This is basically a hangover from how regional dialing codes are handled in the UK. Rather than having codes expressed as eg "1752" and then having to dial a 0 to start a long-distance call, the code is "01752". And for some reason, telling the UK populace that +44 means UK and you can replace that with a zero if you're in UK was too hard, so they adopted the bastardized +44(0) format, which has now crept into NZ.
I recall being in a UK ship in the US, and a lot of our crew were too dumb to realise that "01144" wasn't the number to dial off the ship, it was the number to dial UK; made ordering takeaways really hard. And others didn't realise that you needed to put a "1" in front of a US dial code to get anywhere
I would imagine the fact that you were on a ship made ordering takeaways harder than the phone number issues did..!! 🤣
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