Go to the full Health Policy
The Green Party want a high-quality health system that is fair for everyone.
We believe in a holistic approach to health and well-being that is focused on promoting good health, reducing the risk of illness, and improving quality of life.
We are committed to a public health care system that provides the same access and level of care regardless of wealth or income. All the evidence shows that a more equal society is better for everyone.
Key Principles
- Health care must be publicly funded and be based on treating the whole person.
- Priority should be given to health promotion and prevention of illness and injury.
- Health should be valued as taonga.
Specific Policy Points
Public Health and Illness Prevention
- Increase funding to promote health and prevent illness and injury to 10% of the health budget.
- Introduce a free annual wellness check for all New Zealanders.
- Ensure the underlying factors of ill health, such as unemployment, poor housing, and poor nutrition are addressed.
Health Workforce
- Support improvements in the pay and working conditions of health professionals.
- Increase the number of positions for nurses in the health sector.
- Introduce lower tertiary fees and a student allowance for all students including those training for health professions.
Waiting Lists
- Increase funding for straightforward surgical services.
- Ensure all patients waiting for treatment are treated within internationally established timeframes.
Primary Health Care
- Expand free and low-cost healthcare services to low income families.
- Extend the healthcare subsidies available to superannuitants to cover people on sickness and invalid's benefits.
- Promote team-managed, home-based primary care for at-risk older people and people with impairments.
Complementary Health Care
- Establish a Complementary Health Care Unit within the Ministry of Health to facilitate the integration of selected complementary health practices and therapies into the public health system.
- Ensure New Zealand retains regulatory control of the dietary supplements industry.
Rural Health
- Increase funding to rural health services to recognise the greater range of skills required by rural health professionals.
- Retain hospital services serving rural communities.
- Encourage rural mobile health services.
- Encourage medical trainees to undertake graduate work in rural areas.
Mental Health
- Ensure mental health funding is ring-fenced so that it is not diverted to other services.
- Give urgent attention to services for child and adolescent mental health needs.
- Significantly strengthen controls around the use of Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT).
- Increase funding for accommodation and related services for people living with, and recovering from, mental illness.
Maori Health as Taonga
- Support research partnerships to meet the urgent need for research that benefits Maori health.
- Increase accessibility of health services to Maori.
- Ensure Maori representation and consultation at all levels of the health service.
- Support rongoa Maori (traditional Maori healing) practitioners and practices.
Reproductive and Sexual Health
- Improve access to family planning and sexual health services.
- Support targeted education and screening programmes to reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted infections.
- Develop a National Infertility Prevention strategy that focuses on ways of protecting fertility.
- Prohibit the use of genetically engineered embryos in all fertility procedures.
Maternal and Child Health
- Improve postnatal care, including care for postnatal depression.
- Improve access to appropriate birth facilities and lead maternity carer, particularly for rural women.
- Investigate why the number of caesarean births has increased.
- Review the explosive growth of prescription of some drugs to children, e.g. Ritalin.
- Develop a national strategy and action plan to encourage healthy eating amongst our children.
- Provide free fruit to all primary schools.
Cancer
- Develop a public awareness campaign to reduce lifestyle risk factors for common cancers such as alcohol, cigarettes, obesity and lack of physical exercise.
- Work for a National Breast Cancer Prevention Strategy.
- Increase funding for research into the prevention and early detection of prostate cancer.
- Increase the early detection of prostate cancer through a public awareness campaign.
Community Care
- Significantly increase funding for the aged and disability care sector.
- Ensure that District Health Boards reimburse homecare workers' travel costs.
- Abolish asset testing for residential care.
- Work with community based agencies to detect and prevent elder abuse and abuse of people with impairments.
Minimising Harm of Alcohol, Drugs and Smoking
- Continue support for smoking cessation programmes.
- Ban broadcast alcohol advertising.
- Require compulsory health warnings on all alcohol products.
- Support continued use of pricing mechanisms to discourage the use of tobacco and alcohol.
Pharmaceuticals
- Ban the 'direct to consumer' advertising of pharmaceuticals.
- Require all pharmaceuticals to contain a consumer information panel, which outlines the risks and potential adverse reactions.
Superbugs and Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, Pandemics, and Electromagnetic Radiation
- Require all diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria to be notifiable.
- Require doctors, wherever possible, to identify the strain of bacteria before prescribing an antibiotic.
- Introduce random testing of chicken meat to ensure it is not contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- Ban the routine feeding of antibiotics to animals that are not sick or suffering from acute infections.
- Ensure New Zealand is prepared for a pandemic, including stockpiling sufficient doses of antiviral drugs, surgical masks, ventilators, syringes.
- Stop new unshielded high voltage power lines being built within 300 metres of any homes or schools.
