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I wanted to share a story.

I recently experienced some low key racism a few weeks back. My wife and I are white Australians, she is pregnant with our first child. We recently went to see a specialist doctor related to the pregnancy, we booked it in weeks ahead for the first appointment of the day as we have shit to do and want to get in and out to continue our day.

We rock up for an 8:30am appointment at about 8:15am. Saw reception and they said all good, take a seat, they will come get you soon (keep in mind reception and specialist are separate businesses). We noticed that all the specialists staff and the doctor himself were of South Asian origin, they sort of walked in and out every now and then. All good, no problem, very common. But this is where this fucked us up. At 9:15am they called asking where we were, we said we were in the waiting room since 8:15am. We waited literally 1 hour, I kept going to the reception and asking but she said she can’t do anything as they’re contractors, but she went in to follow up for us, meanwhile other patients were being seen. Once the staff were gone, they were kind of far away so I couldn’t just knock on a door or something.

I finally grabbed the assistant at around 9:30am and asked her wtf is going on. She said sorry there’s 2 patients ahead of me, I said how’s that possible when we were first for the day. She said we were late and they would be seeing 2 other patients before us.

This is where it gets interesting. The 2 other patients, as well as all the others before that were also of South Asian appearance, and we noticed the assistant was very friendly with them in comparison to how cold she was with us. The assistant literally had a piece of paper with the days appointments printed out, but kept on skipping us.

I got pissed at this point, and started questioning her why she was favouring other patients over us. This is where the doctor came out and basically gaslit us, saying it was all a mistake. He did let us in at this point, only because he could tell I was annoyed and ready to cause a scene.

We reminded him our appointment was over an hour ago at this stage, and that we were made to feel like we were second class to the other patients. The doctor then also gave completely shit medical advice (confirmed with 2 other GP’s and another specialist). We lodged a complaint with APHRA but have little faith anything will come of it.

TLDR; South Asian operated medical business ignored appointment times to service 4-6 other South Asian patients before us, then tried to cover it up as a “mistake” after we got shitty.