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Ninety-nine percent of Māori are born in New Zealand. Of the 7,419 Māori at the 1996 Census who had been born overseas, 4,281 were born in Australia, and over two-thirds of these people were children under 15.
It is estimated that around 27,000 people of Māori ancestry were living in Australia in the mid 1980s. This is equivalent to just over 6 percent of the New Zealand Māori descent population at that time.
In 1996, 6,573 Māori living in New Zealand gave their address five years previously as Australia, up considerably on the 4,428 Māori who did so in 1991.
Of the Māori who had been living in Australia in 1991, nearly 1 in 4 were children under 15 and almost 1 in 2 were aged between 25 and 39.
The number of Australian-born Māori children living in New Zealand has risen markedly from 1,113 in 1986 to 2,934 in 1996. This suggests that many Māori return migrants are family groups coming home to New Zealand.
For more information you can order NZ Now Māori or Te Kanohi Hou o Aotearoa: Māori.
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