Where are they now?... former MP Peter Simpson | Canterbury News | Local News in Canterbury

Peter Simpson left the political scene in 1990 and has never regretted the decision.

Sixty-two-year-old Simpson, who now lives in Auckland with his wife Helen, was Labour's Lyttelton MP from 1987 until 1990 ? when the party lost power in one of the country's worst political defeats.

While he enjoyed his one-term foray at the frontline of New Zealand politics, he thinks the return to his academic career was the best decision he could have made.

"In politics you more or less know what is going to happen to you. I probably would have got elected again in 1993, but I would have lost in 1996.

"That was the year MMP came in and Lyttelton was expanded to take in Banks Peninsula. It was a much more marginal seat. It would have been too late to resume my university career, so it was a wise decision in retrospect," Simpson said.

His academic career, however, has continued to grow in strength each year.

"I'm not a narrow academic. I work on a broad field and look at inter-disciplinary study, working in visual arts as well as literary pursuits," Simpson said.

He spent two years in Christchurch "between jobs" doing a myriad of different things including running a food bank and writing a non-fiction book on New Zealand art and literature, after losing the Lyttelton seat by 55 votes.

He headed north after being offered a job with the University of Auckland in the English Department, where he started in 1993. At first he was based at a campus in the eastern suburbs, but moved to the city site in 2000. On February 1 he will start a three-year stint as head of department.

Although no longer active in politics in a practical way, Simpson follows the political scene closely from a distance. He is still deeply committed to New Zealand, but feels the best contribution he can now make is through his writing, teaching, curating and scholarship.

"Such activities seldom achieve radical change but they do contribute, I hope, to understanding better the country's history and culture, and to fostering intelligent appreciation of its strengths and weaknesses."

Simpson said he found his involvement in politics enjoyable and stimulating.

"One aspect of it I especially enjoyed was the chance to work with a diverse group of broadly like-minded people from all sorts of backgrounds such as I found in the Lyttelton electorate."

However, if Don Brash was to become prime minister and began initiating racially divisive policies he "might well feel compelled to become active again", he quipped.

Simpson is also editor of Holloway Press, the university's small printing unit, producing limited editions of high quality books, and he has several of his own research projects on the go.

#The Christchurch Star runs a regular series of profiles of once-high profile people who are now out of the limelight.