Robert Muldoon campaigning, 1981

The 1975, 1978 and 1981 election campaigns were largely dominated by the self-assured, combative presence of National Party leader Robert Muldoon. One of the relatively few New Zealand politicians who appeared comfortable in television during the 1970s, he was equally adept at addressing large or small public meetings, even when faced with a hostile audience – as in this photograph, taken in Upper Hutt during the bitterly contested 1981 campaign.