The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand proposes universal, publicly funded mental health counselling — starting with guaranteed free access for all New Zealanders under 25 and working toward extending that coverage to every adult in the country.

The Policy: Green Party Mental Health Policy — 2023 →

What it does

• Expands free counselling to all New Zealanders aged 25 and under, with an explicit commitment to work toward extending this to all adults
• Part of a broader $260 million youth mental health package (announced September 2017, reaffirmed in subsequent manifestos), including $100 million per year to boost psychiatrists and nurses and cut waiting times
• Expands youth mental health services — Piki, Mana Ake, and Youth One Stop Shops — to regions not currently covered
• Provides dedicated, funded postnatal mental health support for new parents
• Trains additional mental health professionals to reduce caseloads (a 1:400 guidance counsellor-to-student ratio in schools with dedicated funding)
• Resources Te Hiringa Mahara (Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission) to monitor services and lead a whole-of-government approach
• Funds kaupapa Māori mental health and addiction programmes through the Māori Health Authority using a Te Whare Tapa Whā model
• Implements recommendations of the Every Life Matters suicide prevention strategy
• Reviews Compulsory Treatment Orders and improves eating disorder inpatient and outpatient services
• The Access and Choice programme (introduced during the 2017–2023 Labour-Greens era) delivered over 1.6 million free or low-cost primary mental health sessions by mid-2024, reaching over 207,000 people in 2023–24 alone

The result

The Green Party's mental health platform is the most expansive of any parliamentary party on access to counselling, consistently earning that assessment from independent analysts including The Spinoff. However, feasibility questions persist. New Zealand's mental health workforce faces a genuine structural crisis: one in five psychiatrist positions in the public system are vacant, wait-list times for private psychiatrists have reached 15 months in some cases, and the 2026 Counselling Workforce Report found cost is now the single biggest barrier to access — with one in five counsellors considering leaving the profession within two years. Labour spokesperson Ingrid Leary noted in March 2026 that "counsellors have capacity to see more clients, yet people are still stuck on waiting lists," pointing to a funding disconnect rather than a supply shortage. Critics — including the Royal Australia and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists — argue successive governments have underfunded specialist mental health, and the 2024 National-led Budget failed to deliver on pre-election promises to fund 13 new psychiatry registrar places. The Greens' push for universality is widely supported in principle, but experts caution that without a credible pipeline of trained clinicians and sustained funding, free access promises can deepen demand without matching supply.

The impacts to watch

• Whether a phased rollout (under-25s first, adults later) can hold political and budget priority across electoral cycles when fiscal pressures are high
• Workforce retention: if one in five counsellors exit the profession by 2028, expanding funded slots may create unfillable wait lists rather than faster access
• Equity gaps: Māori youth have suicide rates nearly twice those of non-Māori (16.3 vs 9.0 per 100,000); kaupapa Māori services need separate, adequate funding or mainstream expansion will bypass communities with highest need
• Regional variation: services are concentrated in main centres; rural and provincial areas already see much longer wait times for both funded and private services
• New Zealand ranks last among OECD countries for child and youth mental health, with a youth suicide rate nearly three times the wealthy-country average — the scale of unmet need may outpace even well-funded universal schemes
• The Access and Choice programme's conclusion in 2025 leaves a potential gap in primary mental health provision if a successor Green policy is not funded in government