Former UN man flies Labour flag in local seat

The Labour Party’s recently selected candidate for North Shore has moved into the electorate, keen to familiarise himself with local issues ahead of the election this year.

And George Hampton believes his international experience at the United Nations, as a senior adviser with a focus on sustainable energy helping combat climate change, also has direct relevance to the challenges residents face here.

“People have told me they are anxious when it rains now,” he said.

Climate change was one of his motivators for getting into politics, along with equity issues. “Events this year have shown us how close we are to the tipping point.”

Hampton and his wife have relocated to Bayswater, with their four-month-old daughter, and are looking to buy locally.

Raised in Christchurch, Hampton has some family pedigree on the North Shore: his mother, Jennie, lived in Takapuna in the 1970s and started a local kindergarten and his grandmother lived in Devonport for 50 years, he said.

Despite spending much of the last decade overseas, Hampton sees his future in New Zealand.

The 41-year-old former diplomat and Fulbright scholar, who spent time as a teaching fellow at Columbia University and also studied at Harvard, is something of a high-flyer to be running in a seat long viewed as safe for National. His selection was uncontested.

Hampton is also a co-owner of the Mr Whippy franchise in New Zealand.

Before being posted to Vienna, then New York, he spent time as a policy adviser to Helen Clark in the run-up to the 2008 election.

He also worked on her unsuccessful bid in 2016 to become United Nations Secretary-General.

He has other Labour Party connections, including through his aunt Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban, a former Minister of Pacific Island Affairs.

Politics and social issues were on the menu for dinner-table conversation growing up as one of seven siblings, he said.

His father is prominent Christchurch defence lawyer Nigel Hampton KC and his mother worked in his father’s law practice.

“Mum and Dad always showed people compassion,” he said.

Although sitting National Party MP Simon Watts holds a comfortable 3734-vote majority, Hampton points out that Labour won the party vote in the seat.

His aim, he says, is to “give people who had a good long look at Labour last time a chance to do so again”.

Hampton said he is in politics for the long haul.

“We as a country are going to face a huge number of challenges in the next 20 years. I want to be part of a party that deals with that in a positive and optimistic way.”

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