As many as 500 Kiwis are sleeping rough every night in Queensland parks, struggling to survive, without any access to Australian government welfare and support.

That’s the guesstimate of Vicky Rose, who manages the Nerang Neighbourhood Centre on the Gold Coast – which is community social services centre (much like the Citizens Advice Bureau here) where desperate Kiwis threatened by homelessness of financial hardship often come seeking help.

That 500 figure is an anecdotal one – and that’s one of the Catch 22 elements about being a Kiwi in Australia.

Because about 60 percent of the New Zealand citizens who have migrated to Australia since 2001 are neither permanent residents nor Australian citizens – either because they can’t afford those privileges, or just don’t qualify – they're in a limbo zone, and don’t really figure in the Aussie social welfare statistics.

But Vicky, who is a migrant from New Zealand herself, knows the Queensland community service scene like the back of her hand.

Furthermore, she works with other professionals who have observed welfare trends in Queensland for years.

That’s where that 500 figure comes from. Furthermore, those observers say Maori made up around 70 percent of those either homeless, or threatened by homelessness in Queensland.

Vicky does have hard data that confirms that there are a huge number of Kiwis in Australia, and in Queensland in particular.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that there were 483,000 New Zealand-born Kiwis living in Australia at the time of their last census, in 2011. That’s 2.2 percent of the Australian population.

Of those New Zealand-born Kiwis, 192,036 – or 38 percent – were trying to make a go of things in Queensland.

On the Gold Coast, New Zealand born-residents make up 10 percent of the population, while in Logan City – the sprawling area between Brisbane to the north and Gold Coast to the south – Kiwis comprise 8 percent of the population.

The number of Kiwis living in Australia is even higher than those stats indicate – because they don’t take into account the children born in Australia to New Zealand parents.

If an allowance is made for those tamariki, the figure is likely to be as high as 600,000.

If you click the link below, you’ll see the Power Point presentation Vicky made to the Kahui Wahine conference in the Gold Coast last Saturday.