Features

Rodney Hide: Great. I loved it.

Was the atmosphere everything you expected? Were you nervous?

You've always talked about how Dancing with the Stars changed your life. Is "New Rodney" still around now or has that phase ended? With the whole Winston Peters donations debacle now, are we beginning to see a bit of "Old Rodney" seep in?
Possibly. I'm doing it a different way, in the sense that I'm not being especially loud or aggressive on it. But what I am being is tough and asking tough questions. And no one else is willing to prosecute the issue in parliament and I find that appalling. Because on the face of it, we've had large sums of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars go into secretive accounts and the same people have been seeking consulships and indeed, the same industry has received tax concessions and handouts. It looks bad and the only way to keep New Zealand corruption-free, is when there is a wiff of this, put in a proper investigation. And the Labour government isn't keen to because they need Winston to get through their last remaining Budget vote and National's not prepared to because they think he might get five percent of the party vote and maybe five percent of New Zealanders who don't care about Winston telling pork-pies. And he'll get in with a deal with them. Well, I think the country's honesty and integrity matters more than that, than you know, just doing a deal, and that we need to do the right thing. And in a way I guess, that is what Act is about.