[1] Spies attained public prominence as the party's spokesperson on labour, in which capacity he was a vocal critic of affirmative action in South Africa.
[8][9] In August 2008, Spies attracted media attention after he drove some 15 kilometres along the N2 to the Houses of Parliament with a bleeding man holding on to the bonnet of his Mercedes Benz.
[10][11][12] Spies said that, in addition to feeling fear and concern for the man, he had worried that they would be seen by tourists, since, "It does not create a good picture of this country in the minds of those people.
"[13] Weeks after he was elected to a second term in the National Assembly in April 2009, Spies announced that he would resign from legislative politics to return to full-time legal practice.
[2] Through the firm, Spies led a successful application before the Constitutional Court that confirmed the right of overseas citizens to vote in general elections, beginning in 2009.
[15] Prominent cases handled by Spies and his firm included AfriForum's hate speech complaint against politician Julius Malema,[19] which resulted in a ruling that it was unconstitutional and unlawful to sing "Dubul' ibhunu", an anti-apartheid song whose lyrics mean "Shoot the Boer" (where "boer" refers roughly to any Afrikaans-speaking white person) in Nguni languages.