Here’s an archived link to an ad for a consultant oral maxillofacial surgeon at Dunedin Hospital. The curious thing—well, not so curious given that it’s New Zealand,—is the list of required qualifications. Click to read (a New Zealand dollar is worth about 57¢ in U.S. currency):
Some of the details:
About the role
In this newly created role that will be hospital based, we are seeking an Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon for a fulltime, permanent position at Dunedin Public Hospital. We would also welcome candidates with sub-specialty interests.
The successful applicant will be expected to provide the full scope of general Oral and Maxillofacial surgery including but not limited to the management of facial trauma, pathology, infections and orthognathic surgery. Duties includes active participation in inpatient and outpatient clinics, clinical audit, quality, clinical guidelines/pathways, professional development, appraisal and risk management.
Given the catchment area Te Whatu Ora Southern services, you will be able to take on cases that are diverse and complex; providing you with a rewarding role. There will be an on-call roster in place, this is set at 1:3. Our links with the University of Otago and affiliation with the Faculty of Dentistry means that you may be involved in the teaching of Dental and Medical Students.
Mōu ake | About you
- Eligibility for vocational registration with the Dental Council of New Zealand
- We would also welcome applications from advanced trainees.
- FRACDS (OMS) or equivalent board certification
- Excellent communication and time management skills
Here’s the part that stamps it as “from New Zealand”. I’ve added links and the translation from Māori, the latter in brackets:
You will also need:
-
- Competency with te ao Māori [the Māori worldview], tikanga [the “right way to doing things” according to the Māori], and te reo Māori [the Māori language] or a commitment to starting your journey and taking ownership of your learning and growth
- Experience in projects / initiatives which give effect to Te Tiriti [the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi] principals [sic] and frameworks, and the application of Mātauranga Māori [Māori “ways of knowing”] and Kaupapa Māori [“Māori customary practices”] approaches, particularly as they apply in healthcare settings.
In other words, you need to know a great deal about Māori culture and also speak or be learning the language (however, out of 978,000 Māori in NZ, only 55% say they have “some knowledge” of the language and only about 5% say they can speak the language well. This doesn’t say how many Māori understand English, but it’s surely close to 100%. The requirement that you either know the language or are learning it is, then, largely superfluous; in this way the ad is looking for people who can signal their virtue.
Finally, we have the ubiquitous but ambiguous requirement that the applicant have engaged in “projects/initiatives” that “give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi,” another completely superfluous requirement. “Te Tiriti,” as it’s called, has nothing to do with surgery; it simply specified in 1840 that the Māori would surrender sovereignty to England, but would keep and rule over their lands and villages, and would also acquire all the rights of a British citizen. If you can tell me which “Te Tiriti-themed” projects are essential to have engaged in for this surgeon’s job, and why those projects are necessarily, I’d be glad to hear it.
The is once again an example of how indigenous people leverage their supposed modern oppression to get more “stuff,” how New Zealand has surrendered to that “victimhood” approach, and, above all, how merit is given at least equal priority to indigeneity. (If you’re a great surgeon but know squat about Te Tiriti and can’t speak Māori, I doubt you’d even be considered for the job.)
Over at Point of Order, which is consistently critical of this kind of stuff, Yvonne van Dongen takes the ad apart. Click below to read her snarky but accurate critique:
An excerpt:
If you had impacted wisdom teeth requiring surgery, would it comfort you to know the consultant surgeon was competent in te ao Māori?
Or, say, if you needed oral cancer surgery, is it a bonus if the person operating on your mouth has had experience in projects and initiatives which give effect to Te Tiriti principles?
How about if you had to go under the knife for facial trauma – does it ease your anxiety knowing that the consultant surgeon is steeped in the application of Mātauranga Māori and Kaupapa Māori approaches, particularly as they apply in healthcare settings?
Southern Health thinks the answer is yes to all the above.
This week an advertisement on their careers website for a consultant oral maxillofacial surgeon at Dunedin Hospital stated that competency in te ao Māori, tikanga, and te reo Māori was a requirement. Or at the very least “a commitment to starting your journey and taking ownership of your learning and growth.”
As well, they asked for
“Experience in projects / initiatives which give effect to Te Tiriti principals (sic) and frameworks, and the application of Mātauranga Māori and Kaupapa Māori approaches, particularly as they apply in healthcare settings.”
Apart from spelling principles incorrectly, Southern Health clearly thinks they know what the principles of the Treaty are, even though this is a topic hotly debated thanks to Act’s Treaty Principles Bill.
Apparently, after inquiries from the press, New Zealand Health is reassessing these requirements, and pondering that wondering whether, after all, just merit and experience should be the qualifications. The answer, of course, is “yes.”
In the UK this job advert would be illegal under the 2010 Equality Act, since it would amount to “indirect discrimination” over race (unless the employer could show that the requirements really were necessary to do the job).
I also suspect that they’re narrowing down their field of qualified applicants quite a bit.
Since being intimately familiar with all things Māori isn’t actually connected to all things facial surgical, the impression is that Oral Maxillofacial Surgeons practicing at this institution are entering into a foreign land whose denizens are isolated, backwards, and tricky to deal with. Approach them carefully; learn to speak their language; use hushed tones and reassuring phrases; make no sudden movements.
Even the Māori can benefit from modern medicine if you’re well prepared to deal with them and willing to make concessions.
In other words, the whole thing strikes me as racist.
