Brian Tamaki On National Radio's Nine to Noon programme Linda Clark speaks with the poisonously anti-gay Pastor Brian Tamaki about his Destiny Church, the rewards of ministering to the needy, defensiveness and Harleys. This transcript is published with permission of Radio New Zealand and has been slightly edited, with headlines inserted, by GayNZ.com for clarity. LINDA CLARK: At the beginning of the year, unless you were a watcher of Christian television programmes that go to air very early in the morning, you'd probably have never heard of Brian Tamaki. By year's end, you can't have missed him. This year he became the front man for a highly organised campaign against the civil union bill and the more liberal aspects of Helen Clark's administration. He was compared to Hitler with his black-shirted followers. He helped launch a new political party with a conservative agenda and his church just got bigger and bigger. Brian Tamaki joins me now, good morning. TAMAKI: Good morning Linda. CLARK: Have you liked the attention this year? TAMAKI: The attention that, you're talking about the media? CLARK: Yeah, the attention on you, have you liked it? TAMAKI: Well nobody likes the misrepresentation that I've heard from the, the media, especially what we've initially stood for, but that's part and parcel of the whole deal of why you step into the public domain to say, hey, enough is enough about some of these things that are breaking down family and so i guess you can expect some people to react like they did, and they did. CLARK: Yeah, although there's a sense that you thrive in the limelight, you're quite obviously comfortable in it. TAMAKI: Well you called me here, Linda, I didn't ask to be on this show. CLARK: No no no, I mean separate to this, I mean, you know, a man who has his own television evangelist programme likes the limelight... TAMAKI: Oh no, hold on, TVNZ just took that off me. CLARK: But I mean you like the limelight. TAMAKI: Why would you say that, Linda, when the reports that we've had in the media have come looking for us? I mean half the time they haven't even asked for a comment from me, so how can you say that? That's not a correct assumption. CLARK: Well I think if you launch a church like yours which seem to be, I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm... TAMAKI: What do you mean, launch a church? I've been a minister for seventeen and a half years full-time, twenty-five years as a Christian... just launched a church... we've always been there, Linda. A CHRISTIAN CHURCH OR A CULT? CLARK: Well describe for listeners, we walk into Destiny's headquarters, and what do we see when we walk into your church's headquarters, we see.... ? TAMAKI: Have you, have you been, have you been there? Editor's note: The entrance of Destiny's Auckland headquarters and church is dominated by images of Brian Tamaki with no religious/Christian imagery evident. CLARK: No and that's why you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read many reports because it's been in the news all year. TAMAKI: So hold on, you have, that's what you're good at, you hear what somebody else says, what somebody else says, and now you're... CLARK: I'm just asking you... TAMAKI: ...making an assumption. I've got to correct you, Linda, because you're saying something that you haven't even seen. CLARK: I'm just asking you to describe it. TAMAKI: You, you've just said to, here is, i'm hearing that, you've been in the church and you've seen big pictures and you... CLARK: no no, I've said to you, I've never been in your church. I want you to describe for me what it's like, tell me what it's like. TAMAKI: Well if you came, Linda, and walked in here before you did the interview, you'd be able to give an accurate assessment of this whole thing. I think people should come and look for themselves. CLARK: No no, that's the really interesting point. Do you now why I haven't been to your church before we did this interview? Because I balance my work with my family life and when I'm not in the Wellington studio, I'm doing my job as a mother and being with my children and that, presumably, you approve of. TAMAKI: Oh exactly, and God's the centre of it all, Linda, and it's a good question to ask, a good question to ask you... CLARK: ...and so if I'd done what you'd asked me to do and flown to Auckland to see your church before we did this interview, I would have been putting my children second. TAMAKI: For a whole year you'd have to do that, because we've been around for the whole year, as you said, so you had a chance at least one Sunday to come and have a look. CLARK: No, I don't do anything unless I'm with my children, apart from when I'm at work, which I assume you approve of. TAMAKI: Well it, to be honest, in a year like this, Linda, it would have taken only one plane trip which I'm sure you could have done and you would have had a good assessment about the whole Destiny thing. CLARK: I don't need to, I want you to tell me about it. TAMAKI: Anyway, Linda, let's get onto something positive here. Like we stood for family values and that's what we've been consistent with and we're still upholding, the man, one man and a woman, a male and a female aNd a good family which, I hear that you are very much for, that's what we've always stood for and anybody can see out there, regardless of their Christian faith or whether you agree with me or not. People are not silly, Linda, they can see that there's a definite undermining of the nuclear family, and the civil union bill goes a long way to doing that. CLARK: Yeah, although the bill's passed now, I mean does the country really feel any different to you? TAMAKI: Well I think the government's