Budget 2026 Exposes This Hard-Right Government
Every day on Open Mic we post a daily political quote, a daily fact and a political haiku:
Warm rooms traded for balance—
Winter bites harder.
Never a truer poem written.
Let’s be very clear, despite all the claims from NZME (owned by an alt-Right Billionaire Canadian who believes in crazy conspiracy theories) that this Budget was some type of ‘balancing the books’ bullshit has fallen to pieces as the enormity of cuts become apparent and the Budget backlash begins.
Budget 2026 rewards power and punishes poverty
- Banks – They can’t believe their luck. They made between $7 billion–$8 billion in profit last year and all they will be hit with is $70 million a year? That’s chump change and they know it! Why the Christ shouldn’t we be serious about windfall taxes on the Banks? They will be laughing all the way to themselves after this joke tax.
- ACT’s Libertarian Chainsaw – They have slashed and slashed and slashed the State with an ideological fervour bordering on book burning. They can’t believe how much voters are allowing them to mutilate.
- Vacant Optimism – The level of disbelief you must suspend to believe the growth numbers that this house of cards rests upon are beyond rational thought. There’s no fucking way unemployment will peak at 5.5%, there’s no fucking way inflation will peak at 4%, and there’s no fucking way growth will be as high as has been predicted. This entire economic platform is built upon hope and snot.
- The 30% GDP Debt Ratio Neoliberal Straitjacket – We are going to cause all this pain so that Nicola Willis can box tick a 30% GDP Debt ratio in 2029 despite borrowing $341 billion because she point blank refuses to tax the rich.
- Environment – The irony of shutting down the Ministry for the Environment while championing roads getting destroyed by climate change as the seven Biggest Polluters get whatever policy they want.
- Health – Ok. It costs $1.4 billion to stand still and we NEED $2 billion a year to do what the Public Health service needs to do. What has the Government offered? $1.3 billion – THAT’S LESS THAN IT COSTS!!!!
- Education – They are trumpeting $500m per year on Education, but $100 million of that is to implement Erica Stanford’s controversial curriculum. Blowing 20% of your budget on an ideological ram raid isn’t the flex National thinks it is.
- Beneficiaries – They lose $200 million from the emergency allowance while automated systems decide some benefit decisions. It’s never been a worse time to be poor in NZ.
- State Tenants – About to pay $380 million in extra rents to generate more desperation to empower National’s landlord mates.
- Students – Losing $200 million in student free fees so propertied boomers can have more is a kick in the balls.
- Public Servants – PSA warning 9,000 jobs will be gone as the Government moves to AI because nothing is more glorious than being told by a Robot to rate your misery from one to five.
- Public Service – PSA warning $2.4 billion will be cut from public services so that the Right can undermine public services so much that voters scream for privatisation as the solution.
- Children in Poverty – It will go from 11% to 14.3% – YOU READ THAT RIGHT! CHILD POVERTY WILL GO UP THANKS TO THIS BUDGET!
What Budget 2026 really says about how hard right this Government really is that we have allowed social media hate algorithms decide our perspective without realising that those hate algorithms are manipulated by the Billionaire class, by the Property Pimps, by the Big Polluters and by the Corporations.
In 2024 on The Working Group, Matthew Hooton was emphatic…
…because National have no actual political philosophy or values, they have adopted Corporate Talking Points and have legislated purely for their donors interests which leaves a wasteland where the common good is strangled off.
This is a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ Budget where the poor will suffer so that the Government can tick a box in 2029 saying that our debt level is 30% of GDP.
All that social carnage is justified so that we can meet some Libertarian fantasy.
The hard-right Government has forgotten who New Zealand was
NZ was once a nation that believed in egalitarianism.
The 40 hour working week was born here.
Woman fought and gained the vote here first.
We were one of the first to stand for Nuclear free.
But now the propertied boomer class alongside the redneck reactionaries are so captured by the Right’s culture war grievance industry we are locked into states of apathy exploited by the Political Right.
Left Universalism funded by taxing the rich is our only hope forward, not endlessly policing pronoun use.
READ THIS AND WEEP.
Martyn’s comment re Health
Health – Ok. It costs $1.4billion to stand still and we NEED $2billion a year to do what the Public Health service needs to do. What has the Government offered? $1.3billion – THAT’S LESS THAN IT COSTS!!!!
