ACT party cost breakdown

The ACT Party has announced $2.6 billion in new spending over the next four years. This is equivalent to $1,271 per household.

Social spending

The largest share of this is health spending, all directed at Pharmac. A baseline increase to Pharmac's budget is costed at $1.9 billion over four years, using the midpoint of ACT's own year-by-year projections. $300 million in 2027/28, rising to $600 million by 2030/31.

A further $92 million is costed to allow pharmacies to diversify the services they offer, based on the $23 million cost of a 2023 pilot scheme. As ACT's policy is broader than the pilot, the true cost is likely to be higher than this minimum estimate.

Government services and administration

ACT's pledge of 100,000 hours of extra rural police patrols is costed at $25.5 million over four years, based on an annual constable salary of $86,597 and a 30 percent overhead allowance.

The three-strikes law proposal for burglary is costed at $191.8 million over four years, using ACT's own maximum estimate of 952 additional offenders caught and a $552 daily cost per prisoner. This figure does not include the cost of any new prison beds that would be required to house them.

ACT has proposed a ban on spiritual practices, including karakia and waiata, on taxpayers' time in the public service. This is estimated to save $14 million over four years, assuming 10 percent of staff at each agency are affected.

The party's changes to climate regulation are also included here. These include $65 million restoring industrial allocations to the 60 percent and 90 percent rates for trade-exposed industries, $407 million returning ETS receipts to households, and a $59 million saving from scrapping the Zero Carbon Act.

Note: These reforms were included in Government services (legislative and regulatory reform), rather than as environmental and conservation policy.

ACT has also proposed consolidating the public service. We have assumed this carries no net cost to the taxpayer, on the basis that any redundancy costs would be more than offset by the resulting savings.

Economic development

ACT has not announced any costed economic development policies this election. Their transport policy will reallocate NZTA cultural spending towards core transport investment, but this is a reallocation rather than a reduction. 

(t) policies where we’ve taken parties’ costings at face value.
(o) uncosted policies that we have had to cost ourselves.
(d) policies where we have disputed parties’ own costings.