New MPs: John Hayes

John Hayes

Former diplomat John Hayes passed up the job as New Zealand's Ambassador to Moscow to pursue a career in politics.

"Moscow would have been an interesting and a nice thing to have done, but I thought I had had my turn and it was time to see if I could re-inject my background, my skills, my experiences into the community," said the former Ambassador to Iran, and High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea and Pakistan.

Last October the 57-year-old won the National candidacy for Wairarapa and began campaigning full-time to wrest the seat from Labour, which had held it for the past six years.

It was an enormous task but Mr Hayes is a man used to tough assignments (he is credited with initiating the peace talks in Bougainville).

"I spent 30 years of my life representing New Zealand off-shore," he said.

"If you see things going wrong at home and you start to think of your kids and your grandkids ... you either bitch about it or you get off your bum."

Mr Hayes, who is married with two adult children who are both lawyers, visited nearly every corner of the electorate, meeting people, giving speeches and raising his profile. "I used to measure what I was doing by how many people I met per kilometre," he said.

"Some days it would be 10km per person, and you would really have to have some stickability to stay doing it."

In 2002 Labour MP Georgina Beyer (who was a list candidate at this election) won the seat with a majority of 6372. Last weekend My Hayes reversed that and won with an election night majority of 2537.

"I have watched the quality of representation here [in the Wairarapa] over for the last six years," he said.

"I thought these people are being let down: let's see what we can do about it."

Mr Hayes, who has owned property in Greytown since 1997, said his electorate was his main concern.

He did not have his eyes on roles such as foreign affairs spokesman for National - at this stage.