A New Zealand politician can’t name a homegrown novel but Kiwi artists have always conquered the world | Elle Hunt

Ppoliticians are used to being asked tough questions – and voters are already used to delaying their answers. However, you may not imagine that “name a New Zealand author” could ever be one of them – especially for a New Zealand politician with an arts portfolio.

Yet that’s exactly what ACT Party arts spokesman Todd Stevenson surprised us with, taking 20 minutes to name one Kiwi author – or even a book – in interview for Newsroom. In a rather remarkable exchange with Steve Braunias, Stevenson was nonchalantly candid about his limited portfolio experience: “It’s an area I want to learn more about.”

Having a fluid enthusiasm for musicals, Stevenson said the last one he saw was Hamilton in New York. Asked about literature, he said he prefers non-fiction – specifically political biographies and campaign books. “It’s been a while since I’ve read a novel,” Stevenson admitted. Pressed further by Brownias to name a single New Zealand author or book, Stevenson reached for a time-honored line straight out of one of those political books he was reading: “Can I get that back for you?”

Eventually, after 20 minutes, he was able to dig up Alan Duff and Once Were Warriors: published in 1985. The transcript of the interview was published under the scathing headline: “Act’s art talker watches a musical once.”

As much as Stevenson bristled at Braunias’s suggestion that she was “ignorant of art,” the disdain was understandable. That old meme – “you had one job” – comes to mind. Stephenson’s colleague in the Labor Party, Rachel Boyack, is now calling for him to be relieved of a portfolio he appears not only to be ignorant of, but to despise.

If Stevenson was the ACT’s sports spokesman and couldn’t name a current All Black, there might be calls to strip him of his citizenship, not just his portfolio. But, of course, in rugby-loving New Zealand, that will never happen: ABs are committed to memory along with ABCs.

Meanwhile, the arts are routinely neglected by those in power – especially under a government led by national authorities. The party was returned to power in October’s general election after six years in opposition, forming a government with New Zealand First and ACT – making Stevenson too close to power to conveniently write off his strange brazen ignorance. (Why wasn’t the person informed? Why pick up the phone to Newsroom’s literary editor without at least a note listing recent Occam winners?)

I lived in New Zealand for almost all of National’s last term in government, from 2008 to 2017, and I remember it as a rather dark period for arts recognition – despite the undeniable and huge successes of New Zealanders. Eleanor Catton became the youngest Booker Prize winner with The Luminaries in 2013, shortly after an EP by a lively young Aucklander who went by the name Lorde started circulating on SoundCloud.

The pair continued a long tradition of original and ambitious art coming out of New Zealand and reverberating around the world – from the films of Jane Campion, Taika Waititi and Peter Jackson; to The Clean, The Chills and the rest of the influential Dunedin Flying Nun scene; and the writing of Keri Hulme, Janet Frame, Katherine Mansfield and Witi Ihimaera, to name a few. Yet today, OMC’s How Bizarre makes people of all ages nod to my English gymnastics.

For a population that only recently topped 5 million, New Zealand punches as much above its weight in the arts as it does in sport. (If I were being provocative, I would invite you to compare international exports with those of Australia, many times its size.)

But these successes were not always respected by the government.

When Catton, two years after her Booker win, dared to criticize the ruling National Party for prioritizing profits over culture, then Prime Minister John Key rejected her as the mouthpiece of the Green Party. His high-profile supporters flocked to support him, with Shaun Plunkett’s strike athlete calling Caton “ungrateful hua”, fueling the outrage cycle even further.

Catton has since lived in Cambridge, England, telling a New Zealand outlet last year that one of the attractions is its freedom to be anonymous. The respect with which she is greeted can’t hurt either: Birnam Wood was widely applauded as one of the best novels of last year, and when Catton came to speak in my hometown, audiences not only sought her thoughts on politics and culture, but hung on her every word.

Literary Kiwis may heave a sigh of relief that the National’s Paul Goldsmith, not Stevenson, is the arts minister actually in charge of the decisions – but the picture is far from rosy. Last October, the outgoing chief executive of the government’s main funding body, Creative New Zealand, revealed the brutal realityshowing “no significant change” in core funding since 2006/2007 despite the blow from the pandemic, high inflation and the rising cost of living.

This period, of course, also includes Jacinda Ardern’s time in government, which shows how long Aotearoa’s creative sector has weathered these ‘cycles of crisis’ I quote James Wenley of Victoria University.

Meanwhile, New Zealand art continues to be supported and celebrated – abroad. Rose Mattafeo and Alice Sneddon’s cute HBO comedy Starstruck win hearts on both sides of the Atlantic. 28-year-old poet Taii Tibble recently became the first Māori writer to to be published by He was a New Yorker hailed by the New York Times as a literary “that girl”.

Among the lively new releases on display at my local bookstore are Pet by Catherine ChijiGreta and Waldin by Rebecca K. Reilly and Booker nominee Bird Life by Anna Smile. I recently spotted a well-read copy of Charlotte Grimshaw’s The Mirror Book in a thrift store, then ran into a friend carrying a copy of Janet Frame’s Owls Are Crying.

Indeed, this August Fitzcarraldo Press – one of the most influential British publishers, with an impressive track record of Nobel laureates – published Frame’s The Edge of the Alphabet as part of its classic list. Stevenson might want to pick up a copy. There is not much politics in it, but there is a lot of truth.