The Vote Health package for Budget 2025 includes funding for primary care, cancer treatments and other medicines, health infrastructure, and new initiatives.
2025 is the second year of a multi-year arrangement for cost pressure funding for the health system, which was announced as part of Budget 2024.
Read Minister of Health Hon Simeon Brown’s press release: Record investment in health delivery.
Initiatives
- Increasing the maximum prescription length from three months to 12 months when it is safe and clinically appropriate. This initiative is expected to be in place from early 2026.
To find our more see: Increasing prescribing lengths. - Funding for primary care initiatives to support timely access to quality primary health care for all New Zealanders (announced March 2025).
- Funding to expand urgent and after-hours care services around the country (announced 8 May 2025).
- Continuing streamlined aged care transfers from hospital care to community settings, such as aged residential care.
- Funding for the Health and Disability Commissioner to improve complaint resolution and care standards.
- Funding for cancer treatments and other medicines (announced June 2024).
- Support for a new multi-agency response to mental health distress calls, including funding for mental health and addiction telehealth and expanded response teams.
- Meeting demand for Forensic Mental Health Services by expanding capacity in the Health New Zealand’s Midland region (related to the Waikeria Prison expansion). This is managed outside of Budget 2025 allowances and will be met through reprioritised funding.
Health infrastructure
Budget 2025 includes $1.013 billion for infrastructure investment, across six key initiatives:
- Nelson Hospital redevelopment programme
- Wellington Regional Hospital Emergency Department refurbishment
- Interim inpatient bed capacity for New Zealand hospitals, providing an interim solution at hospital sites ahead of longer-term redevelopment
- Improvements to ageing infrastructure at Auckland-based health services
- Funding to address core infrastructure risks at Palmerston North Hospital
- Funding for small-scale infrastructure projects across the country.
The funding for these infrastructure initiatives is placed into tagged contingencies. Contingency funding can be drawn down by Ministers, subject to business cases being completed and other necessary conditions being met.
These investments are the first stage of investment as part of the 10-year Health Infrastructure Plan announced in April.
View the full Budget 2025 summary of initiatives.
Cost pressure funding
At Budget 2024, a multi-year arrangement was put in place to meet cost pressures for frontline health services, with funding of $16.68 billion over three Budgets.
This arrangement across three budgets is to enable Health New Zealand to better plan and deliver frontline health services including Emergency Departments (ED), primary care, aged care, public health services, and assist with the retention of the health workforce.
Budget 2025 is the second year of this multi-year arrangement for cost pressure funding.
Through the multi-year arrangement, $16.68 billion in cost pressure funding has been provided:
- Budget 2024: $5.720 billion across the forecast period
- Budget 2025: $5.480 billion across the forecast period
- Budget 2026: $5.480 billion across the forecast period.
This represents an increase across Health New Zealand’s operating budget as follows:
- Budget 2024: $1.430 billion p.a. from 2024/25
- Budget 2025: a further $1.370 billion p.a. from 2025/26
- Budget 2026: a further $1.370 billion p.a. from 2026/27.
The annual increase in funding from each Budget is carried forward into the baseline, meaning that the annual increases across the three Budgets are cumulative.
This cost pressure funding supports keeping pace with demographic changes (as our population increases and ages) and increasing costs (inflation).
