Australia have quickly turned their attentions to their forthcoming tour of Britain and Ireland after coming up short against New Zealand for the fourth time this year.

The Wallabies went down 32-19 in Tokyo in the final Bledisloe Cup match of the year to extend their run of consecutive defeats to the All Blacks to seven.

But, with a midweek game against Gloucester looming followed by a Test against England on Saturday, Robbie Deans has been quick to shift focus.

"We've got an exciting opportunity ahead of us now," said Deans, who has lost all bar one Test against his countrymen since taking charge of Australia last year.

"This was our last southern hemisphere outing (of the year) and we have a great tour ahead of us, which we're really looking forward to.

"We'll be better for this performance. We're back playing rugby, which we hadn't done for two months, so that's a good launching pad now for us to push on to the UK."

The Australians were leading 16-13 at the break after Peter Hynes scored while New Zealand's opening try-scorer, Sitiveni Sivivatu, was in the sin-bin for a dangerous tackle on Adam Ashley-Cooper.

But, for the fifth time in the past six Bledisloe Cup Tests, the Wallabies wasted that half-time advantage and were not able to push on for a confidence-boosting win as a Conrad Smith try swung momentum the New Zealanders' way and Daniel Carter punished Australian ill-discipline with another fine display of accurate goal-kicking to finish with a 22-point haul.

"This was the end of our domestic season and for a lot of reasons we had a score to settle there. But it didn't happen, obviously, and we look at England now and get into our tour," said new Australia skipper Rocky Elsom.

"We're very frustrated because that opened up for us more than any other game this year but we just weren't able to take advantage of it.

"I couldn't fault the guys for effort. I was really proud of the effort they put in and the intensity they brought to the match. But it wasn't good enough for us, which is a big problem.

"Fortunately for us, we've got England to think about and they'll be looking at us as the southern hemisphere team that they'll be most likely to beat."

New Zealand also depart Tokyo tomorrow to head to Cardiff for a date with Wales next weekend.

But they will be in a far better frame of mind than their trans-Tasman rivals after backing up an impressive win against the Wallabies in Wellington with another solid outing in Japan.

All Blacks coach Graham Henry said: "It's very good going forward and gives us a lot of momentum.

"I think we probably played at about 70% capacity, which means we've got a lot to work on.

"But if you can get a win it does give you a bit more confidence and momentum going in and it's always better when you're travelling 12 and a half hours in a plane to have a win under your belt."

Skipper Richie McCaw also feels there is still plenty to work on with Tests against Wales, Italy, England and France over the coming weeks.

"I think we'd like to start a bit better," he said. "We had a Wallaby team who came out pretty fired up. We'll expect that with teams we play now but, rather than sit back and absorb it, we need to make sure we have that edge.

"Having that game under the belt will help that. A few of us played in the Air New Zealand Cup but the intensity is a long way off Test match level. So we'll be better for having that run.

"We perhaps didn't have enough field position in the first half. We had a couple of opportunities and in one I spilt the ball when we probably would have had five points, so little things like that, if we can iron those out, we will put teams under pressure."