AHC: Big New Zealand

Theoretically. What is the biggest population NZ could have achieved by today, that is within reason and isn't complete ASB. I mean sure, it looks small next to Australia but then you think about it, it is 268,000 km big, not all that small.

If I where to hazard a guess, due to its moderate and agreeable climate, the fact that it has pretty good farmland for the most part, i'm going to say in excess of 15 million, with the right conditions (early migration).
 
I don’t know that I guess a number, but I can come up with a scenario to get there. Japanese invasion of OZ during WWII (failed) leads to NZ graciously taking in Aussie refuges. The aussies stay for two or three years until the Yanks bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then simply don’t move back. Bigger seed population in 1945 means bigger population today.

Tangentially, I read a stuff article the other day saying “Wellington is out of room” with a population under 500k. During the four years my wife and I lived there I would have given anything for a population over 1M so that we’d have the critical mass to support more mexican restaurants and longer Sunday opening hours. It really is a cool city... shame it‘s so small...
 
15 million seems about right - NZ is about the same size as the UK and has a similar climate (and this is still only 1/4 of UK's population!). I think a plausible scenario might be a medium-sized nuclear war, one bad enough to destroy and contaminate most of the Northern Hemisphere but not the entire world. If there are enough wealthy British and American refugees, and New Zealand is receptive (or at least isn't able to stop them from settling in New Zealand), you could get a population of that size with a POD as late as 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis).
 
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