A decade on reference works described the resulting furore as a milestone in New Zealand's political history.
Who'd have thought this bloke who's so darn "ordinary" (we use the term in the nicest possible way) could possibly have been so provocative?
Well, he was, and makes no apology for it, nor does he resile from his 2004 Anzac Day dawn parade address at Ohinemutu, slamming the Clark government for its intention to circumvent his findings by vesting the seabed and foreshore in the Crown.
His views haven't softened, telling Our People this reaction was on a par with Mugabe's Zimbabwe land-grab. "He took land without compensation, here it was the colonists putting the boot into tangata whenua also without compensation."
But Ken Hingston's no hot-headed seditionist. He's twice served Queen and country in the jungles of Malaya at the height of the communist incursion, carrying the rank of Corporal 1st class. There's a twinkle in his eye as he reminds us Hitler and Muldoon were corporals.
A lot of twinkling and laughter goes on as we traverse a life story he'd be the last to call impressive.
"I was a bloody good bulldozer driver," is the closest you'll get to pinging Ken Hingston for boasting.
Raised on his whanau's Horohoro farm, his first wage packet came from bulldozing,
He was 18 and making tubs at Firth Concrete when his Compulsory Military Number (CMT) number came up. For this master of the understatement the experience was sufficiently "okay" for him to agree to sign on full time, but that had to wait until he was 20.
He filled the gap skinning sheep at Hawke's Bay and South Island freezing works.
For Ken, Malaya's jungle warfare was all about 'running around in the bush and getting malaria real bad'. "Us Kiwi fullas were used to pig hunting in the bush, the Brits weren't" . . . there's that twinkle again.
After two tours of duty he enrolled at Victoria University's law faculty. "The first year was very hard, I wasn't used to writing long essays."
Once he got the hang of it he coupled studies with legal work at the railways and Ministry of Works. By the time he graduated he was the Defence Ministry's assistant solicitor.
His first fulltime job was debt collecting "and very minor criminal stuff" for prominent Wellington practitioner Olive Smutts-Kennedy.
Returning to Rotorua in 1969, one of his initial assignments was defending at a Waiouru court martial, present Rotorua district court judge Chris McGuire acted "for the other side".
Criminal cases began to come his way. "A lot of the other lawyers weren't keen on the murders so I took them on."
He was defence counsel at the first Rotorua High Court trial, an infanticide, in 1971 "and managed to keep her [the accused] out of jail".
It was inevitable he'd make enemies. "There was this woman I got off murder who'd carved up a taxi driver, one night I caught a cab and all the way home the driver slagged off 'that effing Hingston', when I got out I said 'by the way I'm that effing Hingston", you should have seen his face."
He was in the midst of a homicide trial when his wife, Niki, suffered a fatal asthma attack, she was 35 and left him with four children to raise.
Respected educationalist Jeanette Makoha became his second wife. Recently back from her OE she was working as a Lake House barmaid when Ken asked for a date.
"I knew her face but had to look her name up on our files, I'd done a lot of land court work for her father." Together they've produced a family of four, that's counting a stillborn twin.
They're devoted, calling each other "Mum" and "Dad", giggling when we remark on it. "It's just the way we are," insists the man who not so long ago was addressed as "Your Honour".
His Niue and Cook Island appointments were in tandem with his Maori Land Court work.
"In the Cooks I had a big election case, finding the wrong people had been allowed to vote for Prime Minister, Robert Wootten. I delivered my judgment disqualifying him on a Saturday morning, was going to spend the weekend there but the Justice Secretary said 'you're going home judge, there could be trouble', there wasn't."
He made history by winding up the Cooks' longest running land ownership case. "It began in 1908, I finalised it in 2010, the [New Zealand] Appeal Court overturned it because they [judges] didn't know anything about Maori or Island land."
Ken does; should he enter Mastermind it'd be his specialist topic.
KEN (HETA) HINGSTON
Born: Rotorua, 1938.
Education: Horohoro Native School, Whangamarino Primary, Rotorua High School, St Stephen's College, Victoria University.
Whanau: Wife Jeanette Makoha, nine children (from two marriages), 13 "or 14" moko, one tuarua (great moko).
Interests: Whanau, politics "international, national, local", fishing, reading "Westerns, but I gobble up the written word", the RSA, following the
All Blacks
Iwi affiliations: Tuwharetoa, Whanau a Apanui.
Philosophy: "Do it, get it done."
