Timestamp with vs without time zone.

I am hoping to get some clarification on timestamp with time zone.

My understanding is that timestamp with time zone stores data in UTC
but displays it in your time zone. Does this also work on queries? If
I query between noon and 2:00 PM on some date in time zone XYZ does pg
translate the query to UTC before sending it to the server?

To provide context I have the following situation.

I have a data file to import. All the dates in the time zone
pacific/auckland. My app reads the data , does some processing and
cleaning up and then saves it to the database.

The language I am using creates the time data type with the right time
zone. The processing is being done on a server which is on UTC, the
database server is also on UTC. I am pretty sure the ORM isn't
appending "at time zone pacific/Auckland" to the data when it appends
it to the database.

So does the database know the timestamp is in auckland time when the
client is connecting from a server on UTC?