Labour’s universal free GP policy faces workforce warning
Saturday, 29 November 2025
Underfunded, understaffed and overworked.
That’s how The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners’ medical director Dr Prabani Wood, has described the state of the GP workforce, warning Labour’s promise to fund three free GP visits will fall flat unless it is backed by serious efforts to retain GPs.
She said the biggest barrier to seeing a GP was not cost, but access. Wait lists of two to three weeks were common as a shrinking number of doctors faced unsustainable workloads, while many rural patients had no access at all.
“The job sizing isn't correct, the terms and conditions under which we work are not correct, therefore people are leaving.”
Labour’s universal GP policy would be funded through a capital gains tax on property - excluding the family home, from July 2028, if elected.
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While Wood welcomed increasing access to primary healthcare, she said the policy would not work if there weren’t GPs for people to see.
“We've got to go back to fundamentally look at the job and size it properly, make it sustainable and build it from there.”
Labour’s health spokesperson, Ayesha Verrall, made no promise to increase the workforce, but did say Labour had met with the College in September to discuss ways to support more people into the workforce.
Alongside the policy, Labour intended to free up 4.5 million appointments through targeting funding to high-needs areas, rolling out AI to take over administrative tasks and introducing same-day clinical triage.
“Three free doctor visits will mean more people will see their doctor or nurse practitioner – and that’s the point. When people get care early, it takes pressure off our emergency departments.”
A Taxpayers’ Union/Curia survey reported by The Post on Friday found Labour out of step with its own supporters on universal free GP visits. Fifty‑seven percent of Labour voters said subsidies should be targeted to low‑ and middle‑income New Zealanders, rather than offered to everyone.
Just 35% backed the current policy of extending free GP visits to all adults, regardless of income; 8% were unsure. Across the full sample, 44% supported targeting and 38% preferred a universal approach.
Shrinking workforce and growing workload
In the next five years, 34% of the workforce is set to retire, with a decreasing number of graduates filling those roles, a 2024 workforce survey from the College revealed.
“We're in real danger of not having GPs if we carry on the way we're going.”
The survey showed the average GP working week had increased to 38.1 hours, up from 35.9 hours in 2022.
Wood attributed that to an increase in non-patient facing work - following up on blood tests, paperwork, emails and administrative tasks - as the population aged and complex health needs became more common.
The College’s Your Work Counts survey of more than 400 members found consultations with patients accounted for just 56.4% of GPs’ time over two weeks, while non‑contact clinical work took 30.8%.
Unlike their hospital colleagues, non-patient facing work was not funded by the Government.
Wood, a former clinic owner, said owners were likely to pay their doctors for extra work, but doctors were facing “unsustainable” workloads while clinics took a financial hit and wait lists grew.
Roughly 22 hours of seeing patients equated to a 40-hour work week, the survey found.
“People who see patients for 22 hours a week would be considered part-time, but they're doing fulltime work, but you don't get paid for that.”
Results from two diary studies showed 71% of participants worked on the weekend during the summer while 73% worked weekends during the winter and were likely not being remunerated for this time.
Wood, who has an established a GP clinic in the Waikato serving around 8500 patients, said she was able to keep her wait times to two to three days for non-urgent appointments, which she said was “pretty unheard of”, and was a result of closing her books to new patients.
Despite the clinic growing steadily over the years, she said the wait times became harder to maintain, with difficulty recruiting and retaining GPs - a different story to when she trained 16 years ago and established practices were oversubscribed with GPs.
Investing in GPs was the best way to relieve pressure on hospitals, but that required long-term thinking, rather than quick fixes, she said.
While she welcomed National’s funding boost to support training GPs, she said it did not fix “the big hole in the bucket”.
“All you're going to do is put a whole lot of people at the top who are just going to leave.”