It's Sydney Airport on a Muggie November night. The arrivals hall is packed.
Could I ask you, actually, what do you know about this family that are arriving?
Not too much, not too much, so I think they keep so many things confidential that this family comes.
Producer Shane Anderson is with a group who have traveled in from Sydney's Northern Beaches. The family they're waiting for has traveled much further.
There are city and family. They were living in an account for ten years and we did foundraising for them before they came here, and we are coming.
Here to I con them.
A little girl holds up a post as she made.
So that's the lot more open to Australia. And that's in their language and those there's some Australian animals. That's in flat and that's the world that that's aheadshot.
As visitors streamed through the gates, they spot a family looking a little lost. Turns out to be a false alarm. When they finally arrive, it's close to midnight. They've been waiting for over three hours. The names are Alan Zabier, Al Muhammad and Narriman Sulfate and Al Yusuf along with their two boys, Muhammed and Mammo, and their daughter Heavy. They are from this moment on permanent residents of Australia and the welcome party have a job to do. Over
the 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. From Schwartz Media, I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM. For decades now, Australia policies towards refugees has been marked by cruelty, detention and punishment. So when CRISP, the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot, started in twenty twenty two, it was seen as a turning point. Based on a model used in Canada.
Under CRISP beats the community rather than the state, who worked as support services for new arrivals assigned to the program. In many ways, CRISP is an experiment. The team behind the pilot had until twenty twenty six to resettle fifteen hundred 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 Shane Anderson on two years of CRISP and whether the experiment is working.
It's Friday August two. Shan, you first met the al Muhammed family two years ago when they arrived in Australia for the first time. Tell me about their journey through CRISP.
Yeah, So the al Muhammed family were the third batch of arrivals under CRISP. And basically to get into the program, you get recommended by the UNHCR and then you get matched with a sponsoring group, which in this case was a sprawling network of volunteers from Sydney's northern beaches. They call themselves the Manly G's after Manly, one of the beachside suburbs. And so the manly Gs go through training and preparation and then they're required to commit to twelve
months of support. They're responsible for putting the family up until they can find a long term place to live, helping to buy essentials until they can get income support from Centerlink. Kind of like anything and everything a new arrival needs to start their new life. So I next saw the family a few months later on jan twenty six, when I was very graciously invited along to a barbecue in Manly, right.
I've met you before, how are you.
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, a pool, and it had a granny flat which was where Narraman, Allen and the kids had been staying.
Okay, so this is barbecue Syrian style, so the Gafts barbecue has been found warm.
A good chunk of the many geese 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's bits out Arabic and vice versa. It had varying degrees of accuracy, which I learned when Narraman and I sat down and tried it out.
This well, that one's Batic.
It's very nice to meet, Thank you us me nasty Vikim excellent okay, So.
There was an obvious language Sparrey, you were speaking through an app the spot that what did you learn about the family?
Yeah, in spite of the language barrier, it was a very warm conversation and I asked her, you know, now she'd arrived in Australia, what her hopes were for her and her kids.
At the manor anyodrosu Ouladi maderes let you kuntu at.
She told me that, you know, she just wanted her kids to study and do well in school and for Alan to find a job. I also learned that Naraman 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, there still was a lot of communication happening. But it was happening through the food.
So Narriman and Alan had prepared a banquet of foods that was enough to feed the twenty plus people that were there, and she went out of her way to make sure I took some home with me. Are you sure sure some of it for.
You food the greatest barrier breaker of all. So it sounds like things were good from their perspective. What about the mainly ges, their sponsors, How are they feeling?
Yeah, So I had a chat to to hear who I met at the airport, and she told me about some of the kind of fun stuff of the first few weeks.
We took them to Christmas Carols at the beach, which was an experience, and they found Santa hilarious.
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.
He's like this big guy in a suit with a white beard, like on stage, yelling at kids like whoa, and they were like, what is going on?
But the other side of crisp is that it's also the sponsor group's responsibility to navigate all of the things that a case worker would normally navigate to help a family settle in. And one of the manly g sponsors, his name's Paul Hobkirk. He explained to me that there were some things that they really struggled with.
