Later, he was a founding member of ACT New Zealand and some years later joined the National Party to help oppose Winston Peters in Tauranga.

[3] He made potential enemies through defending high-profile criminals and his controversial policies as a politician, and once revealed that he kept a pump-action shotgun under his bed for personal protection.

In the following year, he returned to Palmerston North and continued as a partner with Loughnan, de Cleene & Co until his election to Parliament.

Proby deer stalking and trespassed Crown land in the Tangimoana forest, for which he was fined £5; the Municipal Corporations Act 1908 required elected members committed of an offence that is punishable by imprisonment to resign.

Elwood achieved 58% of the vote, but de Cleene was elected as a councillor and served until 1976, when he moved away from Palmerston North.

[2] De Cleene first stood for Parliament in the 1969 general election in the Pahiatua electorate against the Prime Minister, Keith Holyoake.

The political novice had no chance to unseat the incumbent in the election, was aware of it and was not interested in entering Parliament at that point anyway: "I was too young and with a wife and kids.

[3] One biographer describes his as being restless during that period, trying to break his political links with his home town Palmerston North.

De Cleene was the most experienced Labour candidate who put his name forward for selection, and despite concerns about his often controversial nature, he was nominated by the party.

The candidate put forward by National was his old foe Brian Elwood, with whom he had worked on the Palmerston North City Council for many years, and against whom he lost the mayoralty contest in 1974.

[5] De Cleene won the 1984 election, called early by Robert Muldoon, with an increased majority over National's candidate, Colleen Singleton.

[2] De Cleene was a supporter of Rogernomics, and in 1984 when the Fourth Labour Government was elected he was appointed undersecretary to Minister of Finance Roger Douglas with responsibility for the IRD.

[8] In 1990, de Cleene was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Medal,[9] and in the 1991 New Year Honours he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for public services.

In 1996, he then joined the National Party so that he could support Katherine O'Regan with the attempted unseating of Winston Peters from the Tauranga electorate.

[11] Clark said that: While being political adversaries on opposite sides of the Parliamentary House, Muldoon was fond of him on a personal level.