The world champions were missing several regulars in Buenos Aires, particularly in the pack, with Joe Moody, Owen Franks, and captain Kieran Read among those absent and Luke Whitelock replaced by Ardie Savea shortly before kick-off after taking ill.

It made little difference as the visiting All Blacks recovered from a shaky first five minutes to dominate a team who have still to record a win against them in 28 games.

“We got better game management,” New Zealand coach Steve Hansen said. “I don’t know if we’re the finished product yet. They are a young team that were out there for large parts of tonight so it was pretty pleasing.”

Back-row Savea was one of the best performers in just his second start and Ofa Tu’ungafasi also stepped up to excel on his first start at prop.

Another back, Karl Tu’inukuafe, was perhaps New Zealand’s best player on the night, further underlining their strength in depth.

The All Blacks, who bounced back from the defeat against South Africa two weeks ago to avoid a second consecutive loss for the first time since 2011, have been particularly clinical in the scrum in this Rugby Championship.

They won all their nine scrums against Argentina to take their total in the five games so far to 31 won and none lost.

They are the only team in the tournament with a 100% record in the department, and assistant coach Ian Foster was pleased to maintain their supremacy against a team known for their scrummaging ability.

It was great performance from our scrum and that is probably a mark of respect because we know it is a big part of the Argentinian psyche,” Foster said. “So it is something we targeted, we wanted to do it well, and we got a good result.

The backs also rarely looked in trouble, with one wing, Waisake Naholo, grabbing one try and another, Rieko Ioane, scoring two more to take his total to 20 in 19 games.

Beauden Barrett recovered from a disappointing match against South Africa two weeks ago to score all four of his conversion attempts and Sonny Bill Williams will be delighted to get some game time under his belt after three months out injured.

It all bodes well for New Zealand as they build up towards next year’s World Cup in Japan. New Zealand are in Pool B alongside Italy, South Africa, Namibia and the winner of a play-off. Before that, the All Blacks will round out their Rugby Championship duties next week against South Africa in Pretoria.

Meanwhile, South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus praised his side’s defensive effort but says the Springboks should have given Australia “a hiding” in their 23-12 Rugby Championship victory at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium on Saturday.

The sides scored two tries each, with the Boks crossing early through wing Aphiwe Dyantyi and scrum-half Faf de Klerk, but after spurning a number of other opportunities, were then forced to defend for most of the second period.

Erasmus was left frustrated by his side’s inability to kill the game off sooner, but was able to celebrate back-to-back victories in the competition after South Africa’s shock 36-34 win in New Zealand a fortnight ago.

I think tonight we created more chances than we did against New Zealand and if we had converted some of those the game would have gone very differently,” Erasmus said.

“If we’d taken them we could have given (Australia) a hiding. In the second half we didn’t play well but we showed a lot of character once again.”

Erasmus has continued to experiment in the Rugby Championship as he builds towards next year’s World Cup in Japan and was pleased to have been able to make eight changes and still come away with the win.

“In the past couple of months when we made changes, we lost matches so to make eight changes and beat Australia is something to celebrate. Before we start to look at where we need to improve, we should probably enjoy the victory,” he said.

Aside from two first-half tries, the Boks kept Australia scoreless and have conceded only 38 second-half points in their five Rugby Championship matches this season — a vastly improved defensive effort from previous years.

“I think the guys are getting the hang of the defensive system but it’s not something you can get right through talking about it or on the training ground. It’s something you have to make mistakes trying, and learn from those mistakes,” Erasmus said.