Hudson,
"Mercy flights" on a whole are almost non existent these days. As I understand, the RFDS operate all of there flights in accordance with the regulations and generally use the MED1 priority for emergency jobs.
Even under a "Mercy flight" priority you will not find a pilot anywhere in the RFDS or other organisation that will ignore all other regs to save a life. As someone wrote previously, there could be 3 or 4 lives that could be lost on board the aircraft. There is no percieved pressure on the pilot to get the job done because a sick child needs to get to hospital.
[ 12 December 2001: Message edited by: Bargearse ]