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A collage of screenshots of Sean Plunket interviewing Ray Chung
The many faces of Sean Plunket during his interview with Ray Chung.

PoliticsJuly 14, 2025

A play-by-play of Ray Chung’s train wreck interview with Sean Plunket

Wellington editor
A collage of screenshots of Sean Plunket interviewing Ray Chung
The many faces of Sean Plunket during his interview with Ray Chung.

What’s even worse than a days-long PR crisis as a mayoral candidate? Getting owned by Sean Plunket.

Wellington mayoral candidate Ray Chung was under fire in a way he had never experienced before. Donors were abandoning him, and his support was cratering. The root cause: An email he sent to council colleagues two and a half years ago detailing salacious and unverified rumours about Wellington mayor Tory Whanau having a drug-fuelled sexcapade with his neighbour’s son. 

It was a wildly inappropriate topic for a work email and almost certainly defamatory. Whanau has denied the claims and said she can prove she was at a different event on the night in question. 

Instead of apologising, Chung doubled down. “There has been a concerted campaign against me,” he said in a video released on Sunday. “An email I sent privately over two and a half years ago was passed to the media. This was done deliberately to discredit me.”

After being deliberately discredited with his own words, Chung desperately needed a way to shore up his base of support and focus everything in the right area. So, on Monday morning, he spoke to Sean Plunket live on The Platform. Chung would have fairly expected this to be a friendly interview, given that Plunket has previously broadcast an entirely different unfounded rumour about Tory Whanau. But as the interview went on, Plunket grew frustrated at Chung’s complete inability to grasp why he was in trouble, and his repeated insistence on making everything worse. 

It was 17 minutes of mayhem and majesty. Here’s the lowlights.

“It sounds like you’ve had a rugged weekend,” Plunket begins, lending a sympathetic ear. 

“I have had a very rugged weekend. I’ve never had so many days in a row like this,” Chung replies. 

“Joel MacManus [hey, that’s me!] tells me you’re a windbag and you’ve never been fit for office,” Plunket says. “Have you seen The Spinoff’s piece this morning? It’s pretty remarkable. I’d have to say it’s one of the most blatantly biased pieces of political writing I’ve ever seen in all my life, and coming from such a pimply faced little stuck-up millennial, it’s amazing.” 

For the record, Windbag is the name of my column, not a comment on Ray Chung. But I stand by the rest. Also, I’m now feeling self-conscious about my skincare routine. Open to any and all recommendations from Plunket.

Plunket wants Chung to go back to the start and explain the whole ordeal to his listeners: “OK, three years ago, you’re approached by a next-door neighbour of yours who tells you what?”

Having just got himself into trouble for repeating an unfounded and probably defamatory story in an email – and trying to play the matter down because it happened two and a half years ago – you might think Chung would be smart enough not to repeat the same allegations live on air. But that’s giving him far too much credit. 

“We were walking with our dogs and [my neighbour] stopped me and as usual, you have a bit of a chat with your neighbours and he said ‘oh, let me tell you about something’,” Chung begins. 

“A good story’s a fast story, Ray,” Plunket urges, already losing patience. 

Chung continues: “He said they met up with two women in a bar and went back to their apartment.” 

“This guy did, your neighbour?” 

“No, no, his son. They went back to the apartment and had a fun night.”

Plunket can’t resist calling bullshit. “It seems odd that your neighbour would come up to you and say, ‘Hey, my son scored the other night and here are the details. ‘” 

Ray’s brain seems to short-circuit here. “….um…. weeeelll….. It was nothing that I expected.”

A man sitting behind a microphione with his arms crossed.
Sean Plunket during his interview with Ray Chung on The Platform

Chung then fluffs around for a while until he finally gets to his big reveal that one of the women his neighbour’s son supposedly slept with was the mayor of Wellington. 

“Ray, what’s wrong with that? She’s not married,” Plunket says. At first, it seems like he is playing devil’s advocate. But then it becomes clear that he is genuinely exasperated. 

