ACT is welcoming Health NZ’s decision to stop using an ‘equity adjustor tool’ that was prioritising ethnicity as a factor in non-urgent surgical waitlists.

ACT campaigned hard against the use of this tool last year.

“Actively promoting racial discrimination in the health system is not who we are as a country”, says ACT Health spokesperson Todd Stephenson.

“A person who has the greatest 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 those ethnicities should all be treated equally.

“If the first four criteria of clinical need, time already waited, geographical location, and economic deprivation are doing their job, then racial discrimination is not needed. The only possible effect of racial discrimination is to make sure a person in greater need waits longer for an operation because they had the wrong ancestors.

“This tool was a classic example of the bureaucracy arguing over identity rather than solving problems.

“New Zealanders are tired of race and the Treaty being injected into everything and saddened by the division that has resulted.

“ACT is championing a modern multi-ethnic liberal democratic society by defining the principles of the Treaty openly and democratically, including that all citizens have the same rights and duties.”

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