The argument is “we can right the wrongs of past racism, but being racist in reverse”.

It’s amazing how many people buy into that argument.

Unsurprisingly, we did try this for a decade or two. It was an extensive and expensive failure and is widely researched and written about [1].

A minor boost to Māori in a waiting list point scoring system for list prioritisation has caused a knee jerk dismissal of the scheme as we see here. Absent from the shouting has been a solution to Māori living shorter lives with worse health [2]. The new scheme also reduces the impact of race on list priorities, as noted at the end of this article [3]. Race is a couple of points out of 100, most being clinical.

The point scoring system is a small part of the large changes underway in the system at the moment. The moves are primarily towards more autonomy for Māori within the healthcare system [4]. The background to this is a recognised failure in the system after a successful court action claiming Treaty of Waitangi obligations were not being met. They weren’t and aren’t [5].

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/20/new-zealand-st...

[3] https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2...

[4] https://www.futureofhealth.govt.nz/maori-health-authority/

[5] https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/news/report-on-stage-one-of...

Consider two hungry kids at lunch. Consider the difference between stealing the fruit from one kid's plate, and giving extra fruit to the other kid. Both are special treatment. Think about what you can see that's different in these two situations that you would call the same thing.

And your analogy is a poor one for what is happening in NZ with regards to healthcare. Healthcare is a limited resource, and what NZ is doing is letting race be a factor when triaged patients in an environment of limited healthcare resources. You could literally be sicker than someone else, but if you're the wrong race, the other person get treatment first.

So for your analogy, it's more like there are two kids. One hasn't eaten in 3 days, the other 2 days, but the one that hasn't eaten in 3 days is a member of an "oppressive race" (without having committed any oppression themselves mind you, just their ancestors), so the other one gets to eat first.

You need to learn about it before you make claims like that. This isn’t the case, as the links provided describe and as I stated.

Race already is a factor in healthcare - the system is biased against Māori and this is an attempt to even it up.

Patients are triaged for medical care, it's always been that way - it's based on medical need, with the sickest treated first, and those who are less sick wait.

The new system now prioritized people based on race. You could be sicker than someone else, but if you're the wrong race, you wait.

This doesn't "even up" anything. It penalizes people for being the wrong race.

You don't solve racism, by being racist. It's an absurd idea.

Clinical need comes first.

My above links may help you.

“Capital & Coast and Hutt Valley DHBs are prioritising Māori and Pacific in our surgical scheduling processes. The patients’ ethnicity is taken into account along with their level of clinical urgency and the number of days they have been on the waiting list within a given clinical priority band. It is unlikely that any other patients will be significantly affected as a result of this work.” - media statement, May 2020

The last statement "it is unlikely any other patient will be significantly affected" is laughable.

The goal is to affect patients - prioritize a specific ethnic group, so either the change does nothing (then why do it at all?), or it prioritizes certain patients (and if it does it must deprioritize others).

So someone is scored 70 out of 100 in clinical need.

Then someone else is 69. But once you make the race adjustment, they are 71 and get treated first.

So instead of treating the most needy patients first, we penalize certain people for their race.

What’s important to the scenario though, is that at present, Māori and Pacific Islanders get seen less by specialists, less clinical tests, less treatment and then worse outcomes. They die several years earlier than their Pakeha peers. It’s incredible that this is acceptable, but here we are.

Māori and Pacific Islanders are being discriminated against by the system, it’s just that their race demerit points are not nicely documented.

So getting promoted on lists by a couple of points is an attempt to even it up via forced functionality.

I don’t think you and I are ever going to agree that positive description should be used.

Other things are being tried. Part of the massive and overdue restructuring that’s underway to our healthcare system is going to be interesting to watch. “In each local community, partnerships between Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards, Health New Zealand’s regional and district teams, and the wider community will ensure Māori voices are heard, embedded in plans and services, and that health equity for Māori is non-negotiable.” [1].

We will see how it goes. The structural changes so far have been rather painful and seem clumsy when viewed from my adjacent seat.

[1] https://www.futureofhealth.govt.nz/maori-health-authority/

Promoting one group by very definition penalized other groups. You can't have one without the other.

What’s important to the scenario though, is that at present, Māori and Pacific Islanders get seen less by specialists, less clinical tests, less treatment and then worse outcomes. They die several years earlier than their Pakeha peers. It’s incredible that this is acceptable, but here we are.

That's fine, then fix those issues. It's bizarre that a lack of medical care in one group is solved by reducing access to medical care in other groups.