 He had conducted the census in Victoria in 1871 and 1881, and had found that a departure by any one colony from the established practice of the others made it quite impossible to deal with some statistics for the whole of Australia.He had intended retiring in 1890 but at the request of the government conducted the 1891 census.Hayter wrote several works including "Notes of a Tour in New Zealand", "Notes on the Colony of Victoria", a short history and a geography of Victoria for use in Victorian State schools, and of a "Handbook to the Colony of Victoria", as well as a "Nosological Index" used throughout Australasia for classifying the causes of death.