DANIEL:

It’s Sydney airport on a muggy November night. The Arrivals hall is packed.

Audio excerpt – Cheyne Anderson:

“Could I ask you actually what do you know about this family that are arriving?”

Audio excerpt – Racha:

“Not too much, not too much. I think they keep so many things confidential until the family comes.”

DANIEL:

Producer Cheyne Anderson is with a group who have travelled in from Sydney’s northern beaches. The family they’re waiting for have travelled much further.

Audio excerpt – Racha:

“They are Syrian family. They were living in a in a camp for ten years and we did fundraising for them before they came here and we are coming here to welcome them.”

DANIEL:

A little girl holds up a poster she made.

Audio excerpt – Lulu:

“So that’s the normal welcome to Australia and that’s in their language, those are some Australian animals, that’s a platypus, that’s a wombat, that’s a hedgehog.”

DANIEL:

As visitors stream through the gates, they spot a family looking a little lost.

Audio excerpt – Bec:

“Yes! That’s them!”

Audio excerpt – Lulu:

“They’re here! They’re here!”

Audio excerpt – Bec:

“Hi!”

DANIEL:

Turns out this is a false alarm.

When they finally arrive, it’s close to midnight. They’ve been waiting for over three hours.

Their names are Alan Zubeir Almohammad and Nariman Saifaddin Alyousif, and along with their two boys Muhammad and Mammo, and their daughter Hevi, they are from this moment on - permanent residents of Australia.

And the welcome party has a job to do. Over their next twelve months, these volunteers are tasked with helping the family find their feet as they settle into their new world.

That was nearly two years ago.

[Theme Music Starts]

DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James, this is 7am.

For decades now, Australia’s policies towards refugees have been marked by cruelty, detention and punishment.

So when CRISP - The Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot - started in 2022, it was seen as a turning point.

Based on a model used in Canada, under CRISP it’s the community, rather than the state, who act as support services for new arrivals assigned to the program.

In many ways, CRISP is an experiment. The team behind the pilot have until 2026 to resettle 1500 refugees. And in doing so, they’re out to prove that Australia wants, and can support, a more humane approach to settlement than our politics suggest.

Today, Producer Cheyne Anderson on two years of CRISP, and whether the experiment is working.

Its Friday, August 2.

[Theme Music Ends]

DANIEL:

Cheyne, you first met Almohammad family two years ago when they arrived in Australia for the first time. Tell me a bit about their journey through CRISP.

Cheyne:

Yeah. So the Almohammad family were the third batch of arrivals under CRISP. And Basically to get into the programme, you get recommended by the UNHCR and then you get matched with a sponsoring group, which was in this case a sprawling network of volunteers from Sydney’s northern beaches, they called themselves The Manlygees. After the Manly, one of the big northern suburbs.

So the Manlygees go through training and preparation, and then they’re required to commit to 12 months of support. They’re responsible for putting them up until they can find a long term place to live, and helping to buy essentials until they can get income support through Centrelink. Kind of like everything a new arrival needs to start their new life.

So I next saw the family a few months later on Jan 26 when I was very graciously invited along to a barbecue in Manly.

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“Hello!”

Audio excerpt – Cheyne Anderson:

“Hi! I’ve met you before.”

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“Yes you have.”

Cheyne:

I was really curious to see how the family was settling in. But at the same time, CRISP is about more than settling. It's also about integration. So I was keen to see for myself what that actually means and what it looks like.

So I went along to the barbecue. It was in a house owned by a young family. It had a big backyard pool, and it had a granny flat, which was where Nariman, Alan and the kids had been staying.

Audio excerpt – Paul:

“So this is a barbecue Syrian style. So the gas bqq has been found wanting.”

Cheyne:

So a good chunk of the Manlygees were at this barbecue. But I also noticed that outside of the family there weren't any Arabic or Kurdish speakers there. They were talking to each other through this app where you speak in English, and it spits out Arabic and vice versa. it had varying degrees of accuracy, which I learnt when Nariman and I sat down and tried it out.

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“Speak?”

Audio excerpt – Cheyne Anderson:

“It’s very nice to meet you.”

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“Ah sorry it’s nice to meet you.”

DANIEL:

So there was an obvious language barrier. You were speaking through an app? Despite that. What did you learn about the family?

Cheyne:

Yeah, in spite of the language barrier, it was a very warm conversation, and I asked her, you know now she arrived into Australia, what her hopes for, for her and her kids…

Audio excerpt – Nariman speaks Arabic

Cheyne:

She told me that she just wanted her kids to study in school and for Alan to find a job. I also learned that Nariman herself is a teacher. And that one of her big goals in Australia was that she really wanted to improve her English so that she could get her teaching qualification here and become a teacher again.

So even though conversation was a little bit stilted, it was still a lot of communication happening, but it’s happening through food. So Nariman and Alan had prepared a banquet of food that was enough to feed the 20 plus people that were there. And she went out of her way to make sure I took some home with me.

Audio excerpt – Nariman speaks Arabic

Audio excerpt – Cheyne Anderson:

“Are you sure? Are you sure?”

