Sir Robert Anster Harvey KNZM QSO (born 24 November 1940) is a New Zealand former advertising executive and politician.

Harvey was an instigator of the great walking trail of New Zealand, Te Araroa, in 1994 with journalist and keen walker Geoff Chapple.

Harvey was also chair of the Park and Wilderness Trust (ARC 1986) to save Auckland's endangered Hamlin's Hill from motorway encroachment and other environmental at risks areas.

[citation needed] He also worked as election strategist to Auckland mayors Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, Dame Catherine Tizard, and Colin Kay.

He also produced The Adventure World of Sir Edmund Hillary, Keep on the Sunny Side, Seasons in Nasby with Warwick Brock and Start Again with Roger Donaldson for television.

[citation needed] His advertising career spanned some of the most creative years in New Zealand advertising[citation needed] and Harvey attracted and worked with some leading edge talent including Dick Frizzell, John Hanlon, Warwick Brock, Grant Marshall, and Rodney Charters (DOP for the TV series 24).

A life member of the New Zealand Labour Party, Harvey served as president from 1999 to 2000, stepping in after the death of Michael Hirschfeld.

[7] While he was president, Labour apologised to a West Auckland family after Harvey lowered his shorts and yelled an obscenity during an argument in public with a long-time adversary in 1999.

[10] He was elected on an environmental platform to manage growth in the Waitākere Ranges and to make Waitakere City the first eco-city in New Zealand.

Others include Rolling Thunder the history of Karekare which won the Montana Books Award's environmental category, Untamed Coast which was a Montana Book Award finalist (3 editions), Wild Beast about painter Dean Buchanan, White Cloud Silver Screen a collection of film scene locations, Spirit of the West with Ted Scott, Iron Bound Coast the memoir of Wally Badham, Westies and (2014) Wild Westie – the incredible life of Bob Harvey, a biography by Hazel Phillips and published by Penguin.

Bob is currently working on the history of the Kakekare Surf Lifesaving Club, of which he is a life member, for its 80th birthday celebration called The Boys of Summer.