“Well, when we walked back, we thought ‘My god, if this hits the news media…”

“What? That the mayor of Wellington is sexually active and she’s a single woman, and she decides occasionally to have sex with people? Why is that a scandal?” Plunket is incredulous.

Then, Chung decides to do the political equivalent of tripping over your shoelaces directly into a cow pat: “Well it wasn’t just sex, it was drugs as well.” 

That thumping you hear is Chung’s lawyer concussing himself against his own desk.

Plunket appears to roll his eyes and gives a barely audible sigh. “Tell us about the drugs,” he says.

Chung stumbles on. “OK, as I was told, when they were at the pub, [Whanau] asked the two boys if they were interested in some drugs.”

“When you say boys, can we define boys?” Plunket says. 

“I think about 21.”

“That’s not a boy, that’s a grown ass man,” Plunket says, crossing his arms. Chung argues for a while about the definition of a boy. Plunket is having none of it. “Doesn’t matter. 21. Get a beer, fight and die for your country, and sleep with who you want to.” 

Time to bring things back on track. “OK, so she offered them drugs?” Plunket asks. 

“Yep. And they went back to the apartment and, um, you know, had a good evening.”

“And did they do drugs, Ray?”

“Well, I don’t know, but I assume they did because that’s what they went back for.”

The key quote there, of course, is: “I DON’T KNOW.” 

A man standing in a board room with two thumbs up
Ray Chung on his first day as a councillor. Image: Facebook

“Did you ever talk to the son to get the story firsthand?” Plunket continues. 

“No, no, he wasn’t there,” Chung admits. 

Chung spends a few minutes giving a meandering account about NZ Herald reporter David Fisher calling him for the story. Plunket gets bored and steers things back to the juicy bits. 

“Where did pendulous breasts come from?” he asks. 

“Where did what come from?”

“Pendulous breasts. Where did that phrase come from?”

“Oh, I was just told exactly what they said and how they described it.”

“So your neighbour’s son told you she had pendulous breasts?” Plunket says with the withering tone of Kim Hill in her prime. “That doesn’t sound like the sort of language a 21-year-old would use, Ray. That’s one part of the story that doesn’t stack up”. 

Chung laughs. “Heh heh, yep, I don’t know, I was just repeating everything that I was told.”

Repeating everything you’re told without doing any effort to verify is exactly the problem. But understanding that seems beyond him. 

“Would you send such an email again?” Plunket asks.

“Never, never. I’ve learned my lesson,” Chung says, after spending 16 minutes repeating all the problematic information that was in the original email, live on air. “But I’ve also learned another even more important lesson, and that’s don’t trust anyone.” 

“Oh, Ray, you can trust me,” Plunket croons. 

“Can I? Can I?” Chung asks. He certainly shouldn’t have. 

With that, Plunket ends the interview and turns to the text machine. He reads two messages from his loyal listeners: 

“God, this Ray Chung sounds like a moron. Hopefully, Wellington has dodged a bullet.”

“Sean, Chung sounds like a loose cannon. He’s the best the right have? God help you.”

Keep going!
Three kids riding on a footpath, with blue zigzaggy borders
This is currently illegal (unless the bikes have really small wheels) (Image: The Spinoff)

PoliticsJuly 14, 2025

Kids on footpaths, e-scooters in bike lanes: transport law catches up to reality

Contributing writer
Three kids riding on a footpath, with blue zigzaggy borders
This is currently illegal (unless the bikes have really small wheels) (Image: The Spinoff)

Cycling and e-scooting enthusiasts are welcoming legislative upgrades that will improve safety – and match what people are doing already.

It is 2025. You are walking down the street. A child bikes past you on the footpath. You cross the road, waiting a few extra seconds for a bus to slowly pull out from its stop and into traffic. On the other side of the road, an e-scooter rider accelerates in the bike lane.

What is wrong with this picture? Well, the law: technically, it was illegal for the child to be riding on the footpath, and the e-scooter rider to be in the bike lane. Meanwhile, the six cars who didn’t let the bus merge were in the right. 