passed something that many people, regardless of the polls, do not really agree with and this is not going to, just because they've passed it and they think that it's going to settle down and people are going to forget, but people are not going to forget this. And I believe next year, at the polls, at election day, people are going to make that known big time. LEGITIMISE GLBT LIFESTYLES?!? CLARK: Why should we disregard the opinion polls though, because the opinion polls have shown on this that the majority of people, the opinion polls show there is a strong group of New Zealanders who are very strongly opposed, but the opinion polls also show that t the majority are comfortable [with] the idea of civil union. So why should we disregard the opinion polls? TAMAKI: I think people can understand that the civil union, in the sense that if they choose to want to have a relationship, two men want to shack up or two women together, which to me I find hard to believe that any, you know, good family-oriented New Zealander would agree with, but nevertheless, that's their right. But let's take it a step further, Linda, to take that very marginal lifestyle and then take it all the way to parliament and then legitimise it by legislation or law is beyond me. And I am sure, regardless of the polls, that if we went to a referendum, or just went out there to everyday New Zealand streets where people work or, whether it be on the farm or on the school or driving the truck, people will say, no, I'm not for that stuff, and I've heard that time and time-again. CLARK: Although people like Brian Donnelly, who gave the vote a great deal of thought, spoke about it quite thoughtfully on the floor of parliament, would have much preferred a referendum they still felt that had it gone to a referendum, New Zealanders are fair-minded kind of people and they probably would have voted for the civil union. TAMAKI: Yeah, I'm not saying the referendum was the answer there. I've just said this was the course over many years, that this nation has progressively moved into a secular, very liberal, pluralistic climate, there's no doubt about that, and so I was under no illusion that I was going to come in on some great white horse and try and change everything. But nevertheless we took a courageous stand to say, say we still believe in the family, we still believe in the intergenerational thing, your children and grandchildrens' future is very important to me. So I see, through the five to ten years, a different picture of what mum and dad, the children, the grandchildren are to the present government's picture. CLARK: Well there are two separate things there, aren't there? I totally accept that you feel very strongly about your children's future, your grandchildren's future and, and so forth... TAMAKI: A lot of other people do too. CLARK: Well precisely, and gay couples would say to you, as I'm sure they've said this year, you will have heard them say this, they feel just as strongly about the future for their children and their grandchildren... TAMAKI: Well let's, Linda, for their children, Linda, let's go to just base one. Base one says that two men cannot produce a child naturally. That's got to say something right from the outset but, you know, we're so smart and we get into this whole thing of test-tubing or, you know, they can adopt, which they can, but if we take it to base one, two men or two women can never in, in a natural world with natural laws biologically produce children. That's got to say something. CLARK: But you also know that there are heterosexual couples that can't, who... TAMAKI: Well I wish you would, I wish you would answer that question for me first. CLARK: No. Look, you also know there are heterosexual couples in this country that cannot naturally... TAMAKI: That's right. CLARK: ...have a child and we don't have a moral judgement about that. In fact the government's just made it available, made two treatments of IVF available to those people. TAMAKI: If heterosexual couples want to do this, that's fine because of some, you know, dysfunction naturally, medically inside the person but not a, an unnatural abnormal sexual orientation that two men or two women, coming together to legitimise their relationship and then saying that that's just on the same level or equal to a married couple, a man and women having children and having a family. That just, that doesn't weigh up, Linda. DESTINY'S "MORTGAGE ON MORALITY" CLARK: And tell me what's the difference between the view you've just expressed and unchristian intolerance? TAMAKI: If you really knew what we were like, and I, that's where I say the media has totally misrepresented us and are venomous in their attack to us, the whole Nazi thing and the black t-shirts was shocking really. And we went out there, and months before we made it known on our web site and there, the media, that we were standing for proper family values, and I said thousands of those men and women that marched that day were society's worst nightmares in the past, here they were making a stand for decent family things. They weren't intolerant they accept you, they accept people that, of different orientation, but there's got to be a, a moral stand somewhere. CLARK: Except that some people, a lot of people, think you don't have a mortgage on morality. TAMAKI: Well why do you? CLARK: Other people, they have perfectly good moral lives, they just have a different point of view than you do. TAMAKI: Some of the, legislating morality, it's the government. What makes you think that you can say that, we can't do that, and yet we have a biblical basis that's far more sound than, than Helen Clark and this