Jobs luring young Maori across Ditch

More than a third of Maori may be living in Australia by the second half of this century if present trends continue.

The number of Maori living across the Tasman more than trebled from 27,000 in 1986 to 90,000 at the 2001 Census. That was a jump from 8.4 per cent to 14.6 per cent of the total Maori population in Australasia.

A policy manager for the Ministry of Maori Development Te Puni Kokiri, Paul Hamer, said the ministry could no longer ignore the fact that one in every seven Maori are now in Australia.

"If the trends continue, in 50 years time it will be 35 per cent, " he said.

Maori are fleeing their ancestral homeland at a faster rate than Pakeha New Zealanders, in line with a higher emigration rate of people in lower-paid jobs who cannot make ends meet on New Zealand incomes.

Overall, the number of NZ-born people in Australia increased by 56 per cent from 218,100 at Australia's 1986 Census to 340,355 in 2001. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that this number kept rising to 442,189 by June 2004.

Those claiming Maori ancestry jumped by 233 per cent in the 15 years to 2001 and are now likely to number well over 100,000.

The figures are not precisely comparable because the Australian Census asks people to state their "ancestry", whereas the New Zealand Census asks for their "ethnic group". Both allow people to list multiple groups.

In Australia's 2001 Census, 90,350 people gave Maori as one of their ancestries. However, this figure included an unknown number of people of Cook Island Maori ancestry, so demographers estimate the true 2001 figure for people of NZ Maori ancestry conservatively as "at least 90,000". A study by Waikato University Professor Dick Bedford and others found that Maori at that time were less likely to be unemployed in Australia than they were in New Zealand.

Two-thirds were born in New Zealand, but 28 per cent were born in Australia and a further 4 per cent were either born elsewhere in the world or did not state a birthplace.

More than half (54 per cent) were in the prime childbearing age group of 15 to 44, compared with 46 per cent of the Maori still in New Zealand. A further 31 per cent were aged under 15, compared with 37 per cent in New Zealand

Mr Hamer, who is studying the Maori population from a Brisbane base for nine months, said this young population meant the number of Maori Australians would keep growing rapidly even if migration from the homeland changed in the future.

"If the birth rates are the same in both countries, and if Australia continues to take much of the out-migration from New Zealand, then it won't take much for the relativities in the population to start to alter quite quickly," he said.

"What you can see is an upward trend that will just go on so long as there are economic differences between the two countries. And now you hear stories of one person in the family coming and then all the whanau coming over because that person will set up a house and they will all come over and get jobs."