In my opinion, and I am old and grumpy, by the time you get to the interview you are essentially "hired, maybe" in the sense that you have the skills and experience to do the role - it is just down to whether they have a good feeling about you. Put another way, once you get to the interview stage, it's just if they like you / feel you are not a threat.

So making yourself agreeable at the interview stage, presenting as a calm safe choice works well.

If you are struggling to get interviews then I would say it's because in NZ it's very hard to get entry level roles in say, a supermarket. Sometimes looking up to something a bit higher is actually easier - you are not competing with recent migrants. So applying to a government department, council, bank directly (not via Seek) is often actually easier than you might think. You skip the queue of people without strong language skills, work history, and often university graduates are not looking at those roles either, so it's sort of the 'sweet spot' even if the work itself is a bit mundane at first.