In Australia, his children's songs, co-written with Peter Dasent, have become popular through the ABC show Play School and recordings by the singer and its host Justine Clarke.
The couple moved back to NZ in 1985 where Baysting wrote scripts for the production company The Gibson Group, including the satirical sketch series Public Eye and the tele-feature Undercover (featuring a very young Cliff Curtis).
[5] He worked for several years at the Auckland Medical School, with Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and through this met Labour back-bencher Helen Clark and became her electorate press secretary.
Later (with Dyan Campbell and Margaret Dagg) he edited Making Policy Not Tea (Oxford University Press), a book of interviews with women MPs.
The 1999 Endangered Species conference bought in experts from Ireland and Australia and put the issue of local radio and television content on to the political agenda.
The campaign found an ally in Helen Clark who went on to become the first NZ Prime Minister to hold the arts portfolio and who ushered in a remarkable period in New Zealand's cultural growth.
[7] In 2008, Baysting and his family travelled to Tahiti, where his partner Jean Clarkson was part of a group exhibition by women descendants of the Tahitians who sailed to Pitcairn Island with the Bounty mutineers.
Artists who have recorded his songs include Al Hunter, Alex Papps, Anne Kirkpatrick, Bamboo, Beaver, Boh Runga, the Cafe at the Gate of Salvation, Che Fu, the Crocodiles, Chanelle Davis, Dragon, Fane Flaws, Forbidden Joe, Glenn Moffat, Hot Cafe, I Am Joe's Music, Jenny Morris (1980, "Tears"),[5] King Kapisi, Kokomo, Linn Lorkin, the Living Hamsters, Marg Layton, Midge Marsden, Neville Purvis, Tony Backhouse and the Umbrellas.
At the 2013 Silver Scroll Awards, Lorde's producer and co-writer Joel Little paid tribute to Baysting for helping at various stages in his career beginning with a songwriting workshop at his school when Little was 10 years old.
[11][failed verification][5] In 2013, Justine Clarke's Little Day Out, featuring his songs, won Best Children's Album at the Australian ARIA music industry awards.