KEY POINTS:
Departing Labour MP Dover Samuels is going to Australia after the election, but denies he will be contributing to the brain drain.
"I've got no brains. How can I be part of the brain drain when I've been a politician for years, which shows I have no brains?"
Mr Samuels, 68, plans to live in Australia for six months of each year to run a diving and fishing charter with his son, a marine mechanic.
He has also bought investment property on the Gold Coast after selling his Matauri Bay motel - reportedly for just under $4 million - a couple of years ago.
Although he has an "affinity" with Australia, where he lived when he was younger, he will return to his Matauri Bay home over summer.
"To me, going to Australia doesn't undermine my aroha for our country."
He said he has become a "younger kaumatua" and with that comes painful knees.
"When I'm in a milder climate like the Gold Coast, I don't suffer those kaumatua pains so I can still swim and dive."
Another was his family. His son and daughter - in their early 20s - are in Australia.
"I've been involved in local and central politics for 40 years and over that time my children have become strangers to me."
There may also be a book on the life and times of Dover Samuels.
He says it will look at his political life as well as "where I came from".
"I was born in a nikau hut. We didn't have any money, but we were very happy. The house had a nikau roof and raupo walls. There are replicas of the kind of house I was brought up [in] in the bloody museums now and I think of that sometimes. And then I end up in this 'loony tune' sanatorium in Wellington."
Mr Samuels was a Labour loyalist who was Maori Affairs minister in 1999 but was forced to stand down in 2002 during an investigation into allegations of historical sex crimes.
He was cleared and regained ministerial status until last year's Cabinet reshuffle, after he agreed to leave at this years's election.
