'Cultural safety'... what even is that?

I’m writing about further abuse by professional regulators, forcing political opinions on healthcare workers. If they don’t echo the party line, they face deregistration.

Cross-cultural assumptions can be risky.

Just ask Christopher Columbus who upon arriving in the Caribbean believed he’d found Asia and proudly insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the indigenous Carib people were ‘Indians.’

Healthcare professionals today know this risk only too well. Cultural differences can be a barrier, so understanding your patient’s background can assist in effective diagnosis, treatment and management. As my dad, a general practitioner for over sixty years always insisted, taking the time to understand a person’s history is key to any investigation.

But should professional regulatory bodies be imposing contested ideological positions on their members especially when it comes to matters which fall outside of a profession’s core competencies?

Cultural ‘Safety’ Training. The term currently has had a lot of pharmacists scratching their heads. And for good reason.

The Pharmacy Council of NZ, in its great wisdom, has decided to mandate ‘cultural safety’ for its members.

While it might ordinarily be difficult to argue against making things safer (especially when you’re dealing with medications), it’s important to point out the Pharmacy Council is not talking about a ‘culture of safety’ in the workplace intended to minimise dispensing errors and the like.

They’re talking about something altogether more ambitious.

They want pharmacists to engage in identitarian politics.

For example, consider the following passive-aggressive edict from the Pharmacy Council: “It is your patient and their family or colleague in the interaction who assesses if the interaction is culturally safe, so seek feedback where appropriate and accept this humbly without defensiveness. Recognise it is not their responsibility to teach you…”

According to such a scenario, if a man accompanies a seemingly intimidated female relative into a pharmacy and presumes to speak on her behalf, is the pharmacist according to the direction above then simply supposed to accept that the behaviour is a private matter of “culture” and not question what is happening?

Other examples in this training material include why “equity” is superior to “equality” and that even if a pharmacist is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it should not be assumed that patients who are “transgender or takatapui” will feel “culturally safe” in their interactions with you. Remember, they shouldn’t be expected to teach you what is “culturally safe”. But you also shouldn’t assume that you know either...
 

Reading the training material is like watching a shell game. Which is to say, that if you think you’ve worked it out, you clearly haven’t.

So, let’s be frank.

Professional regulators have no business imposing contested ideological strictures on their members.

Pharmacists have better things to do like staying informed on matters of actual safety. Those who wish to pursue identitarian politics are entirely free to do so if they want, just in their own time.

This is why we’ve written to the Minister of Health Simeon Brown and Associate Minister of Health David Seymour raising objections at cases of regulatory overreach and ideological imposition as it affects healthcare professionals.

Patients, each with their personal experiences and stories of life, are reduced to myriad fractured classes based on identity.

Healthcare professionals are politely asked to psychologically flagellate themselves for having the immutable characteristics of an ‘historically oppressive class.’

Beyond healthcare, ideological imposition is no less a problem. Because these regulatory bodies are effectively monopolistic, in that they govern their professional domain without competition, they can write the rulebook and act with a certain degree of impunity.

The courts have much less leeway than you’d think when hearing appeals from dissenters. That’s because only Parliament can ultimately check and shape the powers of professional regulators.

And this is why we're asking you, to add your name to a public letter to the Minister for Courts Nicole McKee, urging the Government to require political neutrality from regulatory bodies.

Sign the public letter here

We must point out the absurd and unjust measures faced by experienced professionals who are being censured and excluded from their professions by the draconian requirements of regulatory bodies.

The unrelenting treatment of real estate agent Janet Dickson by the Real Estate Authority of NZ is just such a case. You'll likely know that Janet refused to complete a mandatory training module in Te Ao Maori. Despite arguing that much of the content of the training material went well beyond the core competencies of her professional domain and pushed on its participants a specific religious ideology and worldview, the High Court determined that Janet’s failure to comply means she must face a total exclusion from her profession for the next five years.

If bureaucratic institutions wish to fight this all the way to the High Court seemingly to bolster and justify their own ideological activism, this only reinforces the fact that the proposed Political Neutrality Bill we’ve helped draft is needed more than ever.

IIt is one of a number of avenues for Kiwis who believe in fundamental freedoms of conscience, belief and expression to fight back. But we need your support.

My dad always appreciated the diverse range of individuals who walked in the door of his practice, but he never forgot that they were human beings just like him. Bureaucrats, however, have a tendency to lose sight of this fact.

Together with your help we can reclaim institutions for the sake of the professionals and those they were intended to serve.

Nick Hanne Education Partnership Manager Free Speech Union www.fsu.nz

PS. For too long, regulatory bodies have put policies and rules in place that silence dissenting voices. To tackle this, we've launched seven industry-specific memberships, including one for healthcare professionals. Head to our website and click 'Memberships' to see them all. 

You may have noticed this isn't the only issue we're working across! The Law Commission has released it's discussion paper on 'hate crime'. This is a fool's errand. Have you used our easy step-by-step submission tool to have your say?