Residents will tell you Ōtara gets an unfair rap in the media. The suburb they’re proud of is a cultural capital, a stronghold of religious faith and a place of untapped potential.

Mormons and Muslims are giving away their scriptures within a few steps of each other. Followers of the Chinese spiritual practice Falun Gong have occupied the town centre with their tai chi-like movements, while an evangelist in a fluorescent rain suit preaches the gospel through a PA system in the car park.

Ōtara’s flea market is a tour of multicultural Auckland, a marketplace for vegetables and clothes and the world’s religions. There is Pacific fare and a growing Eastern presence, with around half of the stalls now Asian-owned.

The market isn't just a soap box for politicians, but the world's religions. A Muslim man gives out free Korans. The market isn't just a soap box for politicians, but the world's religions. A Muslim man gives out free Korans.

A Chinese family from Mt Roskill unloads beans, ginger and eggplant out of their big red van; a Cook Islands Māori lady from Epsom shows off her array of 'ei katu (flower crowns) and coconut oils.

The market is widely-known as a place to mingle and buy cheap veggies - or if you live outside Auckland, as a well-worn destination for politicians on the campaign trail. A visit to the Ōtara market is almost a rite of passage for future leaders: Helen Clark in 1997; John Key in 2008; Jacinda Ardern in 2017.

A visit to the Ōtara market is almost a rite of passage for future leaders. Labour leader Helen Clark wanders the flea market in April, 1997 - two years before she became prime minister. A visit to the Ōtara market is almost a rite of passage for future leaders. Labour leader Helen Clark wanders the flea market in April, 1997 - two years before she became prime minister.

Political analyst Bryce Edwards says the event is a crucial "home ground" for the Labour Party; a meeting place of low-income voters the party has historically appealed to. For decades, there was an expectation that Labour candidates, MPs and leaders would have a physical presence at the market.

But the flea market is even more valuable to politicians on the right, Edwards says, because it's such a good opportunity for them to be shown on TV or in the newspaper mixing with the masses.

A big part of modern campaigning is based not just on pitching your message to individuals at places like the market, but being seen to be doing so.

Ōtara's market is a tour of multicultural Auckland. Ōtara's market is a tour of multicultural Auckland.

"For people like John Key, attending events like the Ōtara market was a very strong indicator to the rest of New Zealand that he was capable of mixing with people very different from himself.

If he didn't convey this sort of readiness to walk amongst poor people, then he might very well have been viewed simply as the Epsom resident worth $55 million.

Lotu Fuli's family don't lock the front door to their home, and haven't for years. Fuli often doesn't lock her car, either, when she parks at the town centre to duck into the shops.

As crime in Ōtara has fallen, Fuli says, the public perception of the place has struggled to catch up. It's actually when she visits other areas like West Auckland that she feels unsafe, because she doesn't know the people out there.

At her office in Manukau's civic building, the chairwoman of the Ōtara-Papatoetoe local board says her hometown still hasn't lived down its reputation following the machete murder 30 years ago.

She says it’s now a place where you're more likely to run into churchgoers and youth groups than gang members. For better or worse, Ōtara is one of the country’s most Christian suburbs, second only, perhaps, to Māngere.

The Ōtara Pacific Island Church is a meeting place for several different Pacific cultures. The Ōtara Pacific Island Church is a meeting place for several different Pacific cultures.

Every Sunday, the doors of the Ōtara Pacific Island Church (PIC) fill with elderly women wearing bold and colorful hats.

They arrive slowly, dressed in bright puletasi (dresses), some assisted by a crutch or younger relative. In the pews they form a canopy of flowers, ribbons, satin and flax.

The minister, standing at the podium in his finery, prays that the parish be kept safe, paying homage to its migrant roots: “We feel the cold so much. And sometimes we dreaded staying in this country; wanting to go home to our island nations, where the weather is so kind and warm.”

This is the first of the day’s rolling services in several different languages: English, Samoan, Cook Islands Māori and Niuean.

Missionaries converted many Pacific Islanders to Christianity in the 19th century. On arrival in New Zealand, migrants lost the close village bonds they were brought up with, and churches became their surrogate villages.

Fepulea’i Margie Apa says church was a focal point of daily life for her parents. Now she’s passing on the tradition to her daughter.

Apa is the chief executive of Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB), but moonlights as a Sunday school teacher for the PIC.

Faapaia Wilson (left) at church with her granddaughter and great granddaughter. Faapaia Wilson (left) at church with her granddaughter and great granddaughter.

She says for her parents’ generation, the church was an unofficial immigration and advocacy service, helping them to unravel the complexities of their new life.

For Pacific people and particularly as a migrant community, it's been a source of social support for each other, and a way of adjusting to a different way of living.

It’s also a meeting place for different Pacific cultures that don’t necessarily mix outside worship. Everything Margie knows about Niuean and Cook Island cultural practices, she learnt at PIC.

Her daughter Sapati Apa, 20, is also here every Sunday, and sings in the church band.

Sapati, whose name comes from the Samoan word for “sabbath,” says she grew up with the other young people in church. Her mother strongly encourages her to attend, but she’s happy to do so because it feels like a family.

"There's a lot of support we have here that we might not necessarily have in school or in our workplaces.”

On Sundays, the church hosts services in English, Samoan, Cook Islands Māori and Niuean. On Sundays, the church hosts services in English, Samoan, Cook Islands Māori and Niuean.

