Brian Tamaki's end game, explained
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
The Destiny Church leader really dislikes the increasing visibility of the rainbow community… But what is his end game? Publicity? Or is it more than that? Explainer Editor Lloyd Burr talks to the apostle himself.
Brian Tamaki has been a polarising figure for decades, from the early days of his Destiny Church, to the expansion into schools, and plans for a Destiny City.
The constant during this time has been Tamaki’s penchant for a headline - whether it be protesting abortion, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, or LGBT+ matters.
What is his end game? What will it take for him to ease up?
What happened at the weekend?
Members of both ‘Man Up’ and ‘Legacy’ organisations - part of Destiny Church - targeted a number of Auckland Pride Week events. The first was a drag king reading stories to babies, toddlers, and kids at Te Atatu Community Centre’s library. A group of men and women stormed the centre and tried to get into the library. They pushed past staff, there were alleged assaults, and staff had to barricade themselves, the kids and parents inside. The perpetrators then did a haka.
The centre was also in the middle of hosting another ‘Pride Fest out West’ event which was a dodgeball tournament. It was being held down the other end of the building and many of the participants went to the aid of those caught up in the story time blockade. Many of the games were cancelled because of this.
It culminated in the same group interrupting and holding up the Pride Parade as it made its way along Auckland’s Ponsonby Road, and doing a haka before police dispersed them.
What’s the motivation for the protests?
It’s not the first time groups linked to Tamaki have interrupted and harassed the LGBT+ community. Tamaki has been doing it for decades, dating back to 2004 when he organised an anti-civil unions march to Parliament called ‘Enough is Enough’. He was famously confronted by transgender Labour MP Georgina Beyer on Parliament’s forecourt and she lambasted him.
He seemed to blame homosexuals for the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake and the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake too, and in 2019 he attempted to make amends with the rainbow community by apologising for his anti-gay and anti-trans comments.
But in 2022, he was back to his anti-rainbow ways, saying New Zealand was a “sick society” for having 12 gay MPs.
His followers and a relative were caught painting over rainbow pedestrian crossings in Gisborne and Auckland, and they’ve interrupted numerous drag story times around the country - one which saw Tamaki face defamation action.
His motivations range from concerns children are being “sexualised”, “perverted” and exposed to “adult entertainers” and innuendo like bananas and sausages. The protest signs and chants at the weekend included “stop grooming our children’, ‘Teach ABC not LGBT’, and ‘there are only two genders’.
He hates “sexually explicit stuff” marching down city streets during pride parades and is opposed to “taxpayers' money being used on a minority group of about 4.8%”.
Tamaki also dislikes society’s move away from the nuclear family and Christian values, to one that embraces diversity in the family unit.
Who are these groups?
Man Up and Legacy are divisions within Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church.
Man Up purports to be a rehabilitative service for ‘dysfunctional’ men, whether they are criminals, violent, addicted to porn or just want to turn their lives around. The 10-week programme was designed by Tamaki himself, launched in 2015 and is now run by Tamaki’s son-in-law Caine Warren. It is often referred to as the brotherhood.
Legacy is the women’s version of Man Up and is a 10-week ‘self empowering’ programme designed by Brian’s wife Hannah. They refer to themselves as the sisterhood.
The church also has a number of other offshoots:
Nan Up, a group for grandmothers. It sits within Man Up and Legacy
Youth Nation NZ, the youth wing of Man Up and Legacy
Tu Tangata Riders, a motorcycle gang of Destiny Church
Vision NZ, the church’s political party founded in 2019 by Hannah Tamaki. She attempted to call it ‘Coalition NZ’ but the name was declined by officials.
Freedoms NZ, another political party founded in 2022 by Brian Tamaki.
New Nation Party, a former political party affiliated with the church for 5 months in 2023.
Is Brian Tamaki using ‘Man Up’ as his personal army?
One of those at the pride parade was Massey University’s Emeritus Professor in history Peter Lineham. He’s been studying Destiny Church for decades and says he’s noticed a distinct change in the way it operates.
“It's now reached a point where the intimidation bears quite a striking resemblance to right-wing groups in European history going back a long way. And that's a very disturbing connection,” he says.
Lineham is referring to the Sturmabteilung or ‘Brown Shirts’, which was Adolf Hilter’s private army in the early days of the Nazi Party. It was made up of unemployed, disillusioned men who would go around attacking Jews and others blamed for the ills of society.
“I fear that unless there's a fairly stern voice of the law at this point, that could be where it's going and I just think we need to be cautious,” Lineham says.
He’s quick to clarify that he’s not comparing Tamaki to Hitler directly. More so the style of their followers.
“I don't think Brian Tamaki is very convincing. I think he's in a very different context. He's got a complete inability to enter into politics because he's so unreal about the nature of the political process. So I don't think there's the remotest possibility of anything like Nazi Germany happening in our New Zealand,” says Lineham.
