Kate Hawkesby: Is this Government going out of its way to lose the upcoming election?

Is it just me, or is this Government going out of its way to lose the upcoming election? I mean, I’ve had the vibe for a while they’ve given up. Chris Hipkins sounds more and more over it and uninterested in what’s going on in the country he’s supposed to be running. Grant Robertson has sounded despondent for a while – I’m sure he quietly quit months ago, many of the Ministers behave in a way that would suggest they too have given up, but this latest revelation from the Health Ministry.. come on. Race-based healthcare is of itself not new in this country, we kind of knew how it worked, and then Covid came along and the focus again was Māori and Pacifica, but this latest revelation on the surgeries. That just takes the cake. As one texter to me yesterday pointed out, this is not just a jab in the arm vaccination we’re talking about here, it’s major surgery. It can be life or death. No one’s suggesting health outcomes for Māori and Pasifika aren’t worse; there just must be another way. The problem with this Equity Adjustor Score as it’s called, is, as Dr Shane Reti pointed out yesterday, the metrics are not clear. No wonder surgeons are pushing back on it. The Health Minister Ayesha Verrall, when asked about this scheme by Reti, confirmed to him that the measuring process was ‘dynamic’.. in other words, there’s no set method to how patients get scored or prioritized, it’s just ‘dynamic’. Meaning, it can change and flex anytime. So if you’re in the health system, and you’re on a waiting list, you potentially will never know exactly where you are on that list because it could shift anytime based on any given surgeon’s ‘dynamic’ scoring. There is a real problem here to be addressed in terms of inequitable access to healthcare but this solution just doesn’t feel right. A chunk of the texts I got yesterday were from people who were either Māori or Pacifica themselves, saying they were embarrassed by this, felt demeaned by it, or were just sick of the government using race as political leverage. One woman said it was absolutely racist in her view, she was Māori , she’d never used that as a lever in the hospital system before, but now that she was awaiting surgery and heard of this measure, she said she’s going to use it. She acknowledged it’s not fair, and said in her view it was racist. But if it gets her surgery quicker, then she’ll take it. And you can’t blame her. Blame the system. Some surgeons have said it’s medically indefensible and they’re disgusted by it. David Seymour said it’s completely wrong and promotes racial discrimination. Dr Shane Reti said the Nat's would repeal it. However the government defends it, and again I think that shows us just how out of touch they really are, how far they’ve pushed us without even realizing it, and how this election is just getting further and further away now from their grip.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.