 Hunter was active in community politics at university, becoming president of the Flinders University Gay Society and later going on to help found the South Australian AIDS Action Committee.He was involved in a variety of campaigns in the LGBT community, including a successful move to have sexuality included as a grounds for discrimination in 1986.Following his graduation Hunter worked as a research assistant in the Department of Clinical Immunology at the Flinders Medical Centre, later serving as an advisor to the federal government and as Labor South Australian State Secretary.