Audio excerpt – Nariman speaks Arabic

“Yes, yes.”

Audio excerpt – Cheyne Anderson:

“I can’t say no that that.”

DANIEL:

Food. The greatest barrier breaker of all. So it sounds like things were good from their perspective. What about the Manlygees, their sponsors? How are they feeling?

Cheyne:

Yeah. So I had a chat with Tahirih who I met at the airport, and she told me about some of the kind of fun stuff of the first few weeks.

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“We took them to Christmas carols at the beach, which was an experience. And I found Santa hilarious.”

Cheyne:

She told me what it was like for her to watch the kids witness Santa Claus for the first time, which I imagine would be quite a trip.

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“There's, like, this big guy in a suit with a white beard, like on stage yelling at kids like woo! And they're like, what is going on.”

Cheyne:

But the other side of crisp is that it's also the sponsor group's responsibility to navigate all of the things that a caseworker would normally navigate to help a family settle in. And one of the Manlygees Sponsors, his name's Paul Hobkirk. He explained to me that there were some things that they really struggled with.

Audio excerpt – Paul:

“Sometimes the bureaucracy just seems so needlessly complicated. You hit these computer says no moments, and you just have to, you know, work around them and figure it out.”

Cheyne:

The big challenge for him was simply dealing with Centrelink.

Audio excerpt – Paul:

“None of us had had terribly much interaction with the support services. And so that was a journey for us as well.”

Cheyne:

And all of that took a lot of time as well. So Paul estimates that it was about 10 to 15 hours a week that the group was spending helping Nariman and Alan. And of course, especially in an area like Manly, another advantage of that is you get access to a wide network in one of the more affluent areas of Sydney. So they were able to get a lot of stuff donated for free, the granny flat, all the furniture in it. They had pro-bono dental. They even had a car gifted by an extended supporter.

DANIEL:

So they're getting a tremendous amount of support. They tapped into some really well connected networks. They’re living in a wealthy community. But on the other hand, that's an expensive community as well, right?

Cheyne:

Yeah. And that is the reality of living in those parts of Sydney. And I didn't actually know this before the barbecue, but Nariman and Allen had already made plans to leave Manly.

DANIEL:

Why is that? Was it the cost of living pressures, feeling more connected to a community elsewhere? Why did they decide to leave Manly?

Cheyne:

Yeah. I mean, it was partly the cost of living pressures, but they'd found a place to live in a suburb in western Sydney, about an hour's drive away from Manly, and on a surface level it offered a lot of things to them that Manly didn’t, primarily an Arabic and Kurdish speaking community. The kids were in school in the northern beaches where they are the only kids in their class who spoke the same first languages as them and the Manlygees told me they had trouble finding halal meat for example. So Western Sydney offered those things.

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“The house that they’re getting is so good for the same price that you probably get a 2 bed apartment here so yeah it kinda makes sense.”

Cheyne:

The manly gees were really supportive of the move and they were really excited. They were really stoked to see how independent and empowered the family felt to make these decisions for themselves so early. But there was a little undercurrent of other emotions as well.

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“I think it's going to completely change the dynamic because we won’t be able to see them as much and help them as much but they’re going to have a much stronger Arabic community around them who will probably take over those roles anyway.”

Cheyne:

So after everyone had eaten, they gathered around to take a big group photo

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“Squeeze in!”

Cheyne:

And while all of that was happening, at the individual level with the Almohammad family and the Manlygees, as the CRISP trial progressed there were obstacles starting to emerge at the political level too.

Audio excerpt – Tahirih:

“Thank you very much.”

DANIEL:

So what are those obstacles to the CRISP trial’s success - That’s after the break.

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DANIEL:

Cheyne, It's been two years of CRISP. We're about halfway through the pilot. How's it going? Is it working?

Cheyne:

Well, we actually do have a bit of data on how CRISP is doing. The University of Queensland were funded to study the outcomes for people in CRISP. So, while CRISP participants hit all the same milestones as people settled by the state, there's a little bit of data emerging to show that, you know, they find work a little bit faster, and they generally have a stronger sense of belonging and community participation.

But I do think there are some interesting questions around the way CRISP was designed, I spoke to refugee policy experts and advocates, and I found that while everyone was really supportive of CRISP and the ideas driving it and really kind of any refugee policy that treats people as humans, some advocates also felt a bit ambivalent.

And the reason for that is, something called additionality, which if you look at the model for community sponsorship overseas, every person who is settled by the community is an addition to the government's own humanitarian quota.

However, when the Morrison government adopted the program back in in 2021, they decided to change this. So basically, for every person the community settles, it's one less that the government has to. And so as a result, experts are cynical, not so much about CRSIP itself, but the government decisions surrounding it. And they question whether CRISP is a cost shifting activity

Audio excerpt – Lisa Button:

“Hi, I'm Lisa Button, I'm the CEO of Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia.”

Cheyne:

So when I spoke to Lisa Button which Runs CRISP. I asked her about this.