This is the increase on last years bullshit $32 . 4 billion Plus the
1.3billion added for 26/27.
Isn’t even enough for Te Whata Ora to stand still.Z
No allowance for inflation
No allowance for Population Growth.
My Open Mic Post on 8th of May.
When are the politicians going to wake up to the fact our health system primary care and our Hospital dysfunction is not going to be fixed until ALL GP’s can prescribe the meds a client needs and know they will be able to get them funded by Pharmac and or THROUGH A ACC $5 per WEEK ACC Medicines levy for Unfunded but Medsafe approved meds and not have to crowd fund while 464 meds sit waiting to be processed or funded on a Pharmac computer desk..
EVERY $1 not spent on meds on extra costs in 2015/16 NZ $ were:
$10 in hospital costs.
$20 in additional social downstream costs .
In 2019 / 20
A hospital ward bed cost $1500 per day
A hospital ICU bed cost $2500 per day.
Since 1980 till 2026 15,000 hospital beds and the facilities that housed them both private and public have been removed .
All these additional costs are almost all related to a patient not being able to access medicines from Day One of medsafe approval for use in N Z.
Is Pharmac as it is now in it’s current model stands fit for purpose in 2026.
My answer is NO !!!
1 There is no emerging substantially sized emerging Medicines fund as in other OECD countries of $200 to 300 plus million.
I suggest due to the long backlog ( 464 medicines) that there should be $750 million, emerging medicines fund within ACC and a $5 medicare levy on all income earners as an ACC levy.
2 The current Pharmac funding model is nothing more than austerity medicines funding model denying us our human rights to access the MEDS OUR GP wants us to get when we need them.
Your income level or lack of a suitable health insurance policy should not be able to deny you that access.
Over our medicines access we have been blatantly lied to for 30 plus years.
Read the below summary and weep then read the 2nd part page 25 and 26 of this post further down the page in the comments .
Executive summary of the
2025/26 MEDICINES LANDSCAPE REPORT.
Access to modern medicines in Aotearoa New Zealand remains challenging for people, family and whānau that need them. Reports have previously highlighted differences compared with other countries, both in the number of funded medicines as well as the time taken to achieve funding following application to a
reimbursement agency equivalent to Pharmac.
Levels of modern medicine funding are closely linked to trends in the Medicines Budget with increases in the last few years coinciding with more funding decisions being made. However, despite this welcome result there still remains a high number of applications at different stages of the medicines funding process, including those not yet ranked and prioritised by Pharmac.
Pharmac maintains three priority lists to show all the proposals currently ranked for funding, each with a different purpose and intent. Analysis of these lists, the Pharmac application tracker and use of Official Information Act (OIA) requests has revealed the following key findings.
The time taken to achieve a funding decision has decreased slightly over the last two years
For the 18 applications that achieved a funding decision in the 2025-26 year to date, they did so on average 5.3 years (or median 4.0 years) following their submission to Pharmac. This was slightly lower than in the previous year and reported previously in 2023. Almost 70% of these came from 2 therapeutic groups;
Oncology Agents and Immunosuppressants and the Nervous System.
It has been an average of 7.2 years and counting for applications waiting across all Pharmac lists.
This waiting time is only expected to increase while funding decisions are still not being made. This was reflected across all priority waiting lists, with a median 5.9 years since applications were submitted to Pharmac.
Even for those ‘yet to be ranked’ medicines application it has been 5.0 years since submission.
There were 182 applications at various stages of the funding process prior to being prioritised and ranked, largely seeking clinical advice or under assessment. These are all part of a funding application backlog.
It has been an average of 6.5 years and counting for applications currently on the Options for investment waiting list.
While this list represents those applications Pharmac has indicated they would like to fund, subject to budget,
they have been waiting an average 6.5 years (median 5.3 years). This time is only expected to increase based on the rate of funding decisions being achieved.
Many medicines on the Options for Investment lists have become standard of care in other countries.
Overall, 83% of medicines on the Options for Investment waiting list are considered standard of care in other countries. If these medicines and vaccines were funded 3.14 million patients would benefit (or 289,189 patients for the medicines only).