Transport law changes announced by minister Chris Bishop in June will go some way to making the law align with reality. The minister sold it as ways to “take the handbrake off productivity”. The changes include changing WOF frequencies, implementing digital drivers licences and potentially revising regulations for imported vehicles. Of particular interest to some transport advocates are several safety-focused rules: allowing e-scooters to use bike lanes, children to bike on the footpath and requiring cars to give way to merging buses.   

“I was always worried that there might be a grumpy pedestrian saying we weren’t allowed on the footpath,” says Philippa Curtis. Living in St Martins in Christchurch, she took her three kids to their primary school on bikes until about two years ago, when they became confident enough to ride on roads. 

a bike lane in wellington
A bike lane on Wellington’s harbour, heading towards the airport Photo: Wellington City Council

While they lived only a block away, getting to the primary school on the road required two right turns. “There are bends and corners [on Centaurus Road] and lots of cars at the school run time,” Curtis says. Staying on the footpath was faster and safer, with no road crossings required. “It would be nonsensical to cross the road twice just for a block … safety was a higher priority.” She’s noticed that even now when riding on roads, her youngest child will avoid going into traffic to get around a parked car by going on the footpath.

Cycling on the footpath, where pedestrians will continue to have right of way, requires patience. Curtis’s children had to get used to going slowly, at times, behind people who were walking to school.

The updated rules also have some inconsistencies, as a post on urbanist blog Greater Auckland points out. There’s no clarification on whether parents should be riding next to kids, for instance. 

It’s been a long time coming: these changes for bikes and e-scooters were included in the Accessible Streets proposal in February 2020. What Bishop announced took the top line of these changes, without establishing an overall footpath framework to prioritise pedestrians or give cyclists in a bike lane right of way ahead of left-turning traffic. 

two young women on pink-branded escooters in the sunshine, wearing helmets
Two Flamingo riders, who would be allowed in cycle lanes under the new rules (Image: supplied)

Jacksen Love, co-founder of rental scooter provider Flamingo, says that allowing e-scooters in cycle lanes was something Flamingo has always wanted. “It just makes sense,” he says. Flamingo operates in seven towns and cities around Aotearoa, including Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and Tauranga. “When we talk to first time riders, safety comes up as a big barrier,” Love says.

The company has seen a shift away from late-night and weekend use when they first launched, and most users were riding scooters recreationally. Now, the busiest days are during the week. When the rule comes into effect, Flamingo will be able to communicate safe routes in cycle lanes to their users. 

Personally, Love is looking forward to Flamingo scooters being officially allowed in the cycle route along Cambridge Terrace in Wellington which goes all the way to Island Bay; at a recent launch for the completed route, they could only use Flamingo’s e-bikes. “It’ll be exciting to eventually have events and promotions to encourage the use of scooters and bikes in bike lanes,” Love says. 

The rules for e-scooters and bikes are changing, but have always been hard to enforce. Another rule change would be making a one metre passing distance for cars around bikes in 60km/h and under zones, and 1.5m when the speed limit is above 60. “We strongly support a 1.5m gap and hope it will be enforced quickly,” says Fox Bennetts, a spokesperson for Spokes Canterbury. But without every cyclist and driver carrying around a retractable tape measure, could anyone prove how far away they were when they passed a cyclist? 

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    Cycle advocates would like to see the changes paired with other improvements. E-scooters and e-skateboards in cycle lanes are a reason to fund more cycle lanes, Bennetts says. “The government should fund value for money cycleway infrastructure for the benefit of a wide range of mobility options.” 

    “While it’s great to update the rules to reflect reality, it’s no excuse to not keep pushing for safer cycleways,” says Curtis. Her kids’ ride to primary school was only a few hundred metres but “we want to go further than that on our bikes, and feel safer to do so”. She says that children should have safe options for riding on roads too, and not have to “re-learn” cycle techniques when they want to go faster than is possible on a footpath. 

    While people are optimistic about these changes, implementation is still a while  away: The changes concerning bikes, e-scooters and buses won’t be in place until 2026. In the meantime, it’s hard to imagine anyone fining a child for riding a bike on the footpath.

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