Who the hell would know. It certainly used to be the case that Air Nelson in particular would regularly enforce a recency requirement of 50 hours NZ flying in the past 12 months. Why they do this I have no idea, I would have thought it would only benefit the NZ aviation scene to have some experience in it that hasn't just been fostered locally.
All the Air NZ link recruitment is now done as a group though, so I can't see how they can enforce this with centralised recruitment. You are just going to have to apply and find out, as an aside, how many hours have you got, have you thought about Jetstar NZ. They are taking FO's with pretty minimal hours and are not fussy about where the pilot has flown in the past.