Lynch studied at the University of Canterbury where he completed master's degrees in history (1958) and Geography (1962).
[1] Lynch joined the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1964 where he was successively, Careers and Special Projects Office (1969–1971), Deputy High Commissioner in Singapore (1971–1974), and Head of the Asian and Pacific Division in Wellington (1974–1977).
Lynch was Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Transport from 1982 to 1992, a decade during which the whole structure of air, rail, road and sea transport was corporatized and eventually privatised as part of the restructuring of the state sector which occurred in those years in New Zealand.
"It was for his work in assisting the meat industry to rationalize and adjust to a very different commodity chain in the post-subsidy open market conditions of the 1990s that he was made Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in June 2004".
[citation needed] He played a major role in debates about the implications of trade liberalization for New Zealand's food industries.