By WARREN GAMBLE
The hat, the moustache, the loud voice - Dover Samuels has never been one to stay unnoticed.
His humble origins in one of the remotest spots in the country, the small Maori coastal settlement of Matauri Bay in Northland, have not stopped him making his mark.
But since taking his seat at the cabinet table, he has had the wobbles.
And now he faces his biggest challenge, over allegations from Act leader Richard Prebble of sexual impropriety 15 years ago.
In Parliament yesterday he spoke emphatically and emotionally in Maori and English to deny the claims.
Dover Samuels was born Dover Hamiora in the remote Northland east coast bay, 24km north-east of Kaeo, in 1939.
An English schoolteacher, the only Pakeha in Matauri Bay, helped with the birth and, in recognition, his parents gave him the name of her home town.
His Maori surname was Anglicised to Samuels by his primary school teacher in an era when speaking Maori at school was punished by canings.
He grew up with his two elder brothers in a dirt-floored whare, bordering the one kilometre of white sand and the blue waters which provided the community's fishing lifeblood.
The same seas killed his father, Arthur, when Dover was nine. During a storm, the lifelong fisherman - who could not swim - set out to rescue a Scottish family marooned on the Cavalli Islands, 4km away.
"I remember crying because I wanted to go with him, but a wave carried the boat out of reach," Mr Samuels recalled in a 1983 interview.
"He called to me 'next time'."
Arthur Hamiora's overturned boat was found, but his body was never recovered.
His mother, Queenie Apiata, took over the daily fishing to provide for her family and then raise money so her son could take up a scholarship at Northland College.
He remembered the humiliation of his first school meal, when he incurred the scorn of his classmates for laying aside the alien knife and fork and eating with his hands.
From there he joined the Air Force as a mechanic, eventually based at Whenuapai, before succumbing to the "call of the wild."
He was part of the exodus of Maori entertainers to Sydney, joining bands such as the Polynesians, the Quintikis, and the Volcanics.
After working as a diver killing pest starfish and working on underwater videos, he went to Queensland's Gold Coast where he worked his way into ownership of a nightclub-cabaret.
As "Shane" Samuels, he entertained the Surfers Paradise night set with his guitar and songs.
He also met his Australian wife, Jacqui, an executive secretary.
After 21 years in Australia, Matauri Bay lured him back in 1987.
Its tribal owners were struggling under increasing debts, so he pushed plans to expand the camping ground and attract more tourists, and encouraged absentee owners to return and build houses.
He and his wife opened a motel which has been expanded into a 42-bed beachfront resort.
Mr Samuels said the trigger for his political career was Pakeha encroachment on Maori fishing and land. In his campaign against commercial trawling, he filmed underwater for evidence of wastage, and sunk car bodies into the sea to rip nets.
In an interview in Mana magazine this year, he recalled raising such issues at his first meeting after being elected to the Whangaroa County Council. The council chairman, a longtime farming identity, told him to "wake his ideas up. Now go outside and stand in the corner."
"I told him, 'You didn't put me here. You can get stuffed. You go outside if you want to'."
Mr Samuels has served on local, district and regional councils for 15 years. He has been a staunch Labour Party worker for many years, becoming the party's Maori vice-president and entering Parliament as a list MP in 1996.
As the senior Labour Maori MP, he was the inevitable choice as Maori Affairs minister after the Labour-Alliance coalition took power last year. But problems quickly followed.
Prime Minister Helen Clark vetoed the appointment of a disgraced former union official to his office as an adviser. Then, in February, he made conflicting statements over whether his leader should go to Waitangi on Waitangi Day.
Next, he became entangled in an employment dispute over the sacking of his press secretary, former television reporter Jodi Ihaka.
Again, Act leader Richard Prebble fired the shots, claiming Mr Samuels verbally abused Ms Ihaka, giving her grounds for a personal grievance claim.
Mr Samuels was also forced to issue a correction over how Maori would become involved in the sale of a high-frequency broadcasting spectrum after his views differed from those of acting Communications Minister Trevor Mallard.
Mr Samuels' emphatic personality has admirers and detractors, but the word most commonly used to describe him yesterday was a "character."
An elder of his Nga Puhi tribe, Graham Rankin, said regardless of how people felt personally about Mr Samuels, he had done the proper thing by standing down until the allegations were investigated.
Mr Rankin said Mr Samuels had not yet delivered in his ministerial role despite "making a lot of noises."
"He's a man that goes out and he's able to make friends, and that's about all. People love him or hate him."
Mr Samuels has said he is not a Maori sovereignty advocate. "I believe our people are better off making changes from the inside."
It is a moderate approach which has not endeared him to some Maori, but after yesterday's events even critics such as Mr Rankin to some extent rallied behind him and against Mr Prebble.
'I have been covered in vile' claims Samuels