4,183,840 New Zealanders would benefit if the Options for Investment waiting list was funded today.
Put another way, this is the number of people missing out due to these medicines not being funded. Even excluding vaccines, an additional 664,840 people would benefit in the 1st year following full funding. This Summary of recommendations for Pharmac to consider
Similar to the previous report in 2023, these findings also provide an opportunity for Pharmac to take these to inform improvements in the medicines funding process for this county. In light of this, it is recommended that Pharmac do the following:
● Continue to report on performance against benchmarks for the time taken to achieve funding decisions, and where available monitor and compare the experiences and timeframes from other
countries.
● Continue to review, optimise, demonstrate and report on more rapid turnaround in the various stages of the medicines funding process.
● Make the following information publicly available on Pharmac website for each application and in summary reporting: Numbers of benefiting patients, alignment with factors for consideration,
assessment by therapeutic group and time since submission.
● Provide better options for individuals and organisations to access aggregated information from the Pharmac application tracker, extending to all applications where a decision has been made, are on priority waiting lists, or those that are not yet ranked. This will support better collective understanding of the impact of work being done to improve the medicines funding process, together with those improvements still to be made.
By working to further increase the transparency of decision making by Pharmac is likely to lead to more meaningful and well-informed dialogue with a wider range of health stakeholders, ensuring medicines funding can achieve the greatest possible benefit for all people in Aotearoa New Zealand.
IN YOUR OPINION IS PHARMAC STILL FIT FOR PURPOSE IN 2026 ?
Page 25 and 26
Reports conclusions.
Conclusions
The findings in this report have highlighted a number of key areas where there have been improvements made since the last report in 2023. Across a range of measures though, there remain opportunities for the medicines funding process to be significantly improved by Pharmac.
Sustainable increase in Medicines Budget equals more funding decisions
The increase in the Medicines Budget in 2023-24 and 2024-25 coincided with the largest number of annual funding decisions made in a single year and was a welcome result. It was estimated 89,436 patients are likely to benefit from new access to these modern medicines in the first 12 months alone. However, this report has shown that this momentum has been maintained through into 2025-26. While there was growth in the
Medicines Budget of 4.1%, the number of funding decisions has now reverted to pre-2024 trends.
Given the correlation of rates of funding decisions with changes in the Medicines Budget, it reinforces the importance of ongoing material increases in budget funding in future years to improve medicines access.
Time taken to reach a funding decision has decreased over last 2 years
In the last report in 2022-23 the median time to reach a funding decision was 6.5 years. In 2024-25, it took a median of 4.6 years to reach a funding decision and in 2025-26 it took 4.0 years. This reduction over time to achieve funding is important given the number of patients that are able to benefit sooner from access to modern medicines. Overall, it is expected that almost 500,000 patients stand to benefit from medicines
already funded this year.
These results may be affected by the number of funding decisions made each year which, after a lift in 2024- 25, has now reverted to historical trend levels.
Moving forward, there is a need for Pharmac to maintain and build on this momentum. This allows for more rapid renewal of priority lists with new ranked applications for modern medicines that will address other unmet health needs.
Medicines still waiting too long on priority lists awaiting a decision
Review of all three priority waiting lists show that it has been an average of 7.2 years (median 5.9 years) and counting since their submission to Pharmac. This varies across lists, from a median 5.3 years to 8.3 years.
Furthermore, even for those medicine applications that have not yet been ranked and prioritised it has still been on average 5.0 years since their submission to Pharmac.
The number of applications is substantial at 464, comprising both the 275 applications on priority waiting lists and 182 applications yet to be ranked. Despite some small improvements from the previous 2023 report the continued trends highlights structural issues in how the medicines funding process operates in practice which will mean it will be challenging to meaningfully reduce these wait times.
Pharmac has already taken steps to remove a large number of inactive applications that may be inflating these numbers, which is positive. However, even once these are removed, for any given year less than 8% of all applications will achieve a funding decision. For the remaining 92% they will continue to wait.
Review of the impact of Pharmac lists for patients in Aotearoa New Zealand 26
The time waiting for a decision to be made continues to be high and compares unfavourably with other countries. These findings are consistent with a report showing that the same set of modern medicines were publicly funded nearly twice as fast in Australia compared with New Zealand.
