Well as an American I ll tell you that the Aussie accent and the Kiwi accent are more different from one another than the American accent and the Canadian accent American accents and Canadian accents are extremely similar I m pretty sure Americans are the only people in the world who can hear the difference Even Canadians don t realize that they sound different from Americans I don t think I have clarified this but in general you re right The New Zealand front lax vowel shift tends to be more extreme than that of Australia However if you were to compare your TRAP and DRESS vowels to my American ones they would probably be a bit more raised Yours would be between mine and a Kiwi s I was just trying to say that it s not like TRAP is never raised in Australia it s just that almost all Kiwis do it and it can be more extreme sometimes especially among young women sounding closer to your DRESS vowel