What they should be saying is it hasnt been seen in AUCKLAND before seems they are all suffering from memory loss.
Not memory loss, just ignorance - from many conversations I've had with Aucklanders they can often be genuinely ignorant to anything happening elsewhere in NZ - so for them when they say 'New Zealand' they generally just mean 'Auckland' but they assume if something has/hasn't happened there then it has/hasn't happened anywhere in NZ