Hugh Templeton

Hugh Campbell Templeton QSO AO (born 24 March 1929) is a former New Zealand diplomat, politician and member of parliament for the National Party.

Templeton was born in Wyndham, Southland, in 1929. He was educated at Gore High School, King's High School, the University of Otago, and then as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford University. He married Russian-born New Zealand novelist Natasha Templeton in Wellington in 1961.

His brother, Malcolm, was a Foreign Service officer who represented New Zealand at the United Nations. His twin brother Ian is a veteran press gallery journalist and author.

From 1954 to 1969 Templeton served with the New Zealand Department of External Affairs, first in London, and then in Wellington, before going as the last Deputy High Commissioner of Western Samoa to prepare specially for independence and then to New York to assist secure Samoa's post independence aid programmes, under Guy Powles. From 1965 to 1969 Templeton served in Wellington working on Asian and European and Defence affairs, before being elected to Parliament.

Templeton was elected as MP for Awarua in Southland in 1969. However, he lost the electorate in the 1972 election to Labour's Aubrey Begg. From 1972–1975, he was executive assistant to the Leaders of the Opposition, Jack Marshall and then Robert Muldoon. Templeton was re-elected to Parliament in 1975 for the Wellington electorate of Karori. The electorate was renamed Ohariu and was represented by Templeton until 1984, when he was defeated by Peter Dunne, then a member of the Labour Party. His friend and diplomatic colleague Chris Beeby commented on Templeton's election losses as follows:

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