It teaches the doctor (or nurse or anyone) to see Maori as “white-knuckle” patients. Your knuckles, as you enter the room, not the patient’s. Which is sad. The patient might be the most reasonable, generous, good-willed human being in the world, but you have been taught to regard him warily as a source of trouble, that nothing you do will be good enough. That’s what we mean by cultural humility and acknowledged incompetence.
The Anglosphere owes a debt of gratitude to New Zealand for demonstrating how far the cultists of Matauranga DEI will go if given an inch. It has been a salutary object lesson, while perhaps not so good for New Zealand itself.
There is beholden on all doctors to treat all patients with respect. Respect for them as individuals, and respect for their cultural needs.
This does not mean the doctor is required to undergo total immersion in the culture of all patients they treat, which would clearly be an impossible task. Singling out just one culture for said total immersion and making it a requirement for appointment is at best discriminatory, and at worst, racist.
In short, this is clearly applying DEI principles to this appointment.
More of this. Ugh.
Here’s a bit of demographic context: Traditionally and now, there aren’t so many people of Maori descent in the South Island at all. (I don’t have the actual numbers) but generally – and sanely – Maori population proportion goes down from warmer north to colder south.
Dunedin is the largest population center of the country’s coldest far south.
My guess is there’s a lot of woke virtue signaling here. And few actual Maoris.
D.A.
NYC
(formerly of Auckland)
I would not blink if the ad expressed a preference for applicants that are bi- or trilingual, given the multicultural profile of the country.
But this is ridiculous.
So this is for GenXers and above – things might have changed, I know there’s a push to teach Maori language to kids in school. Presumably b/c it is so useful in our international global world. How will I travel in Laos, say, without my “Titriti knowledge” and command of Maori? (sarcasm there).
–
Between 1970 and 1991 I spent several months living in Auckland every year and a few years whole. I went to primary school there and got my first shtty teenage jobs there.
In Auckland… center of Maoridom.
I’ve never met a fluent Maori speaker (and I looked for one at that pre-internet time, I’m into foreign languages) or in those days I met nobody who even had a functional grasp of it beyond “special” kinds of words. Half a dozen cultural nouns everybody there knows.
I never noticed Maori people speak anything but English to each other.
And I’ve never even HEARD of non-English speaking Maori people.
This entire thing is a farce which, like all ID politics, will reduce the talent in the pool of applicants for an important medical job. THIS is how DEI, affirmative action, set asides ruin countries. Here the facial health of southern kiwis.
Identity politics is leftist poison – the new communism.
D.A.
NYC
According to a study published in 2020 in New Zealand Medical Journal, NZ has 39 Oral Maxillofacial surgeons. 39. It could be they already have somebody in mind that they want to hire. Just posted the requirements that no one else would fulfill. I can’t imagine more than 1 person in the whole world fulfilling all these requirements. Link to the study here… https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32325464/
In academia, there are sometimes teaching positions that are ‘inside’ jobs, where a particular person is the expected hire so the ad that goes out is very specifically geared toward that particular candidate. The whole process has to be played out, complete with sham interviews of other applicants who will probably never be hired.
If the oral surgeons I work with are any guide, “taking ownership of your learning and growth” will be accomplished by avoiding this position.
I would be curious to know what percentage of Māori actual care about this nonsense. Perhaps it is largely driven by an obnoxiously loud minority of Maori activists and their virtue-signaling white allies.
Yes, Michael, again.
My impression – and data is scarce apart from visually scanning the demographics of protests there (like the Pro-Pal crowd at our campuses here)… is the moving party is
a coalition of liberal, young white (Pakeha, non-Maori) women.
The skew is deeply female and young.
A long time ago for sure…. but I never met a Maori person who was all aboard on this kind of stuff.
D.A.
NYC
“No harm or offence was intended.“ But offence will certainly be taken, not just by the surgeons excluded by this ad, but by the general public who can see this for what it is – a modern version of “No Irish admitted”, where the ‘Irish’ are the majority of the population.
Anyone who has encountered the NZ health system in recent years knows that it is sustained by immigrants – Chinese, Indian, Filipino, and Pacific Islands. Get used to it, if you want medical excellence and international skill levels rather than animistic mumbo jumbo in your treatment.
Anyone passing through Auckland can see a tremendous number of ethnic groups, all of whom cope with the health system, though sometimes with professional translators for older immigrants and recent refugees.
I imagine that the death blow to this stuff will be when a well qualified, but not white, person sues for discrimination. Someone Asian or Caribbean who has all of the credentials but gets passed over for essentially religious reasons.
As a New Zealand resident – putting out “fake ads” is quite common here. They likely have a candidate in mind already, but need to put out an ad for tickboxing purposes.
The Maori requirement will be used to “reject” other applicants.
That’s true everywhere not just NZ. Positions are already filled but they’re required to post the job. Very frustrating and unfair to the unemployed. At least this Maori excuse will spare some from applying to a job that’s already filled.
The sad part of this absurd tokenistic virtue signalling is that if you are a great surgeon but know nothing about the TOW and cannot speak any maori then you probably would still be considered for the job because of the lack of MaxFax surgeons in NZ…….the sadder part is that once employed then you would be FORCED to take the indoctrination to become the thing they want…..this explains EXACTLY why NZ is so accutely short of medical professionals…..we have the indoctrination across nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, midwives and even real estate agents…..you name it we have it!