Victoria has been accused of introducing racial priority into its public hospital system and, by endorsing it, the Labor government of Premier Jacinta Allan has shamed itself.

St Vincent’s Hospital in central Melbourne is a Catholic hospital contracted into the state’s public hospital system. It has emerged that since April last year, Indigenous people have been given priority over others in its Accident and Emergency service.

According to news.com:

Staff at St Vincent’s Hospital have been told to treat all First Nations patients within 30 minutes of arrival to its emergency department, according to a Herald Sun report, putting them ahead of others in some cases.

Under the policy changes, introduced at St Vincent’s last April, Indigenous patients are assigned a minimum category-three triage, meaning they must be attended to within half an hour of arrival.

This places them ahead of semi-urgent category-four patients and non-urgent category patients, of which there were more than 17,000 in the 12 months to June this year.

Normally, if you present to A and E with illness or injury, you’re assessed by a highly-trained nursed and allocated a priority – triaged – in order of your assessed urgency.

It’s no secret that less and non-urgent cases can wait quite a while for treatment, especially on Saturday nights when the drunks and druggies get on the sauce, and on weekend afternoons in football season.

The hour or three’s wait is a hassle, not least with a sick or hurt child, but that’s the price of guaranteed free access to good-quality and efficient emergency medical care when it’s not a life-threatening emergency.

From what Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper reported, it appears that the 30-minute rule for Indigenous patients applies regardless of their medical urgency. The hospital has defended its policy and reported that the rule has improved treatment access and outcomes for Aboriginal patients. It further claims non-Aboriginal patients have been no worse off in terms of their access to A and E services.

Whatever the justification, or excuse, St Vincent’s is proud of its decision to consider race when it comes to treatment times.

When the story broke, it was inevitable that Jacinta Allan was asked about it.

Instead of saying racial discrimination of any sort has no place in Victoria’s hospital system, the Premier praised St Vincent’s for their ‘good example’ initiative.

‘(St Vincent’s) are putting in place an initiative that supports the principle of treating … the sickest patients quickest,’ she said.

‘When you have better outcomes for every health outcomes for everyone, that’s good for our strong, healthy community.’

Allan also didn’t rule out the ‘initiative’ being extended to state-operated public hospitals, cravenly dodging the question but saying it is a matter for individual hospitals based on their own data.

Premier, is this what race-blind healthcare looks like in the People’s Republic of Victoria?

Premier, are you asking health professionals to lay aside their duty to treat solely according to need?

Premier, is this a forerunner of what to expect when your ‘treaty’ with Indigenous activists becomes law in coming weeks? That everyone’s equal, but one per cent is more equal than the other 99 per cent?

St Vincent’s might have had good intentions in doing this, but what they’re doing is, in my opinion, morally wrong and ethically misguided. Dressing up discrimination by any identity characteristic as ‘positive discrimination’ does not excuse or justify it.

If the standard you walk by is the standard you accept, in her response Jacinta Allan effectively condoned the introduction of a racial component in Victorian health services. The Premier should explicitly have rejected the St Vincent’s policy outright, not effectively endorsed it by praising the hospital.

Labor, from Anthony Albanese down, bangs on endlessly about Medicare – including free-at-point-of-access public hospital services funded lavishly by the federal government – being universal and based solely on need, not a person’s means or any other non-clinical factor. Remember the Prime Minister flashing his Medicare card everywhere he went in the election campaign? It is my concern that by introducing race-based criterion into medical care we are opening the door to identity politics in clinical decision-making.

If you present to A and E at a Victorian hospital, they routinely ask you whether you’re Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Presumably that’s for politically-correct data collection purposes, but after this revelation, how can we be sure?

The next time I have to go to A and E in Melbourne, I’m going to self-identify and tick the Aboriginal box. And if I’m not seen by a doctor in 30 minutes, look out!