News stories don’t just pre-exist somewhere out there, walking around intact and whole, waiting for an equal chance to step through the door of a media outlet and into the public arena.
They exist in tiny bits and pieces, among heaps of junk and distortions and agendas — and the bits are selected, assessed, ranked, and assembled, according to the rigour and professionalism, or the whim and worldview, of the journalists and outlets involved.
Barry Soper chose to construct a pretty ugly beast out of their scraps. The Herald chose to parade it. Then they stepped back and let everyone else feed it, until the whole thing became something big and real-seeming enough to cause genuine uncertainty and fear, and to prompt genuine attempts to do the proper journalistic work of understanding what this new health initiative is all about.
Sounds a lot like you’re saying “Maori and Pasifica are lazy, therefore their health problems are their own fault”.
Which is completely wrong, btw, and also racist.
I also fail to see how I should be penalised for that.
You aren’t being penalized for anything. Certain populations of people have different needs, and in certain circumstances these needs mean they should be prioritized higher than others, due to risk factors and other health outcomes. This isn’t a hard concept, and applies to many more things than just race (as outlined in the article).
If all other factors are equal, need, wait time, financial situation etc, a Maori or pacific islander will get treated before a European person.
How is that not penalising us? How is that fair or equitable?
For a start, that is not what is happening. You have proven our point that the reporting on this is not accurate.
Every person is judged on a myriad of risk factors to decide the order of operations. One of these risk factors is race, but so is age, sex, socioeconomic status, genetics, severity of issues, and on and on.
Do you have a problem with someone going ahead of you if they are high risk because their disease is more serious? What about if they have pre-existing conditions? What about if they are genetically predisposed to worse outcomes if they wait? This is no different.
Additionally, you understand the entire health system as it stands is not fair and equitable towards Maori and Pacifika right? When all else is accounted for, they experience worse health outcomes than Pakeha, and that costs the health system (and “taxpayers”) more money than needed. Preventative healthcare is always cheaper.
Even if this was a racist policy, which it isn’t, it would only be attempting to correct the institutional unfairness between Pakeha and other groups. If you have a problem with this, then one can only assume you think they don’t deserve it, which says a lot.