Luxon Booed & PSA - Wright Family / Sean Plunkett Warning
Exercise extreme caution on reports Wrights no longer support 'The Platform'. The evidence doesn't match up.
Summary for all subscribers:
- Winston Peters is linked to UK far right Reform Party Nigel Farage leader - not a surprise given his history with Russian linked Brexiteers, but he also hints where he is taking his 2026 election i.e. in very similar ways
- Headlines suggest the Wright Family has divested itself from Sean Plunkett’s The Platform - extreme caution is needed on taking this on face value. Hear it in Plunkett’s own words in May.
- The AG and Auditor General both call out breaches of human rights on Paul Goldsmith’s voter suppression tactic while Luxon defends it with disingenuousness
- Luxon is booed - while the ANZ executive stands by nervously
- Auckland homelessness up 90% in less than a year - another National Party success story
PSA: SEAN PLUNKETT & THE WRIGHT FAMILY BEST START EMPIRE - BE VERY WARY OF NEW HEADLINES
Folks need to be careful about a story claiming the Wrights no longer financially support Sean Plunkett’s The Platform since March 2025.
The Wright Family have been reported as 75% owners for a while and one option is certainly to restructure matters, if desired - the latter being speculative, but one possibility at play.1
But look -
As recently as May 2025, Wayne Wright Junior was on The Platform where Plunkett gushed:
“3 and a half years ago, I was looking for people who were prepared to …take a pretty big punt on the idea that we needed a revolution in media.
I got bloody lucky … that I met the Wright Family…
..And a big part of the team on the Platform since then has been Wayne Wright Jr, as ..a director on the company and my partner in crime…”
BTW this Duncan Grieve Spinoff article with backer Wayne Wright Junior is very informative:
“I would say that if a particular group of people feel aggrieved, then make something of it,” [WWJ] says. “Get out there and do it.”
This is a key part of his motivation in funding The Platform….
“I’ve seen what racism looks like in other countries, and it is severe,” he says. “It’s people hanging up on burning crosses. That’s what racism looks like.”
He believes Te Tiriti is an important document, but not relevant to his vision of New Zealand, and that Māori dispossession of their language and whenua has long since ceased to be an adequate explanation for poor outcomes that persist over generations.
“I don’t think the answer to it is carving them out, and giving them extraordinary rights and privileges, because they don’t live as long,” he says. “The fact that a group doesn’t live as long… is not inherent racism.”
And later,
I ask whether he fears becoming associated with The Platform might blow back on him, that a host’s words might put him in a similar bind to that which caught DGL’s Simon Henry a few months ago.
“That’s a very legitimate question… it was the one area that I dwelt on the most.”
He ultimately decided his family’s fortress was essentially impregnable.
“They can’t cancel me,” says Wright.
“When people come and rattle their sabres at us, we can say, ‘well, tomorrow is another day. Good luck with that. And by the way, you could buy one of our things over here. Stay in a hotel we own’.”
PS - It looks like a restructure
Luxon Booed
Stuff features a video of PM Luxon being booed at a Netball ANZ Premiership Final.
Watch how uncomfortable ANZ’s Chief Marketing Officer, Astrud Burgess, looks next to him:
Related Materials:
The Sean Plunkett Tweet
Related Articles:
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