By conventional economic indicators, such as GDP per capita and unemployment, New Zealand is among the better off of the OECD countries (OECD, 2015). This, however, is not true for all areas in the country. 

This article focuses on the contribution of Māori to national and sub-national population and development. Its underlying postulate is that the Māori contribution to subnational dynamics has been insufficiently valued. Instead, in past public discourse on ethnicity, Māori have too often been viewed as a fiscal burden and as benefit dependent. This article will discuss two related issues. Using national level data sets and case-study regions, it will document the contribution that Māori have made to population replenishment and thereby New Zealand’s economic development. At the same time, it also shows that this contribution has been achieved by overcoming contemporary inequalities that have their roots in colonisation.

The article looks at the contribution of Māori to growth overall; to the quantum of the child population, which is the future engine of growth; and to labour and employment. Our sole aim is to show what happens for these three dimensions. Above all, we show how Māori have played a role in population and development dynamics, nationally and then in two case-study regions. The regions selected, Northland and Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay, have been chosen because of the relatively high proportion of their population that identify as Māori, 30 and 28 percent respectively.