David Moffett (born 17 April 1947) is a businessman who has been the head of Sport England, New Zealand Rugby, Australia's National Rugby League, and the Welsh Rugby Union. and founding a political party, New NZ; this party later merged with the Outdoors Party and Moffett became its executive director. He moved to Australia at age sixteen with his father after his parents split up. Moffett also has a daughter named Kirsten.
Moffett is a naturalised Australian,
- Executive director of the New South Wales Rugby Union, starting in 1992; but this did not eventuate. He held this position until 2001;
- Chief executive of Sport England: Moffett left Sport England acrimoniously in 2002 after only 10 months in the job, and complained that he was restricted "by too many committees run by too many blazers".
Politics
Moffett first made political news in December 2018 when he attacked Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, over a non-binding UN migration compact which the government supported. He called them "traitors" and "leftards" and said: "Next year will likely be your Annus Horibilis because we are coming to get you."
In 2019, Moffett founded a political party called the New NZ party (later renamed Real NZ). Journalist Alex Braae described the New NZ party in May 2019 as "a vehicle for David Moffett which is at this stage is unregistered, and mainly appears to consist of aggressive social media posting." The party announced former United Future MP Marc Alexander as its leader. According to its website, the party's policies included opposing "open borders, interference by the UN, Government excess, waste and interference, far left and right ideologies, the PC brigade, tyranny by minorities, unlawful religious beliefs and terrorism". On its website, it used the slogan "WWG1WGA", also used by the QAnon conspiracy theory.
In March 2020, the New Zealand Outdoors Party announced that it had joined with the Real NZ Party, that David Moffett had become a board member for the Outdoors Party, and that he was now the party's executive director. In a press release, Moffett said "it became apparent that the Real NZ Party was not going to reach the 500 member threshold to form a party" and so the party talked with the Outdoors Party. The Real NZ Party also offered to endorse the New Zealand Public Party and to allow the Public Party to take on any of Real NZ's policies. It follows his frequent criticism of modern rugby, both the rules of the game and the structure of professional competitions.