Religion has never played a huge roll in New Zealand’s politics, an explicitly religious party has never been elected to parliament. The closest they have come was when the Christian Democrats changed their name to ‘Future New Zealand’ and merged with ‘United New Zealand’, who’s leader Peter Dunne has a “safe” electorate seat, meaning the party could bypass the usual 5% threshold for representation. While United Future gained 6.7% of the vote in 2002, support fell to 2.67% in 2005.
Then in 2007 when Dunne voted for the repeal of section 59 of the crimes act, a clause giving the defence of “reasonable force” to parents on trial for child abuse, the party split, with former United Future MP’s Gorden Copeland and Larry Baldock forming the new Kiwi Party.

The Kiwi Party achieved only 0.5% of votes at the last election, but Baldock has been the principle organiser of a citizen initiated referendum asking the question “Should a smack, as part of a good parental correction, be a criminal offense in New Zealand” the goal of the referendum is to reverse the change to the crimes act, although the law is not an ‘anti-smacking’ law as Baldock and the media have labeled it, in fact the law explicitly allows smacking in a number of situations including “performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.” The law does stop smacking for the purpose of “correction” but this word has a legal meaning different than the common language meaning. As John Roughan put it in the Herald

As the word is used in public policy nowadays it means serious systematic punishment. The penal arm of the state is now called the Department of Corrections. A prison is a “Corrections Facility”.

Is the type of correction that the Christian right wants to be legal for use against children?, Baldock recently told the Herald “I’m not opposed to [hitting children with] the wooden spoon or ruler because you can control things with that better than you can with an open hand.”
Both of the largest parties in parliament have said they will not reverse the law change, but with 88% of the votes cast (by the 54% of people who voted) going to ‘No’ Baldock and the Kiwi Party will be able to claim a mandate for at least one of their policies, and attempt to build support around that.

In the last election many former Labour supporters in South Auckland did not vote, likely disillusioned with Labour after a decade of doing little or nothing for the working class- its former core constituency. While the workers and beneficiaries of South Auckland would be unlikely to vote National, many of them are Pacific Islanders who commonly hold strong religious views. Former Labour MP Taito Philip Field tried to win this demographic with his Pacific Party, though this party is likely defunct now that Field has been changed with corruption. A constituency could be built for the Kiwi Party, maybe one big enough for them to reach the 5% threshold in a few years time. If this does happen, it will be a bleak day for secular and progressive New Zealanders.