Rodney Philip Hide was born in Oxford in Canterbury. His father, Philip Hide, owned a small mixed-farm at Cust and also drove trucks. In 1960, due to sickness, Philip Hide sold the small farm and moved to Rangiora, continuing to drive trucks until his retirement. Rodney Hide attended Rangiora High School, before gaining a degree in zoology and botany from the University of Canterbury.

Many people had known for some time that Hide saw himself as a potential parliamentary leader of the ACT party, and he himself showed no reluctance in saying so. At several points, rumours circulated that Hide planned to challenge party leader Richard Prebble for his position, although such a challenge never emerged. When Prebble eventually announced his retirement, his critics claimed that this had been brought about by secret campaigning by Hide. However, Prebble himself has denied this claim and it appears more likely that he stood down for personal reasons, as he publicly claimed.  When Prebble announced his retirement, Hide quickly indicated that he would seek the caucus leadership. Prebble, however, appeared unenthusiastic about the prospect of Hide succeeding him, and in a speech praising each of the new leadership contenders, pointedly dwelled on the others. The succession method chosen by Prebble also appeared to disfavour Hide: rather than a simple caucus vote, which a conventional leadership challenge would have called, a four-way election involved all ACT party members (although the election remained only "indicative"). Many people consider that the party organisation, in which Douglas has considerable influence, dislikes Hide.  Hide campaigned against Stephen Franks, Ken Shirley, and Muriel Newman for the ACT party parliamentary leadership. In the race he claimed that his high public profile and his image of strength would prove crucial to ACT's political survival. Stephen Franks, seen as the primary "anti-Hide" candidate and a social conservative, had the backing of Roger Douglas. In the end, however, Hide prevailed, and the party introduced Hide as its new leader on 13 June 2004.  Under Hide's leadership, the vote in the September 2005 elections severely reduced ACT's party parliamentary representation. ACT's share of the party vote dropped from over 7% of the total in 2002 to around 1.5%; its representation in Parliament fell from nine MPs to two. Despite this reduction, the party remained in parliament due to Hide winning the Epsom seat. As a consequence of its reduced share of the vote, ACT received a significant cut in taxpayer-funded Parliamentary resourcing and Hide shifted his electorate office in Remuera to Newmarket, the same location as that of ACT's head office.  As a post-election strategy, Rodney Hide focused on his high-profile attacks on prominent Labour Party MPs. His campaign against alleged abuse of schoolchildren by Labour Party minister David Benson-Pope, which was verified by the now grown children involved, continued to make headlines in late 2005. In 2006, Hide voiced speculation on the leadership cadre of the National Party (then led by Don Brash), a strategy which gained him headlines but complicated the once co-operative relationship between ACT and National.

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