Hayton, Max

MAX HAYTON up at the buildings

From The Listener 29th June 1976

JUST BECAUSE Parliament was in recess for half a year doesn't mean to say that there wasn't a lot going on up at "The Buildings" as Max Hayton, one of two reporters who patrol the parliamentary beat for TV2 can vouch. He describes the place as seething with events — the mini-budget, the wage freeze, an interview with the Prime Minister, sitting in with the latest deputation to this or that Minister, supplying material for the six o'clock news as well as News at Ten.

Max Hayton, who quite firmly describes himself as number two to Eleanor Roy on the team, came to The Buildings by a fairly logical route — via the journalism course at Wellington Polytech in 1970. The following year. giving in to what he describes as his sense of the perverse. he went to the Waimati Daily Advertiser as its resident one man band — reporting. taking photographs. even selling advertising — and getting a good rounded introduction to the trade.

From grass roots. rural New Zealand be moved to NZBC radio news at 3ZC Timaru, reporting on activities in South Canterbury. Moving steadily back up north, he went to Christchurch, still in radio news but with a nibble at television, then back to Wellington in time for the 1975 start of Parliament as a press gallery reporter for Radio New Zealand. Six months later he joined TV2 and after one session of Parliament and another just started. At 27 be regards himself as still a new boy with a lot of time to log up before he gets the real feel of the place.

To Max Hayton, Parliament is a fascinating arena where even an average day is always good theatre.