Besides Australia and New Zealand, are there any particularly liberal countries in that corner of the world at all? The authoritarianism of the China aligned and/or left/communist Asian countries is well understood, but what of the rest?
South Korea spent much of the 20th century under military dictatorships, going from one military coup to another. Singapore's single-party system (with suspiciously fascist iconography[0]) is notorious for harsh authoritarianism. Japan today is a lot more liberal than it was a century ago, but their criminal conviction rate is too high to be believed and public support for the death penalty is around 80%. All three of these are nice countries in many respects, but I don't think any of them are particularly liberal by anglosphere standards.