12 It will therefore be important to measure time frame improvements in the funding process by how they compare with other similar markets.
Aotearoa continues to miss out on access to standard of care medicines
Overall, 83% of medicines currently on the Options for Investment waiting list were considered as standard of care in other countries. While these standard of care medicines remain unfunded this will continue to impact
A significant number of patients that are missing out. After 5 years the number of patients is likely to reach 3.14 million patients including vaccines and medicines.
When considering medicines alone, 289,189 people
would be missing out on standard of care medicines.
Moving forward, it is important that a reasonable benchmark for the time taken to achieve funding decisions for these standard of care medicines is established. This should take into account the timeframes and funding status from other countries, given a number of reports have previously highlighted differences between New
Zealand and other OECD countries. Together with the estimates of those patients missing out, it allows a better understanding of the real ‘cost’ while these medicines remain unfunded.
Over 4 million patients would benefit from immediately funding the waiting list
Delays in time to achieve medicines funding will continue to have an impact on people expected to benefit, both initially and then subsequently over time. For the Options for Investment waiting list, for example, there would be 4,183,140 patients that would benefit from fully funding the list in the 1st year alone. Even excluding vaccines, an additional 664,840 people would benefit from funding this waiting list in the 1st year alone.
This increases all the way up to 843,400 patients benefiting if funded by the 5th year.
These numbers should be considered together with the cumulative level of unmet health need while the medicine remains unfunded to give the true picture of the opportunity cost of delayed funding decisions. Or put into context, most of the current Aotearoa New Zealand population would benefit if all applications on the
Options for investment waiting list were funded immediately.
Even funding all medicines other than vaccines would benefit over 10% of the country’s population straight away, many of these for conditions with high health needs.
Need to focus on those patients with highest unmet health needs
The health need level of the condition is an important factor for consideration Pharmac have when ranking funding proposals on lists. However, the correlation of these factors with the likelihood of a funding decision being achieved for an application is unclear, as evidenced in the current 2025-26 year. There did not appear to be a strong overall correlation between health need severity and likelihood of achieving a funding decision.
Looking at health need specifically, there were 22 unfunded applications where the heath need was very high, very high-extreme or extreme and had the potential to benefit 9,620 people. A further 41 applications had their health needs listed as high, with the potential to benefit 346,850 people. Given this it is recommended that greater consideration should be given to those applications that have the highest health needs not currently being met.
https://www.medicinesnz.co.nz/fileadmin/user_upload/Publications/2026/Waiting_List_Report_2026_FINAL.pdf?
DO YOU SUPPORT A ACC FUNDED EMERGING MEDICINES FUND OF $750 Million.
WOULD YOU SUPPORT A $5 Weekly ACC MEDICINES LEVY THAT CREATES THAT $750 Million Dollar stand alone fund .
This fund would fund medicines and or Medical devices approved by Medsafe while
Pharmac goes through its processes.
If Pharmac doesn’t fund it it would continue to be funded through the ACC Emerging Medicines fund.
‘The Right’, and their self delusion, that they are the great economic managers of the world, has no foundation, no evidence, no nothing….it’s the biggest hoax known to modern man.
We have journalists now…. These journalists, through some pretty basic research and socratic questioning, could easily expose the the lie.
Where are they?
The lineup of….Men’s Face Cream Salesman Luxon, $680 million dollar penalty Nikki- No- Boats Willis, Up Chuck Muck School Lunch Debacle Organiser Seymour, 2 Bit lawyer Bishop and Porn Junky Jones as N.Z’s economic managers is woeful….not one of them has a background in this kind of specialised work …all floundering around in their silos telling each other with hubristic fervour that they are great economic managers….nothing could be further from the truth or reality.
Their reckons, based around both ego driven self interest and big money influence, fused with warped narrow minded ideologies, isn’t going to cut it.
Expect carnage!
Preach brother! Never were truer words spoken (written).
We need to call a spade a spade! National are not delivering corporate welfare to their donors! They are their BRIBERS! It’s massive corruption which our media refuses to call out and their RW enablers clearly agree with. How sick is that for our people? No other NZ PM has has it so good – no portfolio, no commonsense, an enormous ego – just another Trump-like Braggart. Please make this nightmare go away!