As a Kiwi, I'd love to believe in these theories for the sheer romance of it, but their evidence never stacks up...or they won't show the locations of their discoveries to Kiwi archaeologists...and the finds always seem to be made by people of the ethnic group they're claiming were here first.
There is one politician who believes in all this, but she's kind of flaky and her minders won't allow her to comment on it publicly.
.... As a Kiwi, I’d love to believe in these theories ....
And, why not.
After all, if you’re as typically-Goebbels-propagandized as are most Kiwis, you likely already believe the Maoris didn’t (along with any and everyone else they could get their chops around) genocidally slaughter and eat almost every Moriori. And that they never had a Kupe, let alone a sense of “nation” — nor called their “nation” “aotearoa.”
For William Pember Reeves and Stevenson Percy Smith hadn’t yet written that fairy tale and nor had the “education” department’s “School Journal” yet promulgated the propaganda nor yet repeatedly recycled it until it had, thus, made the lie “the truth.”
You've got those, too? :-)