[23][24] The election for the Superintendent of Auckland Province was held in November 1873 and was won by the veteran politician, John Williamson, with Lusk attracting the least number of votes of three candidates.

In a report of the election results it was noted that "Lusk had all the dead weight of the education tax to carry, but may justly pride himself on having secured a large support with very little expenditure, employing hardly any canvassers, and having the confidence of a great proportion of the most respectable electors".

[25][26] By November 1875 Lusk was being mooted as a candidate for the Franklin electorate, a rural district south of Auckland, at the forthcoming general election.

His stated reason was monetary considerations, claiming that he "was sacrificing his business to politics, and it was incumbent on him to study his own and his family's personal interests".

[31] In an editorial in the Auckland Star, reporting his resignation, it was said of Lusk: "While endowed with considerable intellectual talent and conspicuously industrious, the retiring member lacks that sincerity and depth of conviction, and that enthusiasm which fits a man for great undertakings".

[33] In about December 1885 Lusk travelled to Samoa in an attempt to enforce a legal claim, on behalf of a man named Cornwall, upon parcels of land (totalling ten thousand acres) on the main islands of Upolu and Savai'i, then in possession of McArthur and Co. Lusk, with two others, travelled by boat from Apia to the village of Fale'ula (on Upolu), intending to take formal possession of the land, but were ordered off by a native chief and two others.

[34] Lusk returned to Samoa in May 1886 as part of the legal team appearing for "a native woman named Maneama", in a case against McArthur and Co., seeking to recover possession of about 250 thousand acres of land.

The case, heard before the Deputy-Commissioner on Samoa, occupied nine days, at the conclusion of which the Court decided in favour of the defendants, "holding that the deed to Manaema did not entitle her to the legal possession of the land".

[37] In early January 1888 Lusk was elected vice-president of the Sydney School of Arts Chess and Draughts Club at their annual meeting.

[42] Louisa Collins was tried for the murder of her second husband in the Sydney Central Criminal Court over three successive days, beginning on 6 August 1888.

In December 1888 the Crown returned to its original case and prosecuted Louisa Collins for the third time for the wilful murder of her second husband.

With a prevailing concern that Lusk was under a disadvantage with no funds to support Louisa's defence, the Premier, Henry Parkes, personally questioned the judge in the fourth trial, the Chief Justice of New South Wales, Sir Frederick Darley, "as to whether the prisoner had been ably defended".

[45][46] In January 1890 Lusk was awarded a £150 prize by the New South Wales Education Department "for the best composition of the first portion of an Australian history for public school use".

[47] In January 1891 the Minister for Public Instruction, Joseph Carruthers, handed Lusk's book of Australian history to a teacher named George Metcalfe, requesting that he "read it carefully and mark any errors".

The writer advocated for political solutions and co-operative enterprises, rather than industrial disputes, as the means of attaining reforms for the working classes.

In the poll held on June 17, John Gillies of the Free Trade Party was elected, with Lusk running last with just 11 percent of the votes.

When asked to explain himself, Lusk claimed the £200 had been used in preparing the case for trial, but "he was unable to give an account of the moneys expended".

An Australian review of the novel was critical of the author's method of describing events through the viewpoints of several characters, leading to "a good deal of repetition" in the narration.

[61] During the 1890s New Zealand developed a reputation "as the social and economic laboratory of the world, a place where solutions to the pressing problems of the age could be tested and perfected for the benefit of people in larger and older countries".

New Zealand had begun to adopt progressive legislative reforms such as women's suffrage, the old-age pension, compulsory arbitration for industrial disputes and the encouragement of small-farm holdings.

[63][64] Articles written by Lusk, many of them on the subjects of political reforms in New Zealand and Australia, were published in magazines such as The North American Review, The Arena, Harper's Weekly and The Forum.

[65] On one occasion Lusk delivered a lecture at the Cooper Union in New York on the subject of Australian and New Zealand political reform.

In his book Our Foes at Home, published in 1899 by Doubleday & McClure of New York, Lusk urged Americans "to adapt antipodean principles to their own needs".

Eureka is an early example of Australian science-fiction, in which an expedition in search of religious manuscripts in the jungles of Ceylon are led to the inland of Australia, where they discover a hidden city inhabited by a "lost race" of descendants of Alexander the Great's army.

[68] In early 1904 a series of five weekly articles were published in the Auckland Star newspaper detailing Lusk's impressions of arriving back in New Zealand after an absence of about twenty years.