Cam Slater: We’re all Maori Now, Aren’t We?

Yesterday we all woke to the news that the government has introduced medical apartheid for real into the New Zealand health system. No longer is need the primary concern for clinicians assessing who gets operations; now ethnicity needs to be taken into account, with the system rewarding people on the basis of who their ancestors were. The government made the largest health reforms in a generation in order to remove what they called the “postcode lottery” of health outcomes. Instead they’ve replaced it with a race-based lottery where your ancestors are more important than clinical urgency.

Auckland surgeons are now being required to consider a patient’s ethnicity alongside other factors when deciding who should get an operation first.

Several surgeons say they are upset by the policy, which was introduced in Auckland in February and gave priority to Maori and Pacific Island patients – on the grounds that they have historically had unequal access to healthcare.

Health officials stress that ethnicity is just one of five factors considered in deciding when a person gets surgery, and that it is an important step in addressing poor health outcomes within Maori and Pacific populations.

Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand has introduced an Equity Adjustor Score, which aims to reduce inequity in the system by using an algorithm to prioritise patients according to clinical priority, time spent on the waitlist, geographic location (isolated areas), ethnicity and deprivation level.

In the ethnicity category, Maori and Pasifika are top of the list, while European New Zealanders and other ethnicities, like Indian and Chinese, are lower-ranked.

NZ Herald

This is outrageous racism, based almost entirely on how someone looks or who their ancestors were. Surgical priority should be based on clinical need, not whether one of your great, great grandparents was of a particular race.

Good on the whistleblower surgeons for blowing this story into the open. We’ve long suspected this was happening, but now they’ve said it out loud.

But we can actually do something about this. The solution is as easy as ticking a box.

Everyone who has interactions within the health system who is required to fill out forms, or answer ethnicity questions, should just say they are Maori. If boys can decide based on ‘feelz’ that they are girls and can compete against women in sport, then the same should apply to ethnicity. If you feel you are Maori when asked about your ethnicity at the hospital or seeing the specialist, then only a retard would not say they are Maori.

This is where I am blessed by my place of birth. I can legitimately claim to be Fijian. I’m sorted, now how about you?

Aren’t we all Maori now?

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE