Alliance Party West Coast–Tasman candidate Louis Coup says decades of underinvestment and service withdrawals have left ageing Coasters stranded and the local health system at a breaking point.

The West Coast has lost more than 54 beds over the last decade due to the centralisation of services.

Despite having an older population than the national average, West Coast elders are increasingly being kept in hospitals far from their families because local residential facilities lack the capacity to take them.

“Our elders deserve to age with dignity in their own communities, not in a stretched hospital system because the government has walked away from rural New Zealand,” says Mr. Coup.

The Alliance is backing calls from the Aged Care Association (ACA) for urgent investment into the aged care sector.

Mr. Coup says the crisis in aged care is a symptom of a wider, broken funding model that treats health as a commodity rather than a public good.

Under a proposed Community Health Service (CHS) model, the Alliance seeks to transition essential health services from a fragmented network of struggling private businesses into a cohesive, publicly supported service.

The Alliance identifies three key pillars to resolve the aged care shortage – Workforce Pay Parity, Investing in Prevention, and Public Stewardship.

Mr. Coup notes that while providers on the West Coast are ready to build, the current economic settings make new beds unviable.

“A right-timed transition into residential care is a gain for the entire system,” says Mr. Coup.

“By better linking our community health and hospital services and aligning funding across the system, we can ensure that aged care is there when and where our people need it.”

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