[3] He wrote his MSc thesis on such matters as land titles on Hauraki Gulf islands.

[11] He intended to retire after two terms but changed his mind in June 2019, announcing he would contest the 2019 Auckland elections.

[15][16] In what was considered one of the biggest upsets of the 2022 Auckland elections, Lee defeated Coom by a margin of 1161 votes and became the councillor for Waitematā and Gulf once again.

[18] Lee completed an MSc thesis entitled New Zealand the 10,000 island archipelago at the University of Auckland in 1996 – it has not been published.

[19] He spent 12 years researching and writing Navigators & Naturalists: French Exploration of New Zealand and the South Seas (1769–1824), which was published in 2018.