The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners is putting primary healthcare firmly on the Election 2026 agenda, launching a national campaign alongside a five-point manifesto calling for greater investment in general practice and rural medicine.
The new campaign, Your GP. The specialist who knows you – He hononga whānau, he oranga whānui, aims to highlight the specialist skills of GPs and the importance of long-term relationships between doctors, patients and whānau.
College President Dr Luke Bradford says general practice and rural hospital medicine should be treated as the foundation of the health system rather than an add-on, particularly as hospitals face growing pressure.
The College says around 90 percent of medical issues are managed in primary care, with approximately 24 million patient contacts each year. But it says primary care receives about 6 percent of the health budget, compared with an OECD average it puts at around 14 percent.
Its election manifesto sets out five priorities for the next Government: invest more in primary care, fund the full workload undertaken by practices, strengthen clinical leadership, grow and retain the GP and rural workforce, and improve health equity.
The College says Māori, Pacific peoples, rural communities and people living with deprivation are among those hardest hit when practices cannot recruit staff or patients face long waits and barriers to accessing care. It wants funding and workforce planning to recognise ethnicity, rurality and deprivation, alongside greater Māori involvement in workforce strategy.
With health already shaping up as a major election issue, the College is now asking every political party to spell out which of its five primary-care priorities they will support and when they would act.
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