New Zealand Energy Resources – Amy Yalland
In 1976 Sanitarium released a set of 20 cards in their cereal boxes showing images of notable ‘New Zealand Energy Resources’. A complete collection of these cards was found in a bric-a-brac shop off the main road into Keri Keri. Eighteen of the 20 cards are shown here. In New Zealand in the mid 1970s, the country was still suffering from the 1973 energy crisis. With high inflation rates and the loss of our biggest export market Britain to the E.E.C., the economy was in dire straits. The Robert Muldoon-led National government began to try to remedy this situation with the interventionist state economic strategy nicknamed ‘Think Big’. These cards can be seen as a domestic manifestation of the country’s—or at least this government’s—preoccupation with the salvation narrative of achieving independent national energy production.
