More prevention, less ‘modern corruption’: A call-to

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Summary 

Health Coalition Aotearoa is calling for evidence-based prevention policies around harmful products in our newly launched call-to-action,Prevention Brief 2026

We propose tobacco endgame strategies, including licensing and reducing the number of retail outlets, reducing nicotine content, and strengthening quit programmes. 

The Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 needs a major review to embed Te Tiriti o Waitangi and restrict availability and marketing of alcohol. Evidence supports a 50 percent increase in alcohol excise tax. 

For food policies, the school lunches programme needs proper funding and redesigning to meet its nutritional and educational goals. A law restricting the exposure of children to unhealthy food marketing and a UK-style sugary drinks industry levy are key. 

Health Coalition Aotearoa believes these policies have failed to gain traction because of undue industry influence or ‘modern corruption’. Policies to tackle this must include lobbying laws, stronger management of conflicts of interest, and revised Official Information Act legislation

More prevention, less ‘modern corruption’: Health Coalition Aotearoa’s election manifesto 

Strong prevention policies are a low-cost way of achieving major and equitable gains in health, while reducing the pressures on our over-stretched healthcare system. This Briefing summarises Health Coalition Aotearoa’s (HCA) newly launched manifesto,Prevention Brief 2026. HCA is a coalition of health, consumer and community organisations and academic leaders committed to closing the health prevention gap in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ)

Three commercial products, tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food, cause one-quarter of all healthy years of life lost in NZ and drive health inequities. For example, Māori life expectancy remains six years lower than for non-Māori.¹ About a third of that is attributed to differences in smoking rates.²

Prevention Brief 2026is a suite of practical policies that would fundamentally shift the health system towards prevention, improve health equity, and help reduce the current overload of services

Commercial determinants of health must be reined in

Evidence-based, cost-effective policies that address the commercial determinants of health are readily available but have been largely ignored by successive governments – a community providers

HCA’s four expert panels have scoped the national and international evidence and identified the top priority areas for action in the NZ context. 

Prevention Brief 2026is HCA’s strong call to reverse the recent backsliding on prevention with powerful industries in key positions to wield extraordinary influence over public policy. 

Despite wide public support for nicotine regulation, our world-leading smokefree legislation has been repealed, and youth vaping is unacceptably high. This policy U-turn in favour of the tobacco industry has seen NZ slide from second place in the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index in 2023 to 53^rd in 2025.³ 

Return to the tobacco endgame

Prevention Brief 2026calls for a return to endgame policies with its top priority being to license all nicotine-product retailers, so that sinking lids can be applied to both the number of retail outlets, and the nicotine level of tobacco and vape products. 

Concerns about tobacco industry influence on the Coalition Government’s policies means that Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,4 which specifies multiple measures to prevent industry influence in public policy, needs to be codified into law

These measures, along with greater support for cessation programmes, can return NZ to making substantive progress on reducing the enormous health, health equity, and economic burden to New Zealanders from tobacco.⁵ 

Major regulatory and fiscal policies to reduce alcohol harm

Alcohol law reform is needed to reduce the inequities in health and social harm caused by alcohol. Around 900 deaths each year are attributed to alcohol, and Māori are twice as likely as non-Māori to die from alcohol-related causes.⁶ 

The Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 needs reviewing to tighten protections on availability and marketing, reduce trading hours, delay online deliveries and mandate an age check, ban all alcohol marketing, and raise the purchase age to 20. The Act needs to embed Te Tiriti o Waitangi so that the Crown’s responsibilities to Māori are upheld

A 50 percent rise in alcohol excise tax would lift prices by around 10 percent,⁷ reduce consumption by about 5 percent, according to price modelling, and the revenue gained could fund more prevention and treatment programmes. 

Reverse the failed experiment of inedible school lunches

Improving food security is urgent because now more than one in five children live in a household where food runs out sometimes or often.⁸ 

Children from these struggling households deserve better than a low-cost school lunch programme that serves up inedible meals, fails nutrition standards, and provides insufficient energy for growing children.9  Without adequate dietary energy, children are less likely to focus at school – so making poorer use of society’s investment in education

An Audit Office report highlighted these performance failures as well as murky procurement processes.¹⁰ HCA supports permanent funding of the healthy school lunch programme, redesigning it to optimise nutrition and learning, and progressively expanding it to cover more schools in low-income communities. 

The heavy marketing of unhealthy foods is fuelling the childhood obesity epidemic, and HCA is calling for legislation to protect children from this harmful practice. 

Over 100 countries have a sugary drinks tax, and a priority policy for HCA is to implement a Sugary Drinks Industry Levy similar to the successful UK model. Revenue from this levy could help fund free dental care

Strengthen our democracy to counter ‘modern corruption’ 

Multiple pro-democracy strategies are needed to counter the rising ‘modern corruption’ of commercial lobbying resulting in public policies for private profit. Health, social benefits, and environmental sustainability need to return to the forefront of public policymaking. 

NZ now ranks last among 47 OECD countries for lobbying regulation,¹¹ and only two in five New Zealanders trust the Government ‘to do the right thing’.¹² 

Core recommendations in HCA’s ‘Level the Playing Field’ campaign include lobbying legislation, better management of commercial conflicts of interest, and reform of the 44-year-old Official Information Act 1982. 

These new lobbying laws would include a public register of meetings, mandatory codes of conduct, stand-down periods before ministers can become lobbyists, and an Integrity Commission

Prevention policies benefit all of Aotearoa

We are calling for all political parties to adopt these recommendations because they are good for Aotearoa New Zealand (more detail in theAppendix)

Prevention Brief 2026is a blueprint for increasing health equity, and reducing preventable diseases and pressures on currently overloaded healthcare systems

What this Briefing adds

• The case for a major step up in specific prevention policies and the need to address ‘modern corruption’ (undue influence of private money on public policymaking).
• The considered consensus of Health Coalition Aotearoa’s three expert panels on the priority prevention policies needed to reduce the harm from tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy foods.
• The priority actions from the fourth expert panel, Public Health Infrastructure, to increase the integrity of public policymaking.

Implications for policy and practice

• Policy actions presented have been developed from national and international evidence and prioritised through consensus by NZ experts.
• The most powerful way to reduce NZ’s inequitable health burden is through these priority policies on tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food.
• Reducing the now-normalised modern corruption practices in policymaking will significantly improve the potential for prevention policies to be enacted.
• Citizens and health and community groups can consider all these issues when questioning political party candidates in the upcoming NZ General Election.

Authors’ details 

Professor Boyd Swinburn, Professor of Population Nutrition and Global Health, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland andco-chair Health Coalition Aotearoa

Jason Alexander, Chief Operating Officer, Hāpai te Hauora, and interim co-chair Health Coalition Aotearoa

Appendix 

HCA’s Prevention Brief 2026 

Table: Prevention Brief top policy asks. HCA’s policy priorities in itsPrevention Brief 2026that will improve the health and wellbeing of all communities across Aotearoa New Zealand