It's not a tiny country... it's about average for country size and when you consider that it's an archipelago, the area of the world it controls through territorials waters and such is basically continent sized. New Zealand is actually smack-bang (#75) in the middle of the list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...I'd group countries in 4 categories:
1. Continent sized (Russia, Canada, China, US, Brazil, Australia).
2. Large countries: anything below 1 up to probably about 500k sqkm.
3. Middle of the pack countries: everything from 500k down to about 100-200k sqkm.
4. Small countries. Everything below 100k sqkm (200k sqkm if you want to stretch it out).
The categories are somewhat fluid since for example Indonesia is not continent sized in landmass, but it's an archipelago that does stretch over the area of an entire continent, when you consider it end-to-end and include its territorial waters. Plus having a very high population for your group also moves you up. Germany is average in size but in population it's a large country. Same for Japan.