There are generational differences. The church hats worn by the older ladies come from a New Testament concept of head coverings that hasn’t caught on with the young women.

Sapati’s band is also a relatively new development, as the congregation becomes more inclusive of young people.

Ōtara-Papatoetoe local board chair Lotu Fuli says in Ōtara, you're more likely to run into churchgoers than gang members.

When Fuli's family migrated to New Zealand from Samoa in the 1970s, they started off living in Mt Eden.

Her father had been a school principal, and her mother a teacher; in New Zealand they were factory workers and cleaners.

Fuli's mother would eventually become a New Zealand educator, but her father continued working in factories, sometimes holding down four jobs at a time.

As more houses went up in Ōtara, the suburb offered what looked like a great deal.

"Of course now that land in the city is worth millions," Fuli says. "We look at our old house in Mt Eden and that's a $3 million mansion now."

Back then, Auckland’s housing market wasn’t prohibitively expensive like it is today. You could work a couple of factory jobs and a cleaning job and still afford to buy a house. In 1976, the Fulis moved into what remains their family home in Ōtara.

Fuli’s father would come home from one job, have a meal, then jump on his 10-speed and pedal out to Fisher & Paykel in East Tāmaki.

By the early 2000s, Fuli had a good life working as an English teacher in Japan and South Korea. But she decided to stay and make a difference in her own country during a visit in 2010.

She had always seen Manukau as a bit of a thriving area, but she noticed empty car yards as she drove home from the airport.

Companies like Fisher & Paykel, which had been a cornerstone of her community growing up, were in dire straits. The appliances factory eventually closed in 2016. Nestle's recent decision to move confectionery manufacturing from Wiri to Levin is predicted to be another blow.

Earlier this year, Ōtara-Papatoetoe was ranked the most deprived part of Auckland in an ATEED prosperity index, given just 0.7 out of 10. That’s compared with Ōrākei at 9.8. Income levels in Ōtara were 22 per cent below the Auckland average.

Stella Muller, who runs a south Auckland-based creative marketing agency called Bright Sunday, says Ōtara is a cultural capital of the Pacific.

But one resident says the prosperity stats don’t tell the full story: that of a new generation of entrepreneurs with distinctly Pacific and Māori ways of doing business.

The second floor of a commercial building in Ōtahuhu hosts an open-plan office that looks down on punters waiting for a tavern to open; in it, Stella Muller runs a creative marketing agency called Bright Sunday.

Muller has five employees, and a network of dozens of Māori and Pacific contractors. She’s proud that the agency is south Auckland-based, and that people in the city - everyone from bureaucrats to filmmakers - are turning to Bright Sunday for their campaigns.

While it's true that a lot of the agency’s work is communicating to a Māori or Pacific audience, Stella says her mission is about more than that.

I think our ideas are the untapped creativity that can give New Zealand an edge.

The 42-year-old says there’s a creative and economic explosion happening in south Auckland that’s gone relatively unnoticed.

For example, Ōtara residents Swannie and Terry Nelson last year developed the country's first phone app to help people pass their driver's licence tests. Ōtara-bred stylist Nora Swann, meanwhile, founded the Pacific Fusion Fashion Show.

"There's lots of enterprising stories that we know, but I think the biggest challenge we have is the visibility of our stories."

Muller lives in her parents' family home of almost 50 years in Ōtara, along with a couple of sisters, her Tongan husband and their six children.

She jokes that she was working in communications long before she got her degree at Manukau Institute of Technology. At the age of six, she was a translator for her parents and their bank teller.

When Muller was adopted within her extended family, she was the afakasi, or half-Pālangi child. Her parents thought she had "magical Pālangi powers," and took her to all their appointments.

It was "all or nothing" when her parents came to New Zealand hoping to provide a better education for their children. They did the hard yards so Muller and her siblings could reap the benefits. She reckons there’s much to be learnt from that kind of pioneering spirit.

Muller goes to a different, more liberal church than her parents. She tithes (gives a portion of her income to the church) and supports her parents to tithe at their church as well.

Critics have accused Pacific churches of draining the incomes of their worshippers. Muller says that’s a misunderstanding. It's only through tithing, she argues, that churches have been able to provide such high levels of pastoral care to migrants.

Our churches were the new villages - the social structure that supported our communities to get by, in times when there were no services for us.

Muller's father had only a primary school education, and worked in factories on arrival in New Zealand. Then he decided he wanted to be a businessman. In a move unusual among his peers, he used his life savings to buy a pool hall in Ōtara.

Stella Muller runs Bright Sunday, a creative marketing agency based in south Auckland. Stella Muller runs Bright Sunday, a creative marketing agency based in south Auckland.

That was where Stella's entrepreneurial journey started. At the age of 16, she was helping her father run the pool hall; dealing with the council and the IRD and balancing the books.

Ōtara has remained a major portal for immigrants, and a testing ground for all their hopes and ambitions. Pacific people were once the newcomers in a majority Pālangi neighbourhood; now Asians are the new arrivals.

Muller thinks the suburb will remain a Pacific stronghold and a “capital of Polynesia”.

"Ōtara is going to be a place of increasing diversity, just as it was for my parents when it was predominantly Pākehā,” she says.

There are things Ōtara is missing out on. It would be a victory for residents to buy back the rundown shop fronts, so they can have more control over the town centre’s appearance and stem the overabundance of fried food.

In the meantime, Muller says, there’s a new generation of Māori and Pacific leaders in the wings, who have grown up in the suburb and want better for it.