Hannah Tamaki is only 5 foot 3, but sometimes she feels like the 'biggest person in the room”.

It's true she has a gravitational pull on people, drawing a crowd of about 100 enraptured listeners to a Vision NZ policy launch in Rotorua on Thursday.

It came just a day after the announcement of her candidacy for the Waiariki electorate, a seat currently held by Labour's Tāmati Coffey.

Waiariki, one of the seven Māori seats includes Tauranga, Whakatāne, Rotorua and Taupō and has only ever been won by candidates from the Māori Party or Labour.

Tamaki plans to change that.

Destiny Church, which she co-founded with husband Brian Tamaki, began from a 20-person congregation from Lake City Church in Rotorua.

At 9am on Friday, volunteers were already milling around Tamaki's newly-minted campaign office, right next to Destiny Church's Rotorua headquarters on Tutanekai St.

Tamaki appears with husband Brian in tow, who appears comfortable in his secondary role. He's roped in by Tamaki to help raise a party banner for the background of her video interview - he's the tallest person in the room.

Tamaki jokes she planned ahead to marry someone who could reach the top shelf when she couldn't.

I ask her about feeling like the biggest person in the room.

'I don't know how and why, but I've always walked into the room and felt that I am a big presence in the room. I suppose it's my confidence, my personality.

'My persona, honestly, is ginormous. I'm about seven foot in my persona. I walk like I am seven foot tall.”

She says she is driven by a passion for family and people, as well as her background as the child of a single father.

'People treat you differently when you're in a different situation so I think that provoked in me the desire to make everybody feel that they're included.”

She had been tempted by the poetry of the 'Tamaki for Tamaki [Makaurau]” slogan but decided to run in Waiariki - the birthplace of Destiny Church.

'[This] is where our people are, these are people that love us, love me, know me and know what I've done.”

Tamaki says she's in the process of finding a house to buy in the electorate. She says she 'doesn't really know a lot” about incumbent Coffey.

'I'm not here to throw stones or to criticise someone else, I can just offer what I've got to offer, and hopefully people can recognise that in me.”

There's a lot of things the Labour government has done she's not a fan of.

Abortion law reform is a big one - 'the womb is meant to be the safest place” - and concerns surrounding measures in place to limit the spread of COVID-19, including the power of the police to search homes without a warrant, and the limits on church and tangi gatherings.

She calls these measures 'pretty evil”.

Act Party leader David Seymour's End of Life Choice bill is also a concern.

'[Euthanasia] is another slippery slope … I think all the things that are happening right now are a very slippery slope.

'This is a whole different dictatorship-like society that we're turning into. ‘I'm going to take drugs, I'm going to do P, I'm going to do whatever I want, I can come into your house, I can just come in without a search warrant, your mother is a burden, we need her hospital bed, take her home or we put her out of her misery'. That's what it feels like to me they're saying.”

Does she want to see Labour re-elected, or a National government? Neither. She hopes for a 'centre government”.

'Part of the reason why I'm passionate to stand up. Win or fail, I still win, because I've decided to stand, to make myself available and to be a valid option.”

She mentions ousted National leader Simon Bridges - 'I think he said I was wacky and bizarre”.

'There's nothing wrong with wacky and bizarre, because it works for me. Jacinda, she said not in a month of Sundays. Let's just hope she doesn't have to come to church for a month.

'At least you actually speak to somebody kanohi to kanohi, face to face, how do you get to know them?

'When you get to talk to people and hear them and understand what their ethos is … You might not agree with everything but there must be some elements that I can bring to the table that can enhance either party.”

Tamaki is well aware of the way people perceive her, and that they associate her with Destiny Church and her husband - for better or worse.

'They always throw up about what my husband says, because I'm not going to be judged ... from what Brian has said. I'm going to be purely judged on my own words.”

She and her husband do share the same beliefs but she expresses hers differently, she says. Some had also accused her of xenophobia.

'I'm not a racist person because my dad's European, my mum's Māori.”

She says a lot of the controversy was 'created 22 years ago from a white media”.

'Just because you're Māori and you're doing well, doesn't mean you're a criminal.

'It seems like we're the only ones that anyone ever wants to look at because there's a whole lot of other churches in New Zealand who do similar things to us - admittedly they're led by white people.

'They're not scrutinised as much as we are. Why can't Māori succeed? Why are Māori like Brian and myself not allowed to inspire others to succeed?

'I just keep doing the mahi and never mind the talkers and the quackers that are in the background doing nothing.

'People say it's water off a duck's back, I say actually no, it's water off a swan's back thank you.” Members of the LGBTQIA+ community feel 'very comfortable” with her.

'I'm not trying to stop their life, I'm not trying to say they can't live their life, so I hope they don't try and stop me being a person of faith.

'I don't think anyone's ever heard me make a critical comment of the [LGBTQIA+] community at all.

'Jevan [Goulter] is my best friend … and I've got family that are gay. I can't expect everybody to like me, and I'm not in this world to be liked, but I am in this world to make a difference."

She says she believes she gets more 'hate” from other people than what she has 'ever given to somebody else”.

'That's because of the media spinning the same old line.

'Why should I be squeezed into a little box? People try to make me be something that I'm not.”