government and the liberals in parliament right now who are legislating morality. They're making the future for your children, Linda, and you ask, you ask yourself this question, and so do the viewers, the listeners, what are they basing their morality and their decisions on? Certainly not the word of God, not something that is sound, something that is good, something that, that does free families. They're making their judgements on humanistic values and, and bases and I think that's dangerous. CLARK: Yeah, because they hold to a separation between church and state, don't they? TAMAKI: Well they, not really because secular humanism is a religion. CLARK: Is it? TAMAKI: Yes it is, most certainly it is. Well, you tell me how a government who says that church or religion and state is separate, and yet they're making laws for morality. that's hypocritical. CLARK: But a caucus like the labour party... TAMAKI: No, you, you answer that, Linda. CLARK: ...they say that within the caucus they're secular because there's a whole range of faiths in that caucus. They're secular because they don't bring those faiths to their decision making process. TAMAKI: What makes you think that secularism is a religion? Because it's a belief system and they believe in certain philosophy and ideologies, that's, there's no doubt about that a New Zealanders are not dumb, they're seeing this, Linda, and you've got to answer the question, they are legislating morality. That then makes it a hypocritical inference to say that there's a separation between religion and state because they are their own worst enemies if that's the case. TAMAKI'S WORLD WITHOUT GAYS CLARK: Tell me what New Zealand would look like if, if you had sway, more sway, political sway, what would it look like? TAMAKI: Well I believe first of all the cornerstone of any nation, Linda, is the family. Out of that, the family, you get, everything would flow, education, social aspects of life, we're talking about economics, wealth, everything, and I think we've got to go back to empowering mum and dad, the husband and wife, and empowering our families to be able to have a future and a hope, that they have the confidence that their future is secure that their future is going to be secure and they're going to have money to be able to have that security and be able to live long, have a happy life in this country which is their own and to have the assurance at least that their children and their grandchildren, two or three generations, are gong to have a good future as well in this country. CLARK: And for those people who don't fit your definition? TAMAKI: It's not my definition, that's the definition and the pattern that's been laid down before any of us arrived in this world. That's the definition of God, Linda. CLARK: Yeah, and for those people that don't fit that definition, what about them? TAMAKI: Well if we want a healthy society, we want a future and a hope for our children and our grandchildren, we better fit it. CLARK: But what if you don't? I mean what happens to the ... ? TAMAKI: Well that's your choice. CLARK: ...what happens to the child of a Destiny church member who gets to sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty-one, thirty-five, and decides they're gay? What happens to that person? TAMAKI: Well you know what, Linda, in the seventeen years as a minister I've had, that, we haven't had that. I've, twenty-five years of being a Christian, I've never had that under my ministry influence. But we've, but I can tell you... CLARK: So do you think that that's because there hasn't been a gay child or...? TAMAKI: What I can tell you right now, we've picked up thousands of people from the secular, the secular society that have been damaged by drugs, alcohol, your ideology and the philosophies of this government, we've healed them, we've put them back together and now they're healthy and whole, contributing productively to society and their children have got a better future ahead of them because of that. CLARK: Do you think you haven't had, you haven't come across this in your church because there, there haven't been any gay children of church members or because something about the atmosphere would make it too big a hurdle to say to someone in the church, actually, I think I'm gay? TAMAKI: Linda, I believe with the teaching, the environment that's positive and proper parenting skills and with the, the word of God under-girding this, it's almost zero possibility of a child wanting to go to the gay lifestyle. CLARK: So the gay lifestyle equates to godlessness in some way, does it? TAMAKI: Well there's a departure from some basic ethics, I believe, and some basic foundational principles of life that certainly makes one more susceptible. But I understand, you know, I'm not against gay people, I don't dislike or hate, regardless of what the media says, I'd be the first to embrace a homosexual or a lesbian into our church and to say, welcome, you are welcome here, and I know that our people, our churches would do the same thing, Linda. CLARK: But in effect you're saying to a parent of a gay person who's listening to this morning that they played a part in their child's sexual orientation, if they brought them up differently, they wouldn't be gay. TAMAKI: I think it's fair to say that there are parenting skills, there are ways of being able to apply certain principles that certainly diminish the probability of our children going not only just into the gay lifestyle but crime, into identity crisis, into drugs and alcohol, we can diminish that. We are seeing that right now with our early childhood and with our primary schools where these children are ten times that of which