"Mumbo Jumbo, Money, and Mana: How Plunket, Peters, and the Wright Family Built New Zealand's Anti-Māori Broadcasting Machine — and How the BSA Just Lit the Fuse Under It" - 3 April 2026
Mōrena ano Aotearoa,
Ko wai rātou? Who are these men?
Three men. Three interlocking roles in a single machine built to erase Māori from New Zealand's political and cultural life.
Sean Plunket — the broadcaster. The voice. The man who sat in a studio on 22 July 2025 and called tikanga Māori — a living body of law, custom, and philosophy that predates the New Zealand state by centuries — "mumbo jumbo", as reported by Chris Lynch Media. Not a slip. Not a hot take. A pattern. In 2021, the BSA already found Plunket had "amplified negative stereotypes about Māori" after his contemptuous treatment of a Te Whānau ā Apanui spokesperson on iwi Covid-19 checkpoints. Fined $3,000. Learned nothing. Did it again.
The Deep Dive Podcast
Listen to a lively conversation between two hosts, unpacking and connecting topics in the sources of this essay.
Wayne Wright Jr. — the money. The Tauranga-based heir to the BestStart preschool empire, a family fortune estimated at $360 million, who held 75% of The Platform's shares while bankrolling Plunket's anti-Treaty megaphone. As revealed by Webworm, Wright eventually pulled his funding in mid-2025 — but not before years of financing content that systematically demeaned Māori culture, promoted anti-co-governance propaganda, and platformed voices that the BSA itself has since found warrant regulatory scrutiny.
Winston Peters — the political shield. The Deputy Prime Minister who, every single time accountability approaches his allies, reaches for the most extreme rhetorical weapon available. He called the BSA "Soviet-era Stasi" in October 2025, then escalated to "bordering on fascist" in March 2026 as reported by RNZ. The escalation tracks precisely with the BSA's escalating enforcement against The Platform. This is not principle. This is protection.
Together, they form a triangle: money, megaphone, and political cover.
The Machine and Its Mahi
The Platform was not a quirky independent media experiment. It was an ideological weapon, purpose-built and privately funded. As The Spinoff's deep-dive established, Wayne Wright Jr. financed the entire operation from its inception. His Wright Family Trust — the same vehicle connected to BestStart, a childcare empire that runs directly on Crown subsidy money — bankrolled a broadcaster whose primary outputs included:
- Dismissing tikanga Māori as primitive nonsense
- Amplifying anti-Treaty voices and co-governance hysteria
- Platforning Counterspin Media's Kelvyn Alp and other far-right agitators
- Running anti-vaccine content at industrial scale
As The Māori Green Lantern has previously exposed, Plunket's operations extend beyond The Platform — his overseas travel and appearances have also been tied to far-right interest networks. The Wright money built the studio. Other interests extended the reach.
And Winston Peters was a frequent and willing guest. As documented by The Platform's own Facebook page, Peters appeared on The Platform to attack what he called the "Māorification" of New Zealand institutions. He gave The Platform political legitimacy. The Platform gave him an unfiltered megaphone. The relationship was mutual, deliberate, and political.
Peters' Funding: The Unresolved Question
Peters' financial conflicts are not a new story — they are a long, documented, and unresolved one. The Spencer Trust scandal, where NZ First donations were channelled through eight separate companies in amounts designed to fall below disclosure thresholds, led to SFO investigation as detailed by the NZ Herald's timeline. Then came the NZ First Foundation — a separate vehicle for receiving undisclosed donations, as The Conversation reported.
The direct financial link between Peters and the Wright network has not been confirmed with documentary evidence available to this mahi — to claim otherwise without verified sourcing would be a lie, and this platform does not trade in lies. But the questions that demand investigation are legitimate:
- Wayne Wright Jr. is Tauranga-based — Peters' historic stronghold
- The Wright BestStart empire receives direct Crown childcare subsidies — making them structurally invested in which politicians govern
- Peters is the most vocal political defender of The Platform across multiple separate incidents spanning years
- The NZ First Foundation's donor secrecy structures remain only partially resolved
The pattern is undeniable. The financial proof requires Official Information Act requests, company registry searches, and electoral commission disclosure filings that this mahi calls on investigative journalists to pursue. The cui bono question points in one direction.
The BSA Ruling: What It Actually Means
On 31 March 2026, the Broadcasting Standards Authority issued its jurisdiction decision in WK v The Platform Media NZ Ltd [ID2025-063], confirming it can consider complaints about The Platform's Live Talkback programme, as confirmed directly by the BSA's own announcement.
The legal architecture rests on three pillars:
First, the Broadcasting Act 1989 defines broadcasting as transmission to the public by "telecommunication." The BSA ruled, on plain English, that internet streaming is unambiguously telecommunication — nothing in the Act restricts that word to radio waves, as confirmed by the Lowndes Jordan legal opinion published by the BSA.
Second, functional equivalence: the same content, the same audience, the same potential for harm. The only difference is the wire it travels down. It is logically incoherent — and the BSA correctly found it so — to regulate the FM version and exempt the internet stream. The BSA's jurisdictional FAQs make this explicit.
Third, the on-demand exception does not apply. The Act excludes on-demand transmissions — that is why Netflix, YouTube, and overseas streaming platforms are not subject to BSA jurisdiction. But The Platform broadcasts live and scheduled programmes to a New Zealand public audience. It is not a library. It is a live broadcast. The exemption does not fit.
