The Act Party and National have come out swinging over the Government’s decision to rank ethnicities to determine who should get an operation at hospital first.

Te Whatu Ora’s new ‘waitlist equity adjuster tool’ uses five criteria to prioritise patients for planned care, one of which is ethnicity.

The first four criteria of clinical need, time already waited, geographical location, and economic deprivation.

“Using ethnicity to prioritise healthcare waitlists is lazy and divisive and it’s not who we are as a country”, says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“The only possible effect of racial discrimination is to make sure a person in greater need waits longer for an operation and may die on a waiting list because they had the wrong ancestors.

“A person who is in great clinical need, has waited a long time, lives far from major medical facilities, and is poor could be Māori, European, Pacific, Indian or Chinese, and they should all be treated equally.

David Seymour says the new policy will “have the effect of Māori and Pasifika moving up the list and Indian and Chinese dropping down.”

“People who have less need are leapfrogging those who have more need. That’s completely wrong and it’s got to stop.

Mr Seymour says the Government actively promoting racial discrimination in the health system.

“It’s a classic example of what’s happening everywhere in the bureaucracy: arguing over identity rather than solving problems.

“New Zealanders are sick and tired of race and the Treaty being injected into everything from water infrastructure and resource management, to healthcare and education.

“Pharmac uses ethnicity criteria for some medicines and they’ve adopted a lower age threshold for Māori and Pasifika to get the flu vaccine. Māori and Pacific patients receive a larger GP subsidy than other New Zealanders. Universities are using Māori and Pasifika quotas to allocate limited places in medical schools.

“New Zealanders are frustrated that people get access just because of who their ancestors were. If that isn’t the very definition of a lottery, I don’t know what is.

“Everywhere I go, I hear people saddened by division, because Labour has divided New Zealand. People are asked to pick a side between tangata whenua and tangata tiriti, with no middle ground. To paraphrase Jacinda Ardern, racial division is not who we are.

National’s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti says race has no place in surgical priorities and the Government should immediately drop ethnicity as one of the criteria surgeons have been told to use to rank patients.

 “While there has been historical inequity that has disadvantaged Māori and Pasifika people, the idea that any government would deliberately rank ethnicities for priority for surgery is offensive, wrong and should halt immediately.

“The way to improve Māori and Pasifika health is through better housing, education and addressing the cost of living, not by disadvantaging others.

“As a doctor, I would refuse to rank patients based on their ethnicity and I completely side with surgeons who are alarmed and affronted by this priority tool implemented by Health New Zealand. “