New Zealand 2026 election: GP access, hospital waiting times and health funding

Policy comparison · 16 October 2026 · New Zealand-wide

Healthcare is a major issue in the 2026 general election, with voting scheduled for 7 November 2026. The main divide is between parties promising to make care cheaper and increase investment in the health workforce, and parties emphasising prevention, medicines, productivity and making existing health funding go further. The main parties vying to form New Zealand's next governmentPolicies for Party vote - NZ Election 2026

The key question is how these different approaches would translate into shorter waits for a GP appointment, faster treatment in hospital and enough doctors, nurses and other health professionals to deliver that care.

What the parties are proposing

National

Earlier care, medicines and prevention

• GP access: Supports making better use of existing health services and expanding the range of tasks that health professionals such as pharmacists can undertake.
• Hospital and specialist care: Its published health package focuses on earlier intervention, cancer screening, clinical trials and access to medicines rather than a specific new, general hospital-waiting-time guarantee.
• Staffing and funding: Proposes an additional $604 million for Pharmac, funded by savings from reduced foreign aid outside the Pacific. It also supports a new medical school in Waikato, an initiative already announced by the government. 2026 Election Policy SummariesPolicies for Party vote - NZ Election 2026

Labour

Lower costs and more GP appointments

• GP access: Three free GP or nurse visits each year for every New Zealander through a proposed Medicard. A family-doctor loan scheme would help up to 50 people a year buy into owner-operated practices.
• Reducing waits: Labour says phone triage, technology and targeted funding could free up more than 4.5 million GP appointments annually.
• Hospitals: Promises to clear the existing hospital repair backlog and fix more hospital buildings and essential systems.
• Staffing and funding: Guarantees jobs for eligible New Zealand-trained graduate nurses and promises 24 paid trainee sonographer positions. A targeted 28% capital gains tax on profits from investment property sales, excluding the family home and specified other assets, would fund its health policies, with revenue ring-fenced for health. Labour's 2026 Election Policies2026 Election Policy Summaries

Green Party

Free care and a larger, better-supported workforce

• GP access: Wants GP clinics and a much wider range of health services to be publicly funded and free to access.
• Hospital waits: Its approach centres on addressing underinvestment, improving access throughout the health system and expanding the workforce, rather than relying on existing services to treat more patients with the same resources.
• Staffing: Proposes increasing recruitment and retention, supporting Māori health professionals to train and upskill, improving pay parity, and ensuring reasonable workloads and better working conditions.
• Funding: Proposes a substantial shift towards fully funded, publicly owned health services, including GP clinics, emergency services, dental care and mental health services. 2026 Election Policy SummariesManifesto 2026

ACT

More use of pharmacies and targeted spending

• GP access: Would let pharmacists treat more everyday conditions, manage some long-term conditions, order blood tests and adjust medicines within limits set by a GP.
• Hospital waits: Emphasises earlier access to medicines and better use of the existing system. Its published package also supports a National Cancer Centre with Auckland and Christchurch campuses.
• Staffing and funding: Proposes raising the share of the health budget spent on medicines by one percentage point annually, reaching 12% by 2033. It says this would come from the existing health budget rather than additional baseline spending. The cancer centre would use a mix of private investment, public-private partnerships and existing health funding. 2026 Election Policy SummariesPolicies for Party vote - NZ Election 2026

New Zealand First

Prevent illness before it leads to hospital treatment

• GP access: Proposes restoring professional autonomy in general practice and introducing health coaches in primary care.
• Hospital waits: Its central argument is that preventing chronic illness would reduce avoidable demand on hospitals, rather than simply spending more on treatment after people become sick.
• Staffing and funding: Its Make NZ Healthy programme promotes nutrition, prevention and vitamin C and D interventions. The published package focuses more on changing the health system's priorities than on a quantified commitment to recruit additional hospital staff or a specific waiting-time reduction. NZFirst Campaign Announcement: The Plan to “Make NZ Healthy”2026 Election Policy Summaries

