By one estimate the natural resource wealth of Australia is about $1m per citizen, making it an incredibly wealthy continent to which everybody who can should emigrate. ;-) But it also makes Australia a potential military target for any expansionist economy that thinks it could make better use of those resources than the Australians. Australia *has* to take defence seriously.

But New Zealand? Well, New Zealand's main advantage isn't expressed in $. Suffice to say there is little motive for *anybody* to attack the place, apart from as a stepping-stone towards the Antarctic, and it's too early for that. NZ's military is predominantly used for policing waters (lots of pirate fishing in unspoiled southern waters by nations that have over-fished and destroyed their own local fisheries), rescue missions for sea vessels that get smashed in the rough Southern seas, and providing aid to Pacific nations. NZ has soldiers in places like Afganistan and Sudan and is regularly called on by the UN to clear minefields, which the NZ team seems to be quite good at. FWIW, NZ used to have a military alliance with the US but the US ended it in the 1980s when NZ went anti-nuclear.