KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's increasing turn towards Asia is confirmed in the latest Census figures on the country's rapidly changing ethnicity, languages and religions.
Europeans remained by far the largest ethnic group at 67.6 per cent of the population but Asians - the fastest growing major ethnic group - were
the third largest.
They made up 9.2 per cent of the total, well ahead of Pacific Islanders on 6.9 per cent - after being just 1 percentage point ahead of Pacific Islanders' 6.5 per cent in the preceding Census.
Though Asians were the fastest growing ethnic group, there was still a significant increase in the number of British people entering the country.
Migrants describing themselves as English increased 26 per cent from the 2001 census, while those calling themselves British grew 64 per cent to 27,189.
Asians - the largest groups were Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Filipinos, Japanese, Sri Lankans and Cambodians - grew by almost half in the five years between Censuses, taking them to 354,552 people. And their growth in numbers far outstripped the 7.8 per cent expansion of New Zealand's total population, to 4.03 million.
Statistics New Zealand, which released its Culture and Identity report based on last year's Census data yesterday, put the current population at 4,181,060.
Maori remained the second largest ethnic group, with 14.6 per cent of the population, but their increase was just half the rate of Pacific peoples, whose 14.7 per cent growth was second-largest, after Asians, since 2001.
Among Europeans, the New Zealand European group shrank by 11.7 per cent from 2001, largely because of the introduction of the "New Zealander" category in 2006, whereas "New Zealander" responses used to be counted as New Zealand Europeans.
Among Asians, the biggest group remained Chinese, after a 40.5 per cent rise since 2001. Second largest were the Indians, rising 68.2 per cent, the largest growth in the Asian category.
Two-thirds of the Asian population lived in Auckland, which, as New Zealand's leading centre for migrant entry, cemented its status as the dominant region for ethnic diversity.
Almost one in five people in the Auckland region identified with one or more Asian ethnic groups, the highest proportion nationally. More than a third of people who lived in the region were born overseas, compared with Southland, where around one in 13 people were born overseas.
England continued to head the list of overseas birthplaces of New Zealand immigrants, but the People's Republic of China pushed Australia out of second place. Australia came third, ahead of Samoa, India and South Africa. Scotland, second in 1956, dropped to eighth.
To match New Zealand's growing ethnic diversity, the population is becoming increasingly multilingual.
English, spoken by 95.9 per cent of people, remained by far the most common tongue. The next most common was Maori, spoken by 4.1 per cent.
But 17.5 per cent could speak two or more languages, up from 13.6 per cent in the 1996 Census.
In the five years to the last count, the number of Hindi speakers almost doubled, to 44,589; Mandarin speakers rose to 41,391; and Afrikaans speakers to 21,123.
Religion and Christianity continued an overall decline, but while some traditional churches shrank, others grew. The ranks of the fundamentalist Christians swelled greatly, as did Hinduism and Islam.
Who's Asian in NZ
147,570 - Chinese
104,583 - Indians
30,792 - Koreans
16,938 - Filipinos
11,910 - Japanese
8310 - Sri Lankans
6918 - Cambodians
- Source: 2006 Census
