Insights from the Aotearoa New Zealand Budget 2024
RANZCOG
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
The Aotearoa New Zealand Government released its budget on May 30. As expected there was little good news for health.
While there was an increase in the total vote health appropriation for 2024/25 to $29.637 billion (compared with a final budgeted appropriation for 2023/24 of $28.202 billion) this appears to be going largely towards funding the increasing cost of current services.
Minister of Health, Dr Shane Reti, did however signal pre-commitments for future funding, including:
A funding boost of $16.68 billion across three budgets, spread over multiple years and taking us up to 2030/31.
$5.72 billion is signalled in this budget for the next four years.
Announcing longer term investment is intended to provide future funding certainty, to allow Te Whatu Ora to plan better.
The good (but not new) news in the budget for women鈥檚 health is an allocation to fund extension of free breast screening increasing the age limit from 69 to 74, and providing support for an extra 60,000 women to be screened a year.
RANZCOG鈥檚 Te K膩hui Oranga 艒 Nuku continues to advocate with Ministers and Te Whatu Ora on key issues in women鈥檚 health, in particular addressing workforce challenges including surgical training, improving maternity ultrasound access, and strengthening maternity services. We鈥檙e also advocating for improvements to preventative health. This year, we are targeting pelvic floor health.
Longer term implementation of the Women鈥檚 Health Strategy is vital for improving women鈥檚 health in Aotearoa and we look forward to seeing plans for this in the New Zealand Health Plan to be published this year.
For media enquiries
Catherine Cooper
Executive Director, Aotearoa New Zealand and Global Health
ccooper@ranzcog.org.nz