Defence lawyer Justin Wall saw the events unfold at the Te Atatu Community Centre where he planned to play a game of dodgeball.
“These guys in Man Up t-shirts and shirts saying ‘make New Zealand great again’ started posturing and walking down this big long hallway and just sort of sizing people up and trying to bait them”.
“They barged in with all their signs trying to make their way up the stairs into this function room. It's there where I saw them assaulting women and threatening children. At that point, I rang the police. All our team had filtered away because they were pretty upset,” says Wall.
He says the assault included pushing a woman over on the stairs, throwing another one to the ground, and general “argey-bargey” while they were “spewing bile”.
Tamaki reacts: “I’m laughing”
I put Lineham’s Man Up - Brown Shirts comparison to Tamaki and he burst into laughter.
“I was at home. I wasn't even involved,” he says. “Actually, I didn't even think of being involved in anything this weekend, just gone”.
Instead, he says the protest was the idea of the local Te Atatu Man Up and Legacy members.
“They said ‘look, we don't agree with that’ so they wanted to do something and put some placards there and I said, ‘well, get tickets, go there and express your viewpoint about it’,” Tamaki says.
“We're not violent and we'll never resort to violence in any matter. No matter how much we feel we're against something, we wouldn't turn to violence. But we have a right to protest in a robust way with a haka. That's what a haka is. It's robust, it's masculine,” he says.
Why is he targeting the LGBT+ community?
There are a number of schools of thought on this.
Lineham believes in a similar way to Hitler blaming the world’s problems on the Jews, Tamaki is doing the same with the rainbow community.
“That's exactly what's happening,” he says. “It's very clear now that LGBT+ people have become a kind of demonic force in his mind and he does not see them as genuine people with feelings.
“They are plotters who either deliberately or unwittingly are in the hands of evil powers that are going to destroy children and young people,” Lineham says.
The trans community is a particular focus, he says, because it’s small with few leaders and it’s an issue that polarises his parishioners.
But Victoria University political science lecturer Dr Luke Oldfield says Tamaki’s motivation is more publicity-driven because he’s long held political aspirations and knows how to get a headline.
“He has been successful in garnering a lot of media attention by being increasingly outrageous, by stirring up hateful rhetoric, and by trying to bully - even bullying government departments,” he says.
“There are two groups in society that are most likely to self-harm: people in the rainbow community and working class Māori.
“So to see a person that I'd describe as a false prophet whipping up hatred amongst one severely marginalised group against another, that's something that I find profoundly sad,” Oldfield says.
Tamaki: ‘I’ve never wanted to exterminate the gays’
Tamaki calls Lineham’s comments “naughty” and says he’s got friends and family who are gay, including some nephews.
“Me and Hannah love them and accept them. We're never hateful to them. They know we don't agree with the lifestyle,” he says.
Tamaki believes sexuality is a choice we make rather than something we are born with.
“It's a choice,” he says. “They can choose not to or they can choose to. I don't buy that they're born like that.
“It's a choice or it's been some type of trauma or event in their life that could make somebody do that, but it's not natural,” Tamaki says.
Jumping on the Trump bandwagon
Wall believes Tamaki has been emboldened by many of US President Donald Trump’s policies - particularly relating to transgender issues.
“For every person that was co-opted into that protest, you're going to get a whole lot of people online who are going to mimic exactly what they say,” he says, adding it is helping to legitimise homophobia.
Lineham worries the actions of Tamaki and his groups will embolden others to commit acts against the rainbow community.
“That's exactly what happens. All the patterns that we know in the right-wing conspiracist groups is that they inspire other individuals not necessarily connected at all to get the same idea. And that is a really troubling aspect of the whole story.
“I think we just need to be observant of strange things going on that might in fact point to individuals getting some very disturbing ideas in their heads,” Lineham says.
What’s Brian Tamaki’s end game?
Despite saying it’s an “almost unfair” question to ask, he lists off what he wants his ideal New Zealand to look like.
“I want our country to return to its most golden days or era in the late 50s and 60s when 90% of the country was Christian and we had 1% unemployment. We had no poverty and we basically were doing well and were the second richest country in the world behind America.”
He wants a ban on Sunday trading with people attending church instead. He wants the restoration of the “generational family” where a female mum and a male dad raise their kids who are taught firmly Christian values. And decision-makers are in his sights too.
“I want to get rid of woke politicians, political parties, councils and any leadership in communities who are into this woke sort of stuff like anti-family, anti-Christian values, basically,” says Tamaki.
One of his biggest “woke” targets is to stop the world from “almost drowning with gay paraphernalia”.
“I understand they really want to push on, but the transgender, the queer, and there's so many pronouns and so many genders, it's confusing the young people and a lot of the children at school are coming back and doubting that they're born in the right body,” Tamaki says.
Both Man Up and Destiny Church were approached for comment but did not reply at time of publication.