What’s a creative thing you like to do in your spare time?

Being a builder means I get to create as part of my work, but I am usually building to plans or to clients specifications, so I find catharsis in building things around my home based on the materials I’ve saved, to my family’s needs and my imagination.

What’s your favourite creative thing to do with your whānau or friends?

The night before I wrote this, my wife, kids (8 and 6) and I, spent a solid hour choosing songs from Spotify to karaoke along to. While one sang, the rest of us would drum on bucket or strum ukulele of air guitar! It was a pretty fun evening.

Why is it important for young people to have creativity in their lives?

My answer to your first question covers a bit of why it could be important, catharsis – and you never know what one could find out about themselves and the world around you.

Why does creativity and culture matter to Aotearoa New Zealand?

New Zealand is a multi-ethnic liberal democracy, we all have our own and each other’s cultures to discover, only through doing this, can we do the work of constantly creating a shared kiwi culture, so that we can continue to live in peace, here in God’s own.

If you were Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, what’s the first thing you would do?

ACT sees no purpose for the Human Rights Commission. If they refuse to represent all New Zealanders and not just those that fit into their ideological bubble then taxpayers shouldn’t be funding them. It’s double standards shows the HRC is ineffective, unprincipled, and needs to go.

If you were made Minister, would the government’s investment for creativity go up or down?

Since coming into office, Labour has increased spending from $80 billion to $137 billion. Even allowing for inflation and population growth, that’s a real, per person spending increase of 29 per cent. You just have to ask, who is getting 29 per cent more value from their government services?

The next government can deal with the hard issues, or it can carry on pretending they don’t exist. Successive governments have ignored problems and taken the easy road and New Zealanders are paying the price.

ACT is the only party willing to tell the truth about the state of our economy and our country. Only ACT has the courage to make the tough decisions required for real change. New Zealanders face a choice: more of the same, or real change. The choice is ours.