Longitude correction to match actual - / + values?

Every few years I get really confused when I look at my Lat/Long settings in WD and I have a momentary panic attack that I have had the longitude set incorrectly because WD requires longitudes East of GMT to be entered as a negative value. However, this seems to contradict actual GPS data. Being based in the Auckland area, normal GPS notation would have me at -36 latitude (which is how it is inputted and displayed in WD config) and 175 long (a positive value whereas WD requires this to be entered as -175).

I suspect there is a reason within the programming logic that Longitudes east of GMT are reported as a negative value (or the risk of changing this requires everyone to manually adjust their WD config if this is updated). However, it is quite confusing and contradicts actual lat/long gps notation?