Australia and New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand are the two largest countries of the Oceania region in the Southern Pacific. With many similarities between them, they also differ [Page 61]in a number of ways. Both countries were settled as British colonies during the 18th and 19th centuries, displacing long established indigenous populations.

Aboriginal settlers arrived on the continent that is now Australia from Southeast Asia approximately 40,000 years before the first Europeans began exploration during the 17th century. No formal territorial claims were made until 1770, when Captain James Cook took possession in the name of Great Britain. Six colonies were created during the late 18th and 19th centuries; they federated and became the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.

The Polynesian Maori reached New Zealand in approximately 800 A.D. In 1840, their chieftains entered into a compact with Britain, the Treaty of Waitangi, in which they ceded sovereignty to Queen Victoria while retaining territorial rights. In that same year, the British began the first organized colonial settlement. A series of land wars between 1843 and 1872 ended with the defeat of the native peoples.

The now predominantly Anglo-Saxon origin Caucasian populations in both countries have become increasingly multicultural with continuing migration from across the globe and (more recently) Asia. The indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand are a relatively small group within each country's population. In 2001, Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population numbered 458,500 persons, whereas New Zealand's Maori population was 526,281 persons.

Australia and New Zealand are among the world's more developed nations, and their aging populations reflect this. In 2005, the estimated median age for Australia was 36.5 years and for New Zealand was 33.5 years. Life expectancy at birth is among the world's highest, being 80 years for Australia (males 78 years, females 83 years) and 79 years for New Zealand (males 76 years, females 81 years). Fertility rates of both countries are low at 1.76 children born per woman in Australia and 1.79 in New Zealand. Currently, the proportion of population age 65 years and older in Australia is 12.9% (males 1,145,274, females 1,452,002) and in New Zealand is 11.7% (males 206,650, females 266,087). Indigenous populations in both countries have significantly shorter life expectancies. The gap in life expectancy at birth between indigenous and nonindigenous people is 20 years in Australia, whereas it is 5 to 7 years in New Zealand.

In common with other developed countries, fertility has fallen below the replacement level (the number of babies a woman would need to bear to replace herself and her partner; i.e., 2.1 on average) in both countries. This occurred in 1976 in Australia and in 1980 in New Zealand. Despite this, in 2000 the number of births exceeded the number of deaths in both countries because the age structure of each population was still relatively young. Natural increase will continue to contribute to population growth for the first 30 to 40 years of this century in each country. However, in the longer term, as the population ages and deaths eventually outnumber births, any population growth in either country will stem from net overseas migration gains.

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