What they say

ACT New Zealand: ACT’s starting point is always that dementia care should be timely and measured by outcomes. ACT in principle, supports ensuring the idea that our healthcare system needs to do better in early diagnosis and strengthen community support. Funding should be tied to services and providers that work for patients.

The Green Party: Yes. The Green Party recognises that people living with dementia mate wareware is set to rise, with great impacts on those with dementia, and whānau who care for them. As part of our manifesto policies for Seniors, the Green Party have committed to launch a dedicated long-term strategy for the needs of an ageing population which encompasses the holistic wellbeing of kaumātua, elder abuse prevention, ensuring income is equitably accessed and sufficient to live comfortably, and the establishment of a state-owned, not-for-profit retirement village scheme. Any action plan is only as good as its implementation.

National Party: Dementia is one of New Zealand’s biggest health and aging challenges. National’s focus is on fixing the basic across the health system while building a stronger future for New Zealanders living with dementia. This means investing in practical initiatives that help people live well for longer and delivers better outcomes for patients, families, and carers.

The Opportunity Party: Opportunity will seek cross-party agreement on a ten-year Health Plan, given a legislative basis, with its projections for demand, workforce, infrastructure and cost published in full and progress reported to Parliament rather than to the Minister.

The refreshed Dementia Mate Wareware Action Plan 2026–2031 belongs inside it. Like the Diabetes Roadmap and the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, it sets out a direction but not the funding, workforce and infrastructure to deliver it. The Health Plan is where that gets agreed. We are not proposing to rewrite it.

The July 2026 Pae Ora amendments require a New Zealand Health Plan within 24 months, so the Action Plan can be built into it within the next term. We would prioritise the actions that help people stay well and at home for longer, and report publicly on what was delivered.

ACT New Zealand: ACT believes that community services provide a very valuable service for dementia patients. ACT generally believes that funding is better directed to such services where there are good outcomes, rather than centralised systems which can often leave out the most vulnerable.

The Green Party: Access to community dementia services should be equitable for all – and not dependent on how much you earn, how much you’ve saved, or where you’re from. The Green Party are committed to providing publicly funded services for people with dementia, with high quality of care, and good pay and working conditions for those caring for people living with dementia. Additionally, we need to see mechanisms in place with the system that focus on accountability, commissioning, and transparency.

National Party: Community-based services play a critical role in helping people living with dementia stay independent and maintain their quality of life. The Government is investing in and strengthened community healthcare, supporting people earlier and closer to home. Funding decisions must ensure better access, equity, and outcomes for patients and families.

The Opportunity Party: First, the size of the envelope. Over the ten years of the Plan, Opportunity will advocate to increase health funding from 7.4% to 9% of GDP, and within that, take first-level care from 5.7 to 10% of Health New Zealand’s spending, on a staged path with a published mid-plan milestone. We expect community dementia services would grow within that envelope given the clear need and value for money..

Second, how the price is set. Services should be paid what they cost to deliver, measured independently and published, rather than on the basis of what they received last year. We also support multi-year contracts for community providers.

We will not set a dollar figure for one service in a manifesto. Politicians should not set the split within that envelope. Health New Zealand allocates it, working to the Plan and reporting publicly against it.

ACT New Zealand: ACT supports practical prevention and early intervention through primary care and community services. It is clear that early intervention can have a massive effect on health outcomes.  This could include things like earlier cognitive assessment.

The Green Party: The Green Party are committed to investing more in the prevention of ill health, including dementia. This means warm, dry housing, adequate incomes, a transport system that supports active travel and reduced air pollution, and reducing advertising of alcohol, including in sports. We support funding the community organisations on the ground who support good health, by removing restrictive contracts and funding these providers to give the wrap-around support that enable higher trust in these healthcare providers, and allow them to do more to keep people well.

National Party: Prevention and early intervention are essential to meeting the growing challenge of dementia. National is focused on reducing key risk factors through stronger primary care, chronic disease prevention, and public health initiatives.

The Opportunity Party: Six of the fourteen risk factors — smoking, harmful alcohol use, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol — also drive New Zealand’s wider preventable disease burden. Tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food alone account for roughly a quarter of the healthy years New Zealanders lose to death and disability. Reducing dementia risk and reducing that burden are largely the same job.

We will pursue a credible path back to smokefree, including fewer places selling tobacco and properly funded cessation support; and nutrition standards legislated and extended to schools, prisons and aged residential care, informed by a new National Nutrition Survey.

Blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol are found and managed in general practice, which is why first-level care grows to 10 per cent of Health New Zealand’s spending.

The Plan carries measurable equity goals and stable commissioning for kaupapa Māori and iwi-led providers. Success is measured on published outcomes, broken down by ethnicity and reported annually to Parliament.

We also plan to regulate lobbying, to ensure public health decisions are made on the basis of evidence and need, not on who has the loudest voices or the most resources.

ACT New Zealand: ACT recognises the role of unpaid carers in supporting people with dementia. ACT would focus on practical support, including simpler access to respite, clearer information, carer education, and better coordination with health services. Any expansion would need to be funded transparently and measured against carer wellbeing and reduced crisis admissions.

The Green Party: The Green Party recognise that a lot of work to support seniors goes unpaid and unrecognised. The Green Party would improve Work and Income to be a high-trust model with adequate levels of income to support people having dignity, and improve the Carer Support subsidy, centring the voice of carers as part of the process.

National Party: National recognises the contribution unpaid carers make in supporting people living with dementia. Through the Government’s Mahi Aroha Carers’ Strategy Action Plan, we are focused on improving recognition of carers, strengthening their wellbeing and financial security, and ensuring support is better coordinated across agencies. We will continue working with carers and communities directly.

The Opportunity Party: The health system’s part is practical support: planned and emergency respite, day programmes and carer education. Whether you can get any of that today depends largely on where you live, and that gap should be measured and reported nationally. We would fund respite through whoever can best deliver it locally, which will often be an aged residential care provider, rather than limiting it to one type of provider from the start. It sits inside the growing primary and community envelope.

We also support a tell-us-once approach for lifelong conditions, so carers are not repeating the same history to every service.

The financial strain is real, but it is not fixed from Vote Health. Our Citizen’s Income and disability support will go some way to recognising the unpaid work of carers.

ACT New Zealand: ACT would consider the Advisory Group’s recommendations when they are released.

The Green Party: The Green Party are committed to a long-term strategy for the needs of an ageing population with sustainable funding. We have the resources we need to be able to take care of those living with dementia. All it takes is a small tax on the super-rich to unlock the resources we all need to thrive, including taking proper care of our seniors and ensuring they and their whānau do not suffer needlessly due to self-imposed fiscal rules.

National Party: Record investments have been made to strengthen health services, including continued investment in frontline care. National is building a health system that is joined up, responsive, and centred on patients and their families. We will carefully consider the recommendations of the Ministerial Advisory Group.

The Opportunity Party: As we told the Aged Care Association, Opportunity is broadly supportive in principle of the Ministerial Advisory Group’s recommendations and supports continued work on a comprehensive government response.

Dementia falls through the cracks because it sits across mental health, aged care, disability and primary care, each planned and funded on its own three-year cycle. One ten-year Plan covering the whole system is the structural answer. Aged residential care is part of the health system and should be planned as such, with stronger links between primary care, hospitals, home support and residential care, and better follow-up after discharge.

Budget 2026 shows the funding problem. The cost of standing still was independently assessed at $1.405 billion. The Budget provided $1.37 billion, and every initiative announced alongside it came from that same money. Under our rules, cost pressures including population ageing are met in full first, and new announcements are funded on top.