Australia is surrounded by 8,000 km of active tectonic plate boundaries capable of generating tsunamis that researchers and the government say could reach the country's coastline within two to four hours.

One third of the world's earthquakes take place along these boundaries, they said.

For example, on December 23, just three days before the Indian Ocean tsunami, a magnitude 8.1 quake occurred several hundred km south of New Zealand and was felt in parts of Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Peter Mora, director of the Earth Systems Science Computational Centre at the University of Queensland, said there was a misconception Australia was safe from earthquakes and tsunamis, when the country was instead very prone.

"Our international research collaboration partners in the USA forecast that within the next 10 years, a great earthquake with a magnitude of at least 7 on the Richter scale is likely to strike to the north of New Zealand," Mora said in a statement.

"The could mean a potential tsunami hazard for the east coast of Australia."

The US researchers who have made the prediction are from the Nasa QuakeSim project and the University of California.

New Zealand would also be hit hard and possibly low-lying Pacific island states to the north.

New Zealand, about 2,000 km east of Australia, staddles two of the tectonic plates that make up the Pacific "ring of fire."

New Zealand's Institute of Geological & Nuclear Sciences records about 14,000 earthquakes in and around the country each year. Most are small, but between 100 and 150 are big enough to be felt.