Since a coronavirus isn't an influenza virus, I don't see what it matters whether Australia or New Zealand were in flu season. Moreover, it's now flu season and people are tiring of the social distancing measures and new cases per day are extremely low.

Australians and New Zealanders can rightly be annoyed that the responses were not excellent - but the responses were basically adequate. They were just enough and a little bit late - compared to europe which was too little too late.

If diverse countries like Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam were capable of mounting competent responses (during the Taiwanese/South Korean flu season), there is no reason to say that Australia/New Zealand were somehow incapable. It's far more likely that we were "lucky" because our timezone and flight time was too far apart to become part of the conversations that lead to social suicide, so our leaders made basically competent responses.