Lives to be saved with ‘need not race’ approach to bowel cancer screening

“ACT has always opposed targeting services on the basis of race. It is unfair, inefficient, and leads to perverse outcomes. Health care should be delivered on the basis of need, not the colour of someone’s skin.

“Bowel cancer screening was a classic example of Labour’s wrong-headed approach. In 2022, Labour gave Māori and Pacific people a lower eligibility age for screening than everyone else. But bowel cancer risk is driven by age, not race.

"At any given age, Māori and Pacific New Zealanders face similar risks to everyone else. The reason more Māori and Pacific people are diagnosed younger is because those populations are younger on average – not because bowel cancer biology is different by race.

“The new approach fixes that mistake. Instead of dividing New Zealanders by race, the age has been lowered for everyone, from 60 to 58. That means 122,000 more people can access lifesaving testing in the first year, 771 cancers will be prevented, and 566 lives saved over the next 25 years.

“This change came from ACT campaigning against race-based health targets, securing commitments in our coalition agreement, and working with the Minister of Health to ensure officials focused on real science and statistics, not lazily categorising people by what time their ancestors arrived in New Zealand.

“It shows, when you use real science and real statistics you don’t have to be racist. The previous government got the science and statistics wrong, and practiced racism. We abhor racial discrimination and we’re proud to be part of seeing the back of it.”