Airline

The reason for choosing Emirates on top of other airlines was because of their ridiculously cheap fare from AKL to SYD.

I have flown, 3 days prior, on Virgin Australia’s DJ 54 service from SYD to AKL and I though “why not see how the premium cabin service is with Emirates”.

I have also read a lot of positive comments (and also some of the bad ones) in various forums especially FlyerTalk regarding their Business Class service.

Fare

The fare I got was just over $400 AUD or around $556 NZD. I believe (at that time) that this was the probably cheapest Business Class fare for an International short-haul hop.

One thing I did find is that if you buy a return from SYD to AKL in Business Class then the price is anywhere from $1200 AUD to $1600 AUD or $1550 NZD to $2055 NZD.

It might be because that you need to be on the same fare buckets for each of the sector (assuming that the AKL to SYD fare is on a lower fare bucket).
Just as a comparison and curiosity I did think about booking into First Class but would rather save it for another time. The price for First Class from AKL to SYD is $900 AUD or $1150 NZD. This I believe is still good value.