Old tricks

Promises Promises: 80 Years of Wooing New Zealand Voters

Claire Robinson

Massey University Press, $59.99

Reading Promises Promises: 80 Years of Wooing New Zealand Voters, I found it impossible not to wonder whether Dr Claire Robinson has expertly documented an era of mass political communication that is coming to an end in the internet age.

It is a “visual history of New Zealand politics” told primarily through striking reproductions of newspaper advertisements, flyers, manifestos, pamphlets and posters, some stills from television broadcasts, and a scattering of very recent internet ads.

Political advertising speaks through metaphor, and New Zealand parties have developed a particular dialect in making their pitches to the electorate: wellbeing is depicted as families on beaches, for example; economic progress in the 80s was shown by pitches in corporate boardrooms, and in the 2000s by hard hats and hi-vis.

Even seemingly concrete issues are often little more than symbolic shorthand. A National campaign