About Andrew Bayly, FRGS

Andrew was first elected to Parliament in the 2014 Election as the National MP for the Hunua Electorate with a majority of 17,376 votes. In 2017, he further increased his majority to 19,443, the third highest in the country. In addition, Hunua was the electorate with the highest National Party vote in New Zealand.

Electorate boundary changes in 2020 saw the Hunua electorate replaced by the newly redrawn Port Waikato electorate. Andrew was re-elected to Parliament at the 2020 Election and again in 2023, when a By-election was required, to represent the people of the Port Waikato electorate, maintaining a large majority vote each time.

Andrew is currently the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing, and Minister of Statistics in the National-led Coalition Government. In the past he has held Opposition portfolios for revenue, small business, manufacturing, commerce & consumer affairs, infrastructure, building & construction, and statistics. He was a Member of the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee from 2014 to 2023, making him the longest continuous serving member of that committee since its establishment.

He was previously Co-Chair of the Middle East/Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group and Co-Chair of the Antarctic Parliamentary Group, which he established in 2019.

Andrew has successfully steered three Member’s Bills through Parliament. The first related to methamphetamine contamination of residential properties, and clarified the rights of owners and tenants. Changes were incorporated into the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill. For the second, he piloted changes to the Arbitration Act which passed through the House unanimously and which significantly enhanced arbitration proceedings and how they are conducted in New Zealand. And thirdly, he steered the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill to being passed, which had been introduced in the previous term of Parliament by former New Zealand First MP Mark Patterson. The bill changed the criteria for New Zealand superannuation so that older migrants, and New Zealanders who spent large portions of their lives overseas, must wait longer to qualify.

Andrew was born in Whanganui into a farming family. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Studies from Massey University and qualified as a chartered accountant. He worked for the Southpac corporate finance team in New Zealand before transferring to London where he worked for a number of years. After returning to New Zealand, he co-founded a merchant bank, offering corporate advisory and capital markets advice to a range of government entities, local authorities and corporate clients. During his corporate career Andrew has been a director of numerous companies.

He is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, the Institute of Managers and Leaders, the NZ Chartered Institute of Corporate Management, and the UK Chartered Association of Certified Accountants. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London.

With his twin brother Paul, he has owned a hill country farm and a range of other businesses, including an award-winning composting and recycling business. Envirofert receives around 40,000 tonnes of green waste and building products every year, and turns most of it into beneficial products, including compost and gypsum. It also has a partnership with Fonterra to process and recycle its waste products.

Formerly an Officer in the New Zealand Territorial Army and British Parachute (TA) Regiment, Andrew also has extensive experience in adventure racing, including competing in three Coast-to-Coast events, marathons and Ironman events. Mountaineering has been another passion and Andrew has scaled many mountain peaks, including Aoraki Mt Cook and Mt Aspiring, and four mountains in Antarctica, including Vinson Massif (the highest mountain in Antarctica), making a first ascent and completing a new route on a third. In the summer of 2012/13, he dragged a sled 120km to the South Pole.

Andrew is married and has three sons, with whom he has shared some epic adventures.

In 2016, Andrew and his eldest son James each dragged a sled 120km across the ice to the North Pole. For Andrew, this accomplished the double of trekking to both poles; it is estimated that only about 150 people in the world have achieved this.

In January 2019, Andrew and his middle son Dan undertook a 500km camel ride through Jordan, retracing the route taken by Colonel T.E. Lawrence and the tribes from the region when they carried out successful military actions against Turkish forces to capture the port city of Aqaba. They were the first people to retrace Lawrence’s journeys since WW1. Their findings were published in the August 2019 edition of the T.E. Lawrence Society journal.

In late December 2022, Andrew travelled to the northernmost province of Mongolia with his third son George to spend time with the Dukha people, one of the last groups of nomadic reindeer herders in the world. They spent two weeks living with a Dukha family, riding reindeer between 20-30km a day, herding the reindeer and protecting them from attacks by wolves. A film crew travelled with them.