Don Brash was Governor of the Reserve Bank of NZ for 14 years before leaving the post in 2002 to enter Parliament. He became leader of Opposition and the National Party in 2003, and edged, but did not beat, the incumbent Labour Party at the 2005 election. He then went into academia before leading ACT New Zealand into the 2011 election, resigning from that role on election night. As well as a number of directorships and other roles, in 2016 Brash became the spokesperson for a new lobby group called Hobson's Pledge, a group formed to oppose what Brash has described as Maori favoritism and to advocate abolishing the Maori electorates. He has weighed into the debate about the use of Te Reo in the past few weeks, saying he's "utterly sick" of the use of the language by RNZ reporters and presenters.