is in the state schools, and they have no desire to want to be involved in some of the practices that I've just talked about. That's got to say something. HARLEY GIFTS AND SECRET BUSINESSES CLARK: Let's talk about the latest headlines about you over the weekend. The weekend papers said an American church gave you a customised motorbikes and your own church sent you on a luxury cruise with members of your family for a wedding anniversary present. Are those things true? TAMAKI: Yes they are. The church and the pastors, from their own free will and their volition got together at our twenty-fifth anniversary and said, we'd like to put them on a trip to, on a trip to the Pacific islands, which I see a lot of new zealanders have been on. So when you get twenty pastors from twenty churches over a year that decide to say to themselves, this couple have really served and given their-all to us, we just want to repay them by putting them away on their twenty-fifth anniversary with a cruise to the Fijian islands and back, which is not too much, What am i going to do, throw it back in their faces and say, no, I don't want that, we don't deserve that? Of course we did, Linda, and it was really enjoyable by the way. CLARK: I'm sure, yeah I'm sure. TAMAKI: So what's wrong with that? CLARK: You're perfectly comfortable with taking church money for that kind of stuff? TAMAKI: We didn't say we took... that wasn't money, we didn't take any money. CLARK: Well someone paid for it, money changed hands. TAMAKI: Well those pastors, over the year, obviously got together out of their, own goodness of their heart and took it from their salaries and contributed over twelve months. What's wrong with that? CLARK: Well I guess other Christians... TAMAKI: You're talking about four hundred thousand dollars that was just given to a news presenter, we're talking about some of the audacious wages that some of these people get, and Paul Holmes and all that sort of stuff, and I can go on and on and on, and here you are' talking about, out of the goodness of some people's heart... twenty couples that wanted to make a gift for a twenty-fifth anniversary for people who've served the community for three-quarters of their lives. Are you're grizzling? CLARK: I'm not grizzling, I'm just raising the issue, but I don't think you can compare it with Judy Bailey's salary, however much that's been in the news, because even though, whatever TVNZ says about Judy Bailey, they don't claim that she is acting on the word of God. TAMAKI: Hello, Linda, where did that come from? That's a funny question. CLARK: Well, you're a man of religion aren't you... ? TAMAKI: I'm in a relationship with God, yeah. CLARK: ...and the money could not be spent better on Christian practices, ministering to your poor and proving... TAMAKI: How could you sit there and take away the freedom of people who make a living, earn that money for what they do and they decide to get together over a year to put a bit aside for people that they love and, and really respect? What's wrong with that? CLARK: So it's a matter of freedom of choice, is that what we're talking about here? TAMAKI: Of course it is but it doesn't... CLARK: And the motorbike? TAMAKI: It seems to me that the public and the media here, anything that's got to do with God, the church or pastor brian Tamaki, or any church for that matter in this nation, there's got to be something wrong with that. We've got to change our perception out there, and the public's perception, you know, Linda. We didn't take a vow of poverty. CLARK: No, but there's a sliding scale of wealth isn't there? TAMAKI: No, no it isn't. CLARK: ...and there's poverty on one end of it and trips to Fiji and flash motorbikes on the other. TAMAKI: if you knew my story from the beginning and how we started, that was never the intention. But after twenty-five years of living life and not having the excesses that most people do and, wise in our expenditure and money management, surely I should have something to show for it by now? CLARK: You've got plenty to show for it, that's not the point. TAMAKI: That's not many compared to most Aucklanders. They have a house which is not on a cliff-top by the way, that's misrepresented by the media, and it's wrong that the motorbike was given. There is an honorarium given for the services that I've rendered and I'm still paying off my motorbike. CLARK: So your motorbike wasn't a gift? TAMAKI: That was something, no, that was my own decision to buy that from the honorariums that I received and times that I worked in America. What's wrong with that? CLARK: So they paid you. There's nothing wrong with that but I'm just trying to clarify, they paid you speaker's fees? TAMAKI: Just like Radio New Zealand pays you. Do they pay you? CLARK: Well of course they pay me, I'm an employee. TAMAKI: I don't question, I don't question what you do with your money and you've bought a car and where you live. So what's the, what's the deal. CLARK: But a lot of your money comes from a tithe doesn't it? TAMAKI: No, that's wrong, you see that's where you're wrong. I do not touch the tithe, in the sense that I'd use that to buy all my possessions. Hannah and I have been around for a while. We have some of our own businesses outside the church. I'm not even employed by the church. CLARK: So what kind of businesses outside of the church? TAMAKI: That's none of your business... Linda, come on Linda. CLARK: Well no, if you're a businessman, promote your business, you're on a National Radio programme, tell us what you do! TAMAKI: I don't need to promote our business, Linda. we've just been wise with our houses, we might have a couple of rentals and, so-and-so