Mike's Minute: We got nowhere this week with the health equity scandal

I don’t think I am alone in thinking we have got about nowhere in this scandal around race based health prioritisation. Sadly it has, entirely predictably, descended into a race scrap where by those who quite rightly ask questions about a highly contentious issue are simply called racist. Being called racist is the laziest of responses sadly rolled out on queue to often these days by people who have run out of sensible arguments. If you support putting people higher up a ladder or queue based on race say so. We can disagree - but at least we know where we stand. All that the Government have done so far this week is dig themselves a monumental hole where by they end up looking like they can’t even explain what it is they are trying to explain. The doctor from Auckland Health on Monday started it on this show, a doctor …seemingly in support …in the middle of this so called dilemma on the hospital floor. Unable to articulate just what it was they were doing other than telling us to talk to others and it had something to do with an algorithm. The Health Minister was tying herself in knots over whether it was an Auckland thing or a national thing. It seemed confined to Northland and Auckland and yet in the house on Tuesday when asked how many hospitals were involved she said Auckland and Middlemore - neither of which are in Northland Then the Prime Minister decided that citing other criteria like rural living and poverty somehow made up for the fact race was part of it as well. The critical part he missed or doesn’t get is the simple fact living rurally is not race based. Being poor isn't race based, and they are separate categories So if you are poor and lingering or in the country and lingering, you are prioritised as you should be, you might be Māori, you might not be. Because that isn't the criteria. Race, as a separate criteria, then gives you the leg up so many are now upset about. You get another crack at the queue; you on race alone get one more chance to be advanced. A shot no one other than you gets and that is the bit that is wrong. Anyone can be chronic in their condition, anyone can be poor or rural or old or young or anyone of the other criteria in that we are all equal. But we are not equal on race - and there is your crime. It's either a scandal because even they don't get it and therefore can't explain it, or it’s a scandal because they do get it and they just can’t argue their way out of it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.