Audio excerpt – Lisa Button:

“You know, it is very easy to be cynical about things, but I would remind people that the Albanese government did lift the refugee intake from 13,750 to 20,000 places last year. So we're not seeing a retreat in government commitment to refugees. We've actually seen government, governments putting more in as well.”

Cheyne:

Lisa said that they still aspire for crisp to be additional, and this matches Labor's own promises. But if we fast forward the clock, it's been two years and this still hasn't happened.

And the next big question is around whether CRISP can reach their goals. I mean, currently the pilot is funded to mid 2026, and they have this goal of resettling 1500 refugees. At the moment. We're halfway through the pilot and they say around 500 refugees have been settled.

So the reality is that they need a lot more sponsor groups to volunteer for the program, but then you can see how things like cost of living might get in the way of that.

When you combine these criticisms and you look at the photo ops at the then Minister for Immigration attended alongside CRISP refugees, and if you zoom out and look at the hardline policies like Operation Sovereign Borders and offshore detention that are still being pursued by Labor. I think it's fair to question where CRISP sits in that whole landscape.

But there is a whole other way of looking at CRISP, which Lisa Button explained to me

Audio excerpt – Lisa Button:

“I like to think that in the longer term, programs like the CRISP will take some of that toxicity out of the debates around refugee numbers. And have refugees seen and understood as, not, a burden, but in fact a huge asset to Australia.”

DANIEL:

So the family is now established in western Sydney. How are they going? Are they still in contact with the Manlygees?

Cheyne:

Yeah. So I visited them a few weeks ago in July. And they'd been living in western Sydney for nearly a year and half at that point.

When I visited, Nariman pulled out this huge laptop bag that was filled with folders and forms.

Audio excerpt – Cheyne Anderson:

“Can you tell me what's in here?”

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“This bag is all the paper for Australia. Too much paper. Too much, too much email. Too much message.”

Cheyne:

Basically this bag that comprised of their administrative life in Australia to that point. And it was a heavy bag.

I visited that day along with one of the Manlygees. Her name is Bec, and she still dropped by regularly, and this time she'd come over to help with some medical paperwork.

But not all the Manlygees made it out. The requirements of CRISP say that the sponsor group has to help for 12 months. At this point, we're at 20 months since their arrival. So, it's pretty incredible to see that they were still in contact and still helping. Nariman's English had improved a lot. Although she wasn't quite ready to do her qualifications yet. But you could see that all the kids had picked up the language really fast. Their eldest son was preparing to do his school certificate exams in English. And I asked him what his favourite subject was, and, and he said it was English.

DANIEL:

So what did Nariman and Alan have to say about their experiences with CRISP overall?

Cheyne:

Really positive things. You know, she said that, when you come to a new country, it's it's really hard. She described it as you have eyes, but you can't see.

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“When you come to new country. It's very hard. Very bad. Very sad. No family, no language. Not anything. I have eyes, but I don't see.”

Cheyne:

And she really felt that CRISP gave her an immediate sense of belonging and friendship that she just wouldn't have had otherwise. Nariman told me about when one of them intervened, when one of their kids was having an issue at school and actually called the school and advocated on their behalf. Also, when one of them had to go to hospital with ear pain, one of the sponsors sat with her in the writing room all day. I mean, those are the kinds of things that you don't forget.

I point out as well that when you're sitting in Nariman's living room and you're looking around the house and the life that they've built for each other, I have to admit, a lot of your cynicism does start to kind of melt away. When I asked Nariman why she thinks the Manlygees go out of their way to help her.

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“Because. Good. Because the nice people. Because the heart. Very clean.”

Cheyne:

She reached across the table and held Bec's hand, and they both began to tear up. It was a very emotional moment.

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“Thank you!”

Cheyne:

And Nariman told me that, you know, in spite of their choices to leave, they they did love Manly.

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“I love Manly, I love, I love.”

Cheyne:

She said that whenever she is driving around in a car and she catches the scent of the ocean air, she thinks about Manly.

Audio excerpt – Nariman:

“I hope every refugee come in Australia, Manlygees take.”

DANIEL:

Chenye, thanks for your time.

Cheyne:

Thank you.

DANIEL:

Read more of this report in tomorrow’s edition of The Saturday Paper.

[Theme Music Starts]

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Also in the news today,

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has issued a video message urging Australians in Lebanon to leave immediately, following the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in the country… fearing tensions could escalate between Israel and Hezbollah.

And

Alexis Wright has won the $60,000 Miles Franklin award for her novel Praiseworthy.

This is the second time Wright has won the award, after her 2006 novel Carpenteria also took out the prize.

You can hear Alexis Wright on a special edition of Read This, out today.

7am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. If you like what you hear, we would love you to share it with a friend.

7am is hosted by Ruby Jones and me, Daniel James.

It’s produced by Cheyne Anderson, Zoltan Fecso, and Zaya Altangerel.

Our senior producer is Chris Dengate. Our technical producer is Atticus Bastow.

Sarah McVeigh is our head of audio. Erik Jensen is our editor-in-chief.

Mixing by Travis Evans, Atticus Bastow, and Zoltan Fecso.

Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio.

I’m Daniel James, this is 7am. See you next week.

[Theme Music Ends]