Primarily, the Australian and New Zealand authorities have recently begun the process to merge their regulatory systems under a new agency: the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Administration (ANZTPA). So far, a number of steps have been taken in this direction. For example, in recent months, the two countries have been working together to launch new systems for adverse event reporting and early warning systems on drugs and devices. In the long term, this harmonization would ideally allow products to go through a single regulatory review before receiving approval for use in both Australia and New Zealand, a vision anticipated to be realised around 2015 or 2016.
Really, this is indicative of a larger trend we're seeing in the medtech industry regulators in Europe are attempting to harmonize their approval processes, while regulatory authorities from Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the US have also committed to better harmonize medical device review processes so that an approval in one country could be more easily leveraged to another.