Pitched as restoring fairness, personal responsibility and the value of work to the benefit system, so support stays with people who genuinely cannot work.

📋 ACT: Welfare as a Hand Up, not a Way of Life, June 2026 →

What it does

• Requires all health and disability benefits to be issued by an MSD-approved pool of designated doctors, assessing against clear, objective criteria. A person's own GP or specialist can still supply medical history and supporting evidence.
• Reassesses existing Jobseeker Support (Health Condition or Disability) and Supported Living Payment recipients in phases, starting with mental-health-related grants made after the pandemic, while keeping long-term arrangements for people with a genuine, enduring condition.
• Moves work-ready Jobseeker recipients onto an electronic payment card after four months on a benefit, directing money to essentials such as rent, groceries and power and blocking alcohol, gambling, tobacco and cash withdrawals, with carve-outs where this would risk safety.
• Both tools already exist as options; ACT would make them mandatory.
• ACT's fiscal plan books savings of $12 million in the first year, rising to $124 million, $231 million and $286 million, about $653 million over four years, based on bringing mental health claimant numbers back to pre-pandemic levels relative to the working-age population.
• First announced on 28 June 2026 and costed in the fiscal plan released on 11 October 2026.

The debate

David Seymour said people who are genuinely disabled "should be looked after well", but argued that either New Zealand had become much sicker or had got worse at helping people who could work, "and I suspect it's the latter". Mental Health Foundation chief executive Shaun Robinson called the plan poorly researched and said it "won't work", citing figures showing the share of people experiencing mental distress rose from 7 to 14 percent since 2019, though he agreed work can be an important part of recovery. Royal College of GPs president Dr Luke Bradford called Seymour's claims that doctors were wrongly certifying people unfit for work "political rhetoric" and questioned where MSD's pool of doctors would come from. Independent disability advocate Jane Carrigan called the cuts a "vicious blow", and the Greens and Labour also criticised them.