things that we've had happened, they're all legit. CLARK: but your business are the church, aren't they? your businesses are the videos you sell of your... TAMAKI: I don't sell my videos, Linda. I don't push my merchandise, never do. It's available for people who want it but I don't push that, I don't push my merchandise. I... actually I'd be quite happy to give it away. You'd get my messages for free. Well you were on TVNZ which we were paying for and people were happily putting together so people had the opportunity to hear messages for free. I didn't ask for money once on my television show, not once. CLARK: Do you ask for money in the course of your services? TAMAKI: I don't ask for money at all, no I don't, never, not me. CLARK: So those reports that have appeared this year of people that have been to the church services and heard not you, but maybe one of your lieutenants asking for money... TAMAKI: Lieutenants, lieutenants are in an army, we don't have lieutenants. CLARK: Well what do you call them, your associate pastors. TAMAKI: Linda, if you came to church, which I don't think you've been for a long time... CLARK: We've been over this. TAMAKI: ...you would have had a lot more information, have a better assessment here, okay... CLARK: You've got no idea when was the last time I went to church. You have absolutely no idea. TAMAKI: People, Linda, people come to church because they want to and they come because they know that there is something that can enrich their life, and then they make the choice to give. They make the choice to want to serve, like all of us. Nobody is held at gun point or forced, or told that if they don't they'll go to hell. That was all your media, or the media out there, that's their lies. A HELEN CLARK/BRIAN TAMAKI SUMMIT? CLARK: Have you ever met Helen Clark? TAMAKI: I don't think she's had the pleasure, let me see, not that I can recall. CLARK: If you had the opportunity to meet Helen Clark, what would you say to her? TAMAKI: Do you know what, Linda, I had a mental picture the other day that her and I would meet, and she was looking forward to it and so was I. CLARK: Oh well, there we are. So what did you say to her when you had this mental picture? TAMAKI: I think she wants to meet me. CLARK: Really? TAMAKI: Yeah. CLARK: so what would you say to her? TAMAKI: I think there's a mutual respect somehow. I don't dislike Helen, I think she's a very smart lady, I think she's very clever. I just think the ideologies and some of the philosophies and some of that government and many people of the parliament are off-skew. CLARK: Well she's an atheist, does that bother you? TAMAKI: Yeah, that's right, well it should bother everybody. CLARK: But it does bother you? TAMAKI: If you don't believe in God and you believe you're your own god, I'd be worried. CLARK: So would you talk to her about that? TAMAKI: Well I don't think she'd give me the time of day to talk about God. CLARK: You know you must understand... TAMAKI: I've already given her an invitation, by the way, the last time I was down there... I'd help with her family policies but she declined. CLARK: I think she would have probably considered you were being wry. TAMAKI: I weren't wry, I was meaning it. CLARK: You scared a lot of people this year. The black-shirted march scared a lot of people. Do you understand that? TAMAKI: Why would that scare people when it was the most peaceful and the most organised march the Wellington police said they've ever encountered. You know what had scared the public and scared you and everybody else, especially the media? Because for the first time they saw order, they saw disciplined people making a stand for family values and the entrance of God's word, and his way, came back into the public domain. CLARK: I don't think it was the order that scared people. I think is was the sense of minds closed that scared them. TAMAKI: No, people's minds weren't closed. They saw people who were marching for something that they believed in. That was family, what's wrong with that? Secondly, they saw good leadership, that frightened people, and I think thirdly we were well-organised and we kept to our, our promises about what we delivered there and we, we took a lot of stuff, you know. We were spat at and called names and all sorts of obscenities were shouted at our guys but they stayed true. The people there were very well-behaved. But you know, all the media could concentrate on was black t-shirts, which-was just the kapa haka team wearing those by the way, and a few other people, and they concentrated on trying to make analogies with Hitler, good grief. ME, DEFENSIVE??? CLARK: We've had a number of emails while you've been talking prompted by some of the things you've said, and a number of people listening to this think you're very defensive. TAMAKI: Very defensive? CLARK: Yeah, are you defensive? TAMAKI: No, I'm putting out some things that I believe are very important for the public to know. They should listen to the things that we've just talked about rather than saying I'm defensive or laying back, letting the same old stuff go forward. CLARK: Tell me, what do you want for Christmas? TAMAKI: I'm going to have a great family time with my brothers and my sisters and my mum and dad, and all the grandchildren and my grandmother, and their great-grandmother, and it's going to be a great time. I'm looking forward to the time. CLARK: And what do you want for Christmas? TAMAKI: That. CLARK: It's nice talking to you, Pastor Brian Tamaki, one of the news makers of this year. National Radio; GayNZ.com - 23rd December 2004
Credit: National Radio; GayNZ.com
First published: Thursday, 23rd December 2004 - 12:00pm