Summarised by Centrist
A survey reported by RNZ as showing that almost two-thirds of New Zealanders are willing to pay more tax for better healthcare found only 12.4% unconditionally agreed to pay more.
The remaining bulk of the headline figure came from respondents who attached a condition.
The Cancer Society-funded survey of 1,635 adults found 62.3% were classified as willing to pay additional tax for healthcare. But 49.9% said yes only if the additional revenue was earmarked exclusively for healthcare, while 12.4% simply answered yes. About 29% opposed paying more.
RNZ quoted University of Otago public health professor Louise Signal saying: “I think we can be confident that indeed New Zealanders are willing to pay more tax for better health care.”
But the question did not tell respondents how much extra tax they would pay, which tax would increase, or what the increase might cost an average household.
Instead, respondents were asked whether they would pay more tax “so there is enough money available to increase funding to healthcare”.
The tax question also came as part of a wider survey focused on cancer prevention and treatment, including questions about spending more on diagnostic testing, medicines, radiotherapy, hospices and the cancer workforce.
More than 90% supported each of eight proposals for increased cancer-care funding.
The researchers themselves acknowledge that asking about policies separately, without requiring respondents to choose between competing spending priorities, “may therefore have produced higher levels of support” than a survey requiring real-world trade-offs.
The raw sample was also substantially more left-leaning than contemporary political polling.
Of respondents stating a voting intention, 41.9% chose Labour, 8.8% the Greens and 4.5% Te Pāti Māori, meaning the three parties accounted for 55.2% of the raw sample.
By comparison, National accounted for 19.4%, NZ First 8.8% and ACT 3.9%, or 32.1% combined.
The researchers explicitly acknowledge that the sample showed imbalances in voting intention, which were “differing from concurrent political polls”.
Re-published from the Centrist with permission
