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Education Minister Hekia Parata hopes Te Matawai will stimulate more use of te reo Maori at whanau, hapu and iwi level.
The 13-strong group charged with developing an iwi and Maori strategy for strengthening the language held its first meeting in Otaki yesterday.
Ms Parata says her ministry spends about $400 million a year on Maori language kaupapa, including funding kura and kohanga reo and providing Maori language resources into mainstream schools.
"Education does have a critical part to play, but it cannot do it alone and what we really need to see if we want a bilingual New Zealand is for iwi around the country, for hapu, for whanau to be speaking te reo Maori and to be speaking their own dialectal Maori and the more we can have that from the bottom up, the stronger reo will be in our country," she says.
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