Early Life
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. Hide gained a degree in zoology and botany from the University of Canterbury. After completing his degree, he travelled overseas, eventually finding himself in Scotland. He worked for some time on oil rigs in the North Sea. Hide eventually returned to New Zealand by way of Romania, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. In Malaysia he re-met Jiuan Jiuan, with whom he had shared a house in Christchurch - the two married in 1983 (in 2007 they separated). After returning to New Zealand, Hide gained a degree in resource management from Lincoln College, Canterbury. He then took up a teaching position at Lincoln, first in resource management and later in economics. He completed his master's degree in economics from Montana State University with a thesis on New Zealand's transferable fishing quotas.
In 1993, Alan Gibbs, an Auckland businessman, offered Hide a job as an economist. He accepted, and also began working at a radio station owned by Gibbs. Later, Hide also met Roger Douglas, a former Minister of Finance whose radical economic reforms had made a considerable impression on him.
When Douglas established the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (which later formed the ACT party), Hide had close involvement as the organisation's first chairman and president.
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