The reason the Maori have come through imperialism in a better position than Indigenous Australians is because they had a treaty with the British after the colonial wars ended, whereas Indigenous Australians never got that:
Treaty of Waitangi - Wikipedia
It guaranteed certain rights to the Maori which is why they weren't quite as badly oppressed as Indigenous Australians over the last two hundred years.
This article goes a little into explaining why that happened:
Why New Zealand's Maori got a treaty, and Australia's Indigenous peoples didn't
Basically Britain took possession of Australia a few decades before New Zealand, in which time international law had moved away from the doctrine of terra nullius. Under terra nullius Australia was legally declared uninhabited land, so the British could just unilaterally claim it as theirs without reaching any sort of agreement with the Indigenous Australians. They could not do the same in New Zealand, they had to reach a diplomatic agreement with the Maori.
So, whilst the Maori obtained legal recognition and protection for their ownership of parts of New Zealand in 1840, the Indigenous Australians did not do so until 1992. Terra nullius was only overturned more than 200 years after the British conquest of Australia, at the Australian Supreme Court in the case Mabo v Queensland:
Mabo v Queensland (No 2) - Wikipedia
