances of pushing ACT over the 5 percent threshold by reminding us that he was the man who garnered “39 point something percent” of the vote in 2005.

Um, actually the figure was 39.10 percent, and those votes were for the National Party, rather than Brash himself. It was a big gain for National, but it’s worth remembering that it was the Labour party’s second term, and the cracks were beginning to show – the Maori party were in the race for the first time, National had made good headway on the issues of Kiwisaver, Working for Families, and the “Pledge Card” funding smokescreen.

ACT are reeling from more than just Rodney Hide, and it’s hard to fathom a change at the top can radically alter their fortunes in the next few months.

So for voters, you now have a new option on the table – two actually. If you really do support the fundamentals of ACT policy, but honestly think their fumbling self-destruction of the last year or two is all the fault of Hide, then you can try again under new management.

And if you’re really opposed to ACT and all that they stand for, well between Hide, Brash and the entire ACT list, this election gives you a chance to kill three birds with one stone.