{"id":63776,"date":"2024-05-03T09:35:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T00:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/article\/2024\/may\/03\/a-new-zealand-politician-cant-name-a-homegrown-novel-but-kiwi-artists-have-always-conquered-the-world"},"modified":"2024-05-03T09:35:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T00:35:39","slug":"a-new-zealand-politician-cant-name-a-home-grown-novel-but-kiwi-artists-are-have-always-conquered-the-world-elle-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=63776","title":{"rendered":"A New Zealand politician can\u2019t name a home grown novel but Kiwi artists are have always conquered the world | Elle Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Government arts spokesperson Todd Stephenson\u2019s inability to name a New Zealand author for 20 minutes in an interview has rightfully raised eyebrows<\/p>\n<p>Politicians are used to being asked tough questions \u2013 and voters are, by now, used to their stalling in response. Still, you might not imagine that \u201cname a New Zealand author\u201d could ever be one of them \u2013 especially for a New Zealand politician holding an arts portfolio.<\/p>\n<p>Yet that\u2019s exactly how the ACT party\u2019s arts spokesperson, Todd Stephenson, has surprised us, taking 20 minutes to name a single Kiwi author \u2013 or even a book \u2013 in <a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.co.nz\/2024\/04\/29\/acts-arts-spokesman-once-watched-a-musical\/\">an interview with Newsroom<\/a>. In the quite remarkable exchange with Steve Braunias, Stephenson was blithely forthcoming about his limited experience of his portfolio: \u201cIt\u2019s an area I\u2019m wanting to learn more about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist and writer<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/article\/2024\/may\/03\/a-new-zealand-politician-cant-name-a-homegrown-novel-but-kiwi-artists-have-always-conquered-the-world\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Government arts spokesperson Todd Stephenson\u2019s inability to name a New Zealand author for 20 minutes in an interview has rightfully raised eyebrowsPoliticians are used to being asked tough questions \u2013 and voters are, by now, used to their stalling in r&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2381,41,511,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-policy","category-asia-pacific","category-books","category-new-zealand"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63776"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63802,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63776\/revisions\/63802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}