Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> So rather than make them equal

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].

With knowledge of the situation and what’s going on, ‘apartheid’ is a pretty radical take. To my knowledge even the dog whistle politicians in an election year haven’t called new the scheme apartheid.

Update: yes, our dog whistle politics have gone there.

[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...



That’s a really long winded way of saying “we tried some things and they didn’t work so we’re going to try racism next”




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: