Don Brash resigned to stand as a list MP for the National Party in the 2002 general election.
58 Facts About Don Brash
2.
Don Brash was ranked high on the party list and so was elected, despite the Bill English-led National Party being heavily defeated.
3.
Don Brash challenged English's leadership position the next year, and was elected head of the party on 28 October 2003.
4.
Don Brash delivered a speech at Orewa on 27 January 2004 that proved controversial, expressing opposition to perceived Maori separatism, through New Zealand's equitable measures designed to benefit them.
5.
Don Brash resigned as party leader on 27 November 2006, and retired from Parliament in February 2007.
6.
On 28 April 2011, Don Brash joined ACT as its leader, replacing Rodney Hide.
7.
Don Brash resigned as leader on the night of the 2011 general election in November due to ACT's poor showing in the election, and its failure to gain any seats apart from its electorate strong-hold of Epsom.
8.
Don Brash was born to Alan Brash, a Presbyterian minister and son of prominent lay leader Thomas Brash, and Eljean Brash, in Whanganui on 24 September 1940.
9.
Don Brash's family moved to Christchurch when he was six.
10.
Don Brash attended Cashmere Primary School and Christchurch Boys' High School before going to the University of Canterbury where he graduated in economics, history and political science.
11.
Don Brash continued his studies in economics, receiving his master's degree in 1961 for a thesis arguing that foreign investment damaged a country's economic development.
12.
In 1964 Don Brash married his first wife, Erica, with whom he had two children.
13.
Don Brash separated from his first wife in 1985 and four months after they were divorced he married Lee.
14.
Don Brash went to Washington, DC in the United States in 1966 to work as an economist for the World Bank.
15.
Don Brash again failed to win the seat at the 1981 general election.
16.
In 1982 Don Brash became managing director at the New Zealand Kiwifruit Authority, which oversaw the export of kiwifruit.
17.
In 1988 Don Brash became governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, a position which he held for the next 14 years.
18.
Barry considered that Brash manipulated public opinion towards neo-liberal economics and gave as examples Brash's advocacy for abolishing the minimum wage and his Hayek Memorial Lecture to the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.
19.
In 1990, Don Brash was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal.
20.
On 26 April 2002, shortly before the 2002 general election, Don Brash resigned as Reserve Bank governor to stand as a candidate for Parliament on the National Party list.
21.
Don Brash immediately joined National's front bench as its spokesman on finance.
22.
In October 2003, Don Brash publicly challenged Bill English for the position of Parliamentary Leader of the National Party.
23.
Don Brash won a caucus vote on 28 October 2003, making him Leader of the National Party Caucus after one year as a Member of Parliament.
24.
Don Brash remained National's finance spokesman, appointing the equally new MP John Key as his deputy finance-spokesman, and eventually appointing Key the primary finance-spokesman after a Caucus reshuffle in August 2004.
25.
On 27 January 2004 Don Brash delivered his first Orewa speech on "Nationhood" at the Orewa Rotary Club, north of Auckland, expressing opposition to perceived "Maori racial separatism" in New Zealand:.
26.
Shortly after the delivery of the Orewa speech, Don Brash fired his Maori Affairs spokesperson Georgina te Heuheu because she would not publicly support his speech.
27.
In 2004, following a political speech given by the Prime Minister Helen Clark inside the Christchurch Cathedral, Don Brash wrote to the dean of the cathedral, Peter Beck.
28.
On 25 January 2005 Don Brash made his third speech to the Orewa Rotary Club.
29.
Don Brash used the speech to highlight his views on both the fiscal and social costs of entrenched welfare-dependency:.
30.
Don Brash proposed a number of ways to reduce welfare dependency and to refocus the DPB back to its original intent of giving aid to single-parent families in need or in danger.
31.
Don Brash acknowledged adoption as an acceptable option, particularly for teenage girls, and drew attention to the growth in numbers of single mothers giving birth to additional children while already receiving the single-parent DPB benefit.
32.
Don Brash questioned whether Maori remained a distinct indigenous group because few "full-blooded" individuals survive.
33.
The National Party advertising campaign aimed at rebutting arguments brought up by Labour about a variety of themes: Don Brash's stand on national security issues, his commitment to social security programmes, as well as his ideas on the perceived drift towards "racial separatism" dividing Maori from other New Zealanders.
34.
Don Brash's party embarked on a targeted billboard-advertising programme, which later won two advertising-industry awards.
35.
Don Brash initially denied National had anything to do with it, but later admitted that the Brethren had told him at a meeting some months earlier that they planned to run a campaign opposing the direction of the Labour Government.
36.
Don Brash has maintained his position that the pamphlet-campaign took place on the Exclusive Brethren's own initiative.
37.
Don Brash took leave on 13 September 2006, to sort out marital troubles.
38.
On Saturday 23 September, Don Brash appeared on Television New Zealand's Agenda news program and acknowledged that he had met with Exclusive Brethren representatives after the 2005 general election.
39.
Don Brash indicated his intention to remain the leader of the National Party and to contest the next election in that role.
40.
Don Brash claimed that the publication of the book did not contribute to his decision to resign as National Party leader.
41.
The book, The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception, details Don Brash's rise to power in the National Party as assisted by an "informal network of people from the right of New Zealand politics", including a number of ACT members.
42.
On Thursday 30 November 2006, just one week after resigning as leader of the party, Don Brash resigned from Parliament after the National Party's new parliamentary leader, John Key, declined to offer him a senior portfolio.
43.
Don Brash set no official date, but he stated he would not return in the new year.
44.
Don Brash then made his valedictory speech on Tuesday 12 December 2006.
45.
On 18 May 2007, Don Brash joined the ANZ National Bank board as Rob McLeod retired from the board to return to his accounting practice.
46.
In late 2008 he was lecturing in economics at the Auckland University of Technology In April 2009 Don Brash was appointed as a director of the electricity grid operator Transpower.
47.
On 28 April 2011 the incumbent leader of the ACT Party, Rodney Hide, announced that he was stepping down as leader in favour of Don Brash who had joined the party that morning.
48.
Don Brash resigned on election night and was later replaced as leader by John Banks.
49.
In September 2016, Don Brash became the spokesperson for a new lobby group called Hobson's Pledge.
50.
The group was formed to oppose what Don Brash has described as Maori favouritism and advocates abolishing the Maori electorates.
51.
On 7 August 2018, Massey University Vice-Chancellor Jan Thomas cancelled Don Brash's talk scheduled for the next day at the university's Palmerston North campus.
52.
Don Brash cited safety issues regarding Brash's support for the alt-right Canadian activists Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux's Auckland tour and his leadership of the Hobson's Pledge advocacy group, which has advocated the abolition of the Maori wards.
53.
Don Brash said too she "supported free speech on campus, but totally opposed hate speech".
54.
Don Brash criticised her decision as a threat to free speech.
55.
Don Brash later received a second invitation and delivered a speech on the campus on 17 October 2018, where fewer than 100 students were reported to attend.
56.
Don Brash voted for the decriminalisation of both prostitution and euthanasia, voted against raising the drinking age back up to 20 and voted against Manukau banning street prostitution.
57.
Don Brash voted against the Civil Unions Bill because he backed a public mandate for any change to the law.
58.
In March 2013, Don Brash joined the debate over the future of Auckland, saying land needed to be freed up for residential zoning so house prices would come down, at odds with Mayor Len Brown's plan to stop urban sprawl and build the city upwards.