The study is concerned with comparison of rhythmic features in monologues of Australian (AusE) and New Zealand (NZE) speakers. Methodology is designed to capture the advantages of both the traditional approach and the ‘new paradigm’ metrics to account for the two national varieties of English. The traditional for Russian linguistics description of rhythm as a hierarchy of linguistic units (ip, foot, syllable) provided data on common rhythm structure with dialect-specific differences in syllable durations, which suggested the Australian speech habits of prolonging unstressed syllables. By applying the metrics collected in Correlatore [15], we found that unmonitored monologues’ rhythm could be categorized differently from reading reported in previous research. AusE speech demonstrated features of ‘controlling’ syllable-based rhythm, in contrast with the ‘compensating’ accent-based rhythm of NZE speakers. The metrics proved to be dialect-, style- and tempo-sensitive, and suitable for comparison of varieties of the same language.