[3] After five years in Australia, Hayter joined the Victorian registrar-general's department in 1857 and gave particular attention to the statistics of the colony.
Towards the end 1872, he spent a short holiday in New Zealand, where he investigated, at the request of the Government, the working of the Registrar-General's department, and made suggestions for its improvement.
In 1875 a conference of Australian statisticians met at Hobart, to consider setting up uniform methods of handling official statistics.
He edited and wrote most of a "Precis of Information on the Colony of Victoria, and its Capabilities for Defence" for the Intelligence Department of the War Office in 1877.
He had conducted the census in Victoria in 1871 and 1881, and had found that a departure by any one colony from the established practice of the others made it quite impossible to deal with some statistics for the whole of Australia.