Peters calls this fascism. The BSA is simply reading the Act it was created to administer.
The BSA Ruling's Reach: Who Else Is in Scope?
Here is where this ruling becomes seismic — and where the network around The Platform should be paying very close attention.
The BSA's own jurisdictional FAQs state that YouTube on-demand content is excluded — but that framing matters enormously. The exclusion applies to YouTube as a platform delivering on-demand content. It does not automatically exempt every New Zealand operation that uses YouTube as its delivery mechanism.
The determining test is this: is the content live or scheduled, produced by a New Zealand broadcaster, for a New Zealand public audience? If yes — the on-demand exception does not apply, and the Act potentially reaches it, as the Substack legal analysis by djhdcj acknowledges even in criticism of the decision.
Apply that test to Big Hairy Network:
- BHN broadcasts weekday live and scheduled news commentary shows, as confirmed on nz.radio.net
- It is produced by a New Zealand entity (Blindfish Media), as listed on Apple Podcasts
- It is explicitly aimed at a New Zealand public audience
- It is funded by New Zealand patrons through Patreon, sells New Zealand merchandise, and covers New Zealand political news
BHN describes itself as "the only independent progressive news network in NZ" — that is not a personal livestream by an individual. That is a broadcaster making a broadcaster's claim. Under the BSA's reasoning in WK v The Platform, BHN's live and scheduled programming almost certainly falls within the same jurisdictional scope as The Platform's Live Talkback. If a complaint is lodged, the BSA would apply the same functional equivalence test — and the result would likely be the same.
This matters. BSA jurisdiction is not partisan. The same rules that now apply to Plunket's racism apply to every broadcaster in this space — left, right, and centre. That is how it should work. The answer is not to destroy the BSA. The answer is to lift your standards, whoever you are.
The Māori Green Lantern: Where This Mahi Stands
themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz has been tracking this network since The Platform's founding — exposing the Wright Family Trust's financial structures, Plunket's pattern of anti-Māori broadcasting, the Atlas Network's infiltration of New Zealand media, and NZME's alignment with Hobson's Pledge, as documented across years of published essays and posts.
Does the BSA ruling apply here? Let us be honest about it: the MGL publishes written essays and analysis — not live or scheduled broadcast programmes in the legal sense. The BSA's jurisdiction, even as expanded, targets audio and visual broadcasting, not text-based publishing. The MGL is a web publisher, not a broadcaster. The ruling does not reach this mahi.
But this mahi is also not hiding behind legal technicalities. This platform operates to a standard higher than the BSA requires — every claim sourced, every assertion verified, every name named only with evidence. Plunket's "mumbo jumbo" would not appear here without citation. Peters' pattern of protecting his allies would not be alleged without the documented record. That is the difference between accountability journalism and the race-baiting entertainment that Plunket has been selling as news.
What "Mumbo Jumbo" Actually Means — A Final Word
The phrase "mumbo jumbo" is not colourful broadcaster slang. It has a documented colonial etymology — used by European colonisers to mock African spiritual and cultural practices as primitive superstition. Applying it to tikanga Māori on a New Zealand public broadcast is a specific colonial act: dismiss the framework so you never have to engage with it on its own terms. Deny its validity. Mock the people who hold it. Move on.
Tikanga Māori is not spirituality. It is not ceremony for its own sake. It is a living legal system — recognised in statute, upheld in court, embedded in the Treaty relationship between Māori and the Crown. When FENZ adopts tikanga-based practices, it is not indulging "mumbo jumbo." It is acknowledging that the institution exists on Māori land, in relationship with Māori people, under an obligation that predates Plunket's broadcasting career by several centuries.
That is what Plunket called "mumbo jumbo." And that is what Winston Peters rushed to defend.
He Whakaaro Whakamutunga — Closing Thought
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has not overreached.
It has done exactly what it was created to do: maintain standards in New Zealand broadcasting at a time of rapidly evolving technology. Plunket, Peters, and their allies want a permanent legal carve-out for online far-right media — exempt from the same standards that apply to every other New Zealand broadcaster. The BSA has correctly refused to grant that carve-out.
The Wright money has now withdrawn. The Platform is weaker. The BSA has asserted jurisdiction. Peters' rhetoric has escalated — which is always the sign of a cornered interest, not a principled one.
The taiaha remains raised. The Ring burns green. The mahi continues.
Tautoko This Mahi — Koha Consideration
Winston Peters called the BSA "bordering on fascist" for daring to hold Sean Plunket accountable for calling tikanga Māori "mumbo jumbo." The Wright family bankrolled the megaphone. Peters provided the political shield. And not one of them paid a cent to the Māori voices they spent years trying to silence.
This essay — naming names, tracing the money, and verifying every claim — is the accountability they don't want funded. Every koha signals that rangatiratanga includes the power to fund our own truth tellers. That whānau will not wait for Crown structures to expose the networks that work against us.
If you can't koha right now — no worries at all. Follow, share, and kōrero with your whānau and friends. That circulation is koha. Every share gets this in front of someone who needs to see it.
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Kia kaha, whānau. The taiaha stays raised as long as you keep it in our hands.
Research conducted 3 April 2026. Sources: BSA.govt.nz, RNZ, NZ Herald, The Spinoff, Webworm, Chris Lynch Media, ODT, themaorigreenlantern.maori.nz, Lowndes Jordan legal opinion, BSA Jurisdiction FAQs, Apple Podcasts, nz.radio.net. All URLs verified at time of publication.
