Here is the News - 1984 Snap Election Anouncement

Doesn't give my opponents much time to run up to an election, does it.

– An inebriated Robert Muldoon answers reporter Richard Griffin's question

...the morning after he lost the election, Sir Robert was at his desk in the Beehive when the phone rang. Treasury and Reserve Bank officials wanted a meeting. Muldoon refused. They warned him the foreign exchange could not open for trading the next day without an immediate devaluation. Muldoon replied that they could close the exchange if they liked but that the dollar would stay where it was.

– Writer Justin Gregory, in a Radio New Zealand article on the aftermath of the 1984 election, 7 June 2017

During the campaign I edited together the daily, incoherent ramblings of the Prime Minister and dubbed the piece the 'schnapps election', a term that is now frequently used to describe it.

– Journalist Barry Soper remembers the 1984 campaign, NewstalkZB website, 14 June 2019

Known for drinking whiskey, Prime Minister Rob Muldoon was on the brandy and dry the night he called a snap election in 1984. Although the decision to switch tipples was ultimately immaterial in his downfall it stood as a symbol of a man on the edge defiantly floundering his way through political turmoil.

– Writer Matt Stewart on Rob Muldoon's fateful captain's call, The Dominion Post, 27 November 2015