In New Zealand this year the Labour Party supported and celebrated blatantly racist criteria in an Wellington government funded organisation. Eight other government funded organisations are considering or have left the door open to similar changes in Northland, Nelson Marlborough, Taranaki, Wairarapa, Southern, Bay of Plenty, MidCentral and Auckland. I am referring of course to DHBs and race-based criteria for surgery waiting lists. Patients who are Maori or Pasifika get more points allocated to them than anyone who is not one of those two races.
This is not the first time this year that the Labour Party have treated one race better than others when it comes to healthcare. In March this year the government allocated $56-million COVID-19 related, race-based funding.
$10 million for community outreach,
$30 million for Maori health services,
$15 million for Whanau Ora,
$1 million to provide Maori business with advice and planning,
$470,000 for Te Arawhiti, the Government’s “Treaty partnership” agency, to engage with iwi on their pandemic response plans.
The National Party shamefully have treated the blatant racism of the Labour Party in much the same way that new leader Todd Muller treated his MAGA hat. It has been shoved into a box and hidden at the back of the cupboard. Instead, National are trying and failing to play the identity politics game, scared themselves of being labelled as racist if they stand up for equal rights under the law.
A quick glance at National Party Press releases reveals a party focussed only on the things that they think matter to their core supporters. Clearly they do not think that we care about racism and unequal health treatment.
Only one party (a mouse that roared), the ACT Party, has stood up for equal rights under the law. Only David Seymour has called the government out on their racism, proving yet again that David Seymour is the true leader of the opposition.
The Labour Party with its “Be Kind” mantra is just like the Ministry of Truth in the novel 1984. There is nothing kind about giving preferential treatment to patients on a waiting based on their race rather than their medical needs. There is nothing kind about allocating $56 million dollars of race-based discriminatory healthcare funding for COVID-19 when the virus does not discriminate.
The mainstream media should be pushing both news stories hard and holding the the government to account for allowing and encouraging such blatant racism and injustice to happen in what is supposed to be an equal society. Instead, after one or two articles on it the story has been allowed to fade into the background, forgotten. An inconvenient truth making a lie of Ardern’s Kindness regime, popped into a box and left to gather dust as the injustice continues unchallenged.
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