Quite typically, as soon as I posted this, I found the solution on another post.
https://community.monday.com/t/still-having-issues-with-column-values-within-create-item/1594
For anyone who comes across this in future, the friendly name does not work, you need to identify the column by the columnid name. I still had some trouble with the status, but changed it to index instead. Follow the link above on how to get the ids
mutation {
create_item (
board_id: 283592949,
group_id: “For Consideration”,
item_name: “New Suggestion”,
column_values:
“{
\“status79\”:{\“index\”: 0},
\“text\”:\“Hello world\”,
\“text59\” :\“Hello world2\”,
\“email\” :{\“email\”:\“test@test.com\”,\“text\”:\“test@test.com\”}
}”
) {
id
}
}