Opportunity (formerly TOP)

Long-term funding reform

• GP access: Wants a greater share of health funding directed to primary care so people can receive treatment earlier in the community.
• Hospital waits: Its proposed 10-year health plan aims to reduce pressure on hospitals through prevention, earlier diagnosis and stronger primary care.
• Staffing and funding: Proposes cross-party agreement on a 10-year plan and increasing health spending from approximately 7.4% to 9% of GDP. This is a system-wide funding target, not a promise that waiting times will automatically fall by a particular amount. 2026 Election Policy SummariesPolicies for Party vote - NZ Election 2026

Te Pāti Māori

Māori-led care and prevention

• GP access: Emphasises accessible, culturally safe care and stronger Māori-led health services.
• Hospital waits: Wants to shift the system away from crisis response towards prevention and whānau wellbeing, addressing health inequities that can contribute to avoidable hospital admissions.
• Staffing and funding: Its published policy prioritises rebuilding and strengthening Māori-led health authority and services. The independent party-policy summary does not identify a specific workforce recruitment target or quantified national hospital-waiting-time commitment. 2026 Election Policy Summaries

How do their approaches compare?

Issue	Main differences
Cheaper GP visits	Labour promises three free visits a year; the Greens support free, publicly funded GP care.
More GP appointments	Labour has the most explicit quantified proposal: 4.5 million additional available appointments annually, alongside loans to support practice ownership.
Shorter hospital waits	The parties' approaches differ: Labour emphasises hospital repairs, National earlier care and medicines, while the Greens and Opportunity focus more on workforce capacity and stronger primary care.
More health workers	Labour promises jobs for eligible graduate nurses; the Greens emphasise recruitment, retention, pay and working conditions.
More health funding	Opportunity proposes lifting health spending to 9% of GDP. Labour proposes a dedicated property capital gains tax for health. National and ACT emphasise targeted spending and reallocation, while the Greens advocate substantially expanding publicly funded services. 2026 Election Policy SummariesLabour's 2026 Election Policies

What about existing hospital and GP waiting-time targets?

The current government introduced a national primary-care access target on 1 July 2026:

National GP access target

More than 80%

More than 80% of people should be able to get an appointment with a general practice provider within one week, with the implementation plan working towards this by 2030.

Source: Ministry of Health, updated 1 July 2026. Primary care health target

This provides an existing benchmark against which voters can assess the parties' proposals. However, a GP access target is not the same as a guarantee of treatment within a week, and the first national results were expected in late 2026.

For hospital waiting times, it is important to distinguish between promises to improve capacity and a firm commitment to treat patients within a defined period. A party may promise more funding, staff or hospital repairs without specifying how many patients will be treated sooner.

What should voters look for?

Three questions help separate broad promises from practical commitments:

• Will access improve in practice? Free appointments reduce the cost barrier, but they do not necessarily create more available appointments. Additional staff, clinic capacity and better use of nurses and pharmacists can also matter.
• Will hospital waits actually fall? More hospital staff, operating capacity, equipment and functioning buildings can help, while better access to GPs may prevent some patients from needing hospital treatment. Prevention generally takes longer to change demand.
• Is the funding credible and sufficient? Look for the total cost, where the money will come from, whether it is new funding or reallocated from elsewhere, and whether staffing commitments are backed by training places and jobs.

Bottom line: Labour has a particularly concrete proposal for cheaper GP visits and more available appointments. The Greens place the strongest emphasis on universal free care and workforce investment. National and ACT focus more on medicines, earlier care and using existing resources differently. Opportunity proposes a long-term increase in health spending, while New Zealand First and Te Pāti Māori put greater emphasis on prevention, with different approaches to how health services should be organised.

These are proposed policies, not guaranteed outcomes. The decisive questions are how quickly they can be implemented, whether the workforce can be expanded and whether the funding will be enough to reduce waiting times across New Zealand.