In the aftermath of the Iraq War, any book on the history of public relations and politics seems almost quaint. That’s not a criticism, because the events and ideas Bridget Griffen-Foley analyses in Party Games: Australian politicians and the media from war to dismissal highlight just how quickly and utterly PR has insinuated itself into the life of politics. Still, it is hard to resist a cynical smile as you read of the then Liberal Party president, R.G. Casey, noting in 1947 that ‘he had learned from an American friend of a new profession called “Public Relations”’. Showing the sort of political prescience that underpinned Robert Menzies’ success, Casey became convinced of the ‘need to create a “favourable atmosphere” to advance one’s causes or interests’. Fast forward to the likes of Alastair Campbell, the head of strategic communications for the Blair government, or even our own Peter Reith, and the naïveté of the immediate post-World War II period seems positively disarming.

But politicians are quick learners, and it did not take Casey long to realise that it was the media that provided the channel to such a favourable atmosphere. He advocated a series of radio talks on non-political subjects, subtly augmented by political publicity. The rest, as they say, is history. From the vantage point of the present, when marketing techniques and opinion polling have mapped out every nook and cranny of political attitudes, Griffen-Foley’s book is a fascinating primer on the symbiotic relationship between politics, the media and PR that has since emerged.