Earlier parties associated with the Tamakis Destiny Church was founded by
Brian Tamaki in 1998 and is led by Brian and his wife Hannah Tamaki. The party contested the
2005 New Zealand general election; it received just over 14,000 party votes, or 0.62%, and won no seats. It was deregistered as a political party in 2007. The official founder and former leader of the Destiny Party,
Richard Lewis, created
the Family Party in 2007. The Destiny Church supported the Family Party in the
2008 New Zealand general election. and was deregistered in 2010.
Creation and registration On 23 May 2019,
Hannah and Brian Tamaki announced the creation of a new party, at the time called Coalition New Zealand, with Hannah Tamaki to lead the party. She would not talk about policies at the announcement. On 10 July 2019 the party applied to the Electoral Commission for registration. On 16 August the Electoral Commission refused registration on the grounds that the party's name and logo was likely to mislead voters. In October 2019, the party announced a new name, Vision NZ, and a new logo, and applied to the Electoral Commission for registration again. The registration was confirmed on 4 December. The party received a broadcasting allocation of $51,821 for the
2020 election.
Dancing with the Stars and related events In February 2020, Hannah Tamaki was understood to be a contestant on the upcoming
Dancing with the Stars television show. Later that month, media company
MediaWorks New Zealand announced that while Tamaki was originally going to be on the show, it had changed its mind and formally announced she was not to be in the show. A MediaWorks speaker said that "we have seen a very strong reaction, some of which has been extreme and concerning and MediaWorks does not condone bullying. We would be failing in our duty of care to everyone if we continued as planned." After a TV presenter commented on Tamaki's inclusion in
Dancing with the Stars, Vision NZ's campaign manager Jevan Goulter made a post on
Facebook about the presenter. The post breached Facebook's community guidelines, media site
Stuff declined to publish them, and police were assessing a complaint laid about the post. Tamaki fired Goulter for these comments. Tamaki was asked by a journalist about similar comments by her husband Brian, who referred to "venomous, dirty liberal left, sexually confused antichrists", but Mrs Tamaki said she was not responsible for her husband's comments as they are not related to Vision NZ.
2020 election campaign By December 2019, the leaders of both major parties,
Labour and
National, had ruled out working with Vision NZ. In July 2020 it rejected a merger offer from the
New Zealand Public Party. Vision submitted a
party list of five people for the
2020 general election, tied for the shortest list with the
Heartland Party. All five also
contested electorates, including Hannah Tamaki in the electorate of
Waiariki. By September 2020, Vision NZ had only registered in one
Colmar Brunton poll, receiving 0.1% of support in its May 2020 poll. In all other polls it had not registered any support. An electorate poll for the
Waiariki seat conducted in September 2020 showed that Vision NZ's leader, Hannah Tamaki, was only polling at 2%, compared to
Labour's
Tāmati Coffey at 38% and the
Māori Party's
Rawiri Waititi at 26%. Vision New Zealand received 4,236 party votes at the 2020 election, or 0.1%. Hannah Tamaki received 1,171 electorate votes in Waiariki (4% of the electorate vote), coming third behind
Rawiri Waititi and
Tāmati Coffey. Vision NZ won no seats, but Hannah Tamaki claimed after the election that her goal had always been to unseat Labour's candidate Coffey from the Waiariki electorate, and since that seat was won by Waititi, the party had achieved that goal.
Alliance with Freedoms New Zealand and 2023 campaign During the
occupation of Parliament in August 2022, Brian Tamaki announced the creation of a new political party,
Freedoms New Zealand. Vision NZ was announced at the same time to be involved with the party, and Vision has since been officially registered as a component party of Freedoms NZ. On 31 May Vision NZ, in conjunction with other parties associated with Freedoms NZ, sought a judicial review of the
Electoral Commission's broadcasting funding decision. The commission had allocated broadcasting funds to Freedoms NZ collectively rather than as individual political parties. Vision NZ and the other plaintiffs argued that the
Broadcasting Act 1989 did not clearly define what was a "group of parties" and that the Electoral Commission had not published a clear criteria for how their parties had joined forces. The New Zealand High Court dismissed the plaintiffs' claims. On 13 July 2023, Hannah Tamaki announced that Vision NZ would be contesting all seven
Māori electorates during the
2023 New Zealand general election as part of the Freedom NZ coalition. Tamaki stood as the party's candidate in the
Tāmaki Makaurau electorate. Final results from the
2023 New Zealand general election showed that Freedoms New Zealand received 0.33% of the party vote and did not win any electorate seats, meaning it will not enter parliament. Hannah Tamaki came last of five candidates in the
Tāmaki Makaurau electorate, with 829 votes compared to the winning
Te Pāti Māori candidate
Takutai Tarsh Kemp's 10,050 votes.
Cuba St rainbow crossing controversy In late 2024, Vision NZ party member Merania (Deanna) Roa filed for filed a judicial review application in the High Court of New Zealand challenging the legality of a
rainbow-coloured pedestrian crossing installed by Wellington City Council. In documents submitted to the court, Roa argued that the council’s decision to install the crossing was unlawful, claiming it was not a "prescribed traffic control device" under the Land Transport Rule: Traffic Control Devices 2004, and that the council had acted outside its powers under the Local Government Act 2002. In March 2025, the High Court dismissed the application, finding the council had acted lawfully and that the crossing did not pose a safety risk or contravene transport regulations. == Policies ==