Tasman migration hits te reo at home

One in six people in the world with Maori ancestry now live in Australia, an expert says. Photo / Wanganui Chronicle

Use of the Maori language increased in Australia but declined in New Zealand in the five years to 2006, as more Maori flock across the Tasman.

Victoria University researcher Paul Hamer has revised his previous estimate that one in every seven Maori live in Australia, and says the number is now one in six - 126,000 of the 765,000 people in the world with Maori ancestry.

And he quotes Australian census data showing that the number of Australian residents who spoke te reo Maori in the home jumped by 20 per cent between the last two censuses, from 5504 in 2001 to 6617 in 2006.

By contrast, the number of people in New Zealand who spoke Maori dropped in the same period from 160,527 to 157,110.

"It's going up [in Australia] because of the sheer number of people who are moving there," Mr Hamer said.

He is now doing further research, to be published next year, on the impact on the language of the migration to Australia.

Maori Language Commission head Erima Henare has expressed concern about the decline of the language in this country from an estimated 35,000 "proficient" speakers 35 years ago to just 18,000 today, as an older generation of native speakers dies out.

He said it was an "ironic and cruel twist" that the decline was continuing despite the launch of Maori Television in 2004 and the increasing public use of the language in other media.

The number of Maori in this country who spoke te reo actually increased slightly from 2001 to 2006, from 130,482 to 131,613, but that represented a decline in the proportion of all Maori in this country who could speak the language, from 24.8 per cent to 23.3 per cent - the second successive decline.

Mr Hamer said the proportion of Maori in Australia who could speak te reo might also be declining, because the total Maori population in Australia may have risen by more than 20 per cent in the five years to 2006.

But his 2007 report on Maori in Australia documented a growing phenomenon of kapa haka groups, Maori clubs and even marae in Australia.

"The figures appear to confirm that Maori society has, in part, an increasingly Australian future," he said.

Meanwhile a draft paper by Wellington researcher James Newell, due to be published next week, has found that Maori 18-year-old Australian Idol winner Stan Walker typifies a Maori working population in Australia that is younger, more male and in less skilled jobs than Maori working in New Zealand.

Again using 2006 census data, Mr Newell found that 28 per cent of Maori workers in Australia were aged 25 to 34, compared to only 23 per cent of Maori in New Zealand.

Fifty-five per cent were male, compared to 52 per cent in New Zealand. The combination means that just over a fifth of all working Maori males aged 25 to 34 now live in Australia, with only four-fifths left at home.

More than half (51 per cent) of Maori workers in Australia were in manual jobs, with 14 per cent in clerical, sales and service jobs and 35 per cent in skilled work.

The comparable figures for Maori in New Zealand were 42 per cent in manual jobs, 16 per cent in clerical, sales and service jobs and 42 per cent in professional jobs.

The skew towards less skilled jobs in Australia matches the trend for all New Zealand-born people in Australia and may reflect higher wages and lower taxes for such jobs across the Tasman, especially in remote mining areas.

Mr Newell said some skilled Maori may also have deliberately "down-skilled" to get such higher-paid jobs.