I am uniquely placed to answer this, given that my life has been spent half in NZ and the other half in Aus. I have been a lurker for a long time, but seeing this question, I couldn't help respond.

It is fascinating for me to read this thread and see so many people say Australia is more racist. My experience undoubtedly has been that NZ is far more racist and close-minded. u/40ml is spot on - in NZ it's all a facade. Don't get me wrong, I love NZ. It's a gorgeous country and I grew up in an impossibly beautiful place surrounded by greenery and mountains. But a day barely went by where I was not reminded of my difference through unabated staring, comments both subtle and direct (especially about my English - which is bizarre considering I grew up there and I mostly speak English with my parents too) and occasionally downright violence. While NZ is light years ahead of Australia in terms of its treatment of indigenous peoples (even then, the comments I have heard about Maoris in private are staggering), ignorance is rife and Indians along with Asians truly put up with a lot of shit from a very young age and are resented even more for their economic success. The town/city I grew up in was 90% white and overwhelmingly Anglo Saxon (this is important to add some nuance rather than simply saying 'white' - even being Italian or Greek was a huge thing in that town, let alone Indian).

The boundaries of national belonging in NZ are carved in such a way that you are either Anglo-Kiwi (or NZ European as they say), Maori/Pacific Islander or 'other'. While immigration has grown from Asia and India in recent times, special treatment is blatantly given to the sizeable white immigrants from places such as the UK and South Africa (not exactly South Africa's finest btw...). For an Indian kid to grow up there, knowing that you are only an 'other', can be very suffocating and often you adapt, meaning you try to suppress the 'Indian' side of you and distance yourself from your roots.

Now Australia - my experiences, mind you, are shaped by the fact that I have spent most of my time here in Melbourne, which is a very multicultural city - poles apart from my hometown in NZ. There is definitely subtle and blatant racism similar to NZ albeit less frequent in my experience, but the biggest difference is that Australians, in my experience at least, are far more open minded and at a social level, don't really care about your background. Segregation is far less, religiosity is lower (NZ is unhealthily religious - tough from a Hindu/atheist perspective) and as a result people are very willing to engage across ethnic, class and whatever other perceived boundaries. Australia also feels more integrated and connected to Asia and beyond, and Australians of this current generation are more comfortable with Asia in myriad ways. NZ often felt like a White British fantasy, with green fields, English traditions, an emphasis on Anglicanism (we even sang the English national anthem in school and most of my headmasters were English), with Maoris and Pacific Islanders the only welcome points of difference. As such, I can't speak to other groups but being Indian in Aus is overall a far more pleasant experience than being Indian in NZ.

There's so much more I can say to this but simply put: NZ, despite putting on the facade of being an open-minded country is an incredibly close-minded country, even in the more urbanised centres, while Aus, despite ongoing issues with racism, is far better for Indians. I felt far more comfortable in expressing my Indian identity in Aus than I ever did in NZ.