The Māori language revival is a movement to promote, reinforce and strengthen the speaking of the Māori language. Primarily in New Zealand, but also in centres with large numbers of New Zealand migrants (such as London and Melbourne), the movement aims to increase the use of Māori in the home, in education, government and business. The movement is part of a broader Māori Renaissance.

Until World War II (1939–1945) most Māori people spoke Māori as their first language but by the 1980s fewer than 20% of Māori spoke the language well enough to be classed as native speakers. The causes of the decline included the switch from using Māori to using English compulsory in schools and increasing urbanisation, which disconnected younger generations from their extended families and in particular their grandparents, who traditionally played a large part in family life. Even many of those people no longer spoke Māori in the home. As a result, many Māori children failed to learn their ancestral language, and generations of non-Māori-speaking Māori emerged.

Steven Leonard Joyce (born 7 April 1963) is a New Zealand politician, who entered the New Zealand House of Representatives in 2008 as a member of the New Zealand National Party. In the same year he became Minister of Transport and Minister for Communications and Information Technology.

As a broadcasting entrepreneur with RadioWorks he became a self-made millionaire before he entered politics.

Joyce's parents worked as grocers. He went to school at Francis Douglas Memorial College, before enrolling at Massey University, applying to study veterinary science. However he "missed the cut", graduating instead with a BSc in zoology. While at university he worked as a presenter and programme director on student radio. After leaving university Joyce and a group of friends (including radio presenter Jeremy Corbett) started their own radio station, Energy FM, in New Plymouth. With business partners, he built up RadioWorks over the next seventeen years, both organically and by acquisition, to a network of 22 radio stations and 650 staff. He retired as Managing Director of RadioWorks in April 2001, when CanWest purchased it, Joyce receiving $6 million for the sale.

David Richard Cunliffe (born 1963) is a New Zealand politician. He is a member of the Labour Party, and the sitting member of parliament for New Lynn, West Auckland. He served as the Minister of Health and Minister for Communications and Information Technology for the Fifth Labour Government of New Zealand from October 2007 until November 2008. After the 2008 general election defeat of the Labour Party, and the resignation of Helen Clark as the party leader, Cunliffe was appointed to be the party's Finance Spokesman. This is considered to be the third highest ranking within the party after leader and deputy leader. Cunliffe has been touted as a future leader of the Labour party, and party insiders have suggested he seriously considered challenging Goff in the aftermath of the 2008 electoral defeat. Speculation of a leadership challenge again arose during the June 2010 expenses scandal and again after the 'Cartergate' affair.

Cunliffe studied politics at University of Otago before working first as a diplomat and then as a business consultant. In 1994 and 1995, he was a Fulbright Scholar and Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School, earning a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 1995.