Early Activity
After 2002 United Future in its family law reform proposals took to heart the trauma and adverse impact on children caused by the separation of their parents. United Future MP Judy Turner made clear that then current government policies were failing in regard to keeping both parents in children's lives, and to this extent made a huge effort in promoting a Member’s Bill on mandatory mediation by means of a national roll-out of the North Shore Family Court "Children in the Middle" pilot programme.
United Future MPs exercised their individual conscience votes to oppose a Bill to enable civil unions. This provided an alternative to marriage for same-sex couples and to opposite-sex couples who choose not to marry. A civil union provides a couple with most of the same rights as married couples. However, Peter Dunne and Judy Turner both supported a companion Bill to give legal recognition to civil unions.
In mid-2004 United Future announced that it would contest the 2005 general election in partnership with Outdoor Recreation New Zealand. Cynics pointed out that here was another minor party that failed to reach the 5% threshold (Outdoor Recreation gained 1.28% of the vote in the 2002 election) seeking parliamentary representation via the security of Peter Dunne's electorate seat.
A month before the 2005 election, list MP Paul Adams quit the party to stand as an independent in the East Coast Bays electorate. His daughter Sharee Adams, also on the United Future List, also quit to assist her father in his campaign. After the general election, disgruntled right-winger and ex-United Future MP Marc Alexander also voiced repeated criticisms of his former colleagues, in his "Marc My Words" political opinion column for Scoop, a New Zealand news website.
In the 2005 election, United Future had the support of the WIN Party, which was set up to fight the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. WIN's leader, John van Buren, was United Future's candidate for Christchurch Central. This further spoke of alliances still to come. In this election, support plummeted to 2.8% and the party won only three seats. Peter Dunne retained Ohariu-Belmont, and Gordon Copeland and Judy Turner were returned on its party list.
United Future had tried to distance itself from its more assertive fundamentalist list MPs, such as Adams, Larry Baldock and Murray Smith. As Election New Zealand data revealed that the Outdoor Recreation Party still provided about 1% of the vote, 4.8% of the previous vote had gone elsewhere. During 2004-2005, the National Party had made renewed efforts to attract social conservative voters, through adoption of pro-life and anti-same-sex marriage voting records.
Following the 2005 election, New Zealand First and United Future entered into a confidence and supply agreement with Labour, under which Dunne became Minister of Revenue, outside Cabinet.
In March 2006 Outdoor Recreation New Zealand split with United Future, due to a dissatisfaction with what it saw as the Christian evangelism within the party. Outdoor Recreation acting chairman Phil Hoare said, "We strongly believe in the traditional bedrock values of our nation's heritage but we also affirm the separation of church and state." In 2006 several younger centrist members also departed from the party.
United Future, like most New Zealand Parliamentary parties, was caught up in the 2005 New Zealand election funding controversy. It voted in favour of the retrospective validating legislation, which was passed through the New Zealand Parliament in October 2006.
From February to April 2007, Peter Dunne exercised his own right to a conscience vote to support Sue Bradford's private members bill against parental corporal punishment of children, while Gordon Copeland vigorously opposed it, as did Judy Turner, but on a more subtle level.
On 16 May 2007, Copeland resigned from the party due to his dissatisfaction with Dunne's support for the aforementioned private members bill, although Turner did not follow suit. Copeland was subsequently part of forming the socially conservative Kiwi Party. Some other United Future members resigned in sympathy with Copeland.
On 13 August 2007 the party unveiled a new logo which Dunne said was a revitalisation of the party before the 2008 election. The re-branding of the party was taken further on 3 September 2007 when Peter Dunne announced that United Future was rebranding itself as a sensible, moderate centre party after the break with its Christian faction. Speaking of the departure of the Christian faction Dunne stated "I think it's taken a bit of a monkey off our back, frankly."
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