Sometimes the bureaucracy just seems just so needlessly complicated you hit these computer says no moments and you just have to work around and figure it out.
And the big challenge for him was simply dealing with Centerlink.
I think none of us had had terribly much interaction with the support services, so that was a journey for us as well.
All of that took a lot of time as well. So Paul estimates that it was about ten to fifteen hours a week that the group was spending helping Narraman and Allen. 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.
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, Yeah, and that is the reality of living in those parts of Sydney. And I didn't actually know this before the barbecue, but Narraman and Allen had already made plans to leave Manly.
Why is that? Was it cost of living pressures, feeling more connected to a community elsewhere? Why did they decide to leave Manly?
Yeah, I mean it was partly the cost of living pressures. But they found a place to live in a suburb in Western Sydney, about an hour's drive away from Manly, and you know, on a surface level, it offered a lot of things to them that Manly didn't, primarily an Arabic and Kurdish speaking community. You know, the kids were in school in the Northern Beaches where they were the only kids in their class who spoke the same first languages as them, And the manly Ges told me that
they'd had trouble finding Hellual meat, for example. So Western Sydney offered those things.
The house that are getting it's so good for the same price as what you probably get like a two bedroom apartment here, So yeah, it kind of makes sense.
The manly Ges 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, be like and 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 like Arabic community around them who will probably take over those roles anyway.
But yeah, So after.
Everyone had eaten, they all gathered around to take a group photo.
I need you're in a bit closer.
And while all of that was happening at the individual level with the ol Muhammad family and the Manly Gees, as the CRISP trial progressed, there were obstacles starting to emerge at the political level too.
Just so, what are the obstacles to the CRISP trial success. That's after the break, Shane, it'sween twos of CRISP. We're about halfway through the pilot. How's it going? Is it working well?
We actually do have a bit of data on how CRISP was doing. The University of Queensland were funded to study the outcomes for people in CRISP. So while CHRISP 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 twenty twenty one, 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 CRISP itself, but the government decision surrounding it, and they question whether CRISP is a cost shifting activity.
Is I I'm Lisa Button, I'm the CEO of Community refugee sponsorship Australia. So when I spoke to Lisa Button, who runs CRISP, I asked her about this. You know, it is very easy to be cynical about things, but I would remind people that the Avin Easy government did lift the refugee intake from thirteen thousand, seven fifty to twenty thousand places last year, so we're not seeing a retreat in government commitment to refugees. We've actually seen government government's putting more in as well.
Lisa said that they still aspire for CRISP to be additional and this matches Labour's own promises. But if we fast forward the clock, it's been two years and this still hasn't happened. The next big question is around whether CRISP can reach their goals. I mean, currently the pilot is funded to mid twenty twenty six and they have this goal of resettling fifteen hundred refugees. At the moment, we're halfway through the pilot and they say around five
hundred 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 opposite the then Minister of Immigration attended alongside CRISP refugees, and if you zoom out and look at the hardline policies like Operation Sovereign Borders and offshot Attention 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.
I like to think that in the longer term, programs like the CRISP will take some of that toxicity out of debates around refugee numbers and have refugees seen and understood as not a burden but in fact a huge asset to Australia.
So the family is now established in Western Sydney. How are they going? Are they still in touch with the manly ges?
Yeah? So I visited them a few weeks ago in July, and they've been living in Western Sydney for nearly a year and a half at that point. When I visited, Norman pulled out this huge laptop bag that was filled with folders and forms.
Can you tell me what's in here?
This bag all that for Australia?
Good much.
Much email? Too much message.
Basically, this bag comprised of their administrative life in Australia to that point, and it was a heavy bag.
Sorry, it's okay.
You can go to the GP and get them to fill okay, and then if you email that to me.
I visited that day along with one of the mainly g's. Her name is Beck and she still dropped by regularly, and this time she'd come over to help with some medical paperwork.
Yes, so if you not that one for me.
But not all the mainly g's were able to make the journey out. The requirements of crisps say that the sponsor group has to help for twelve months. At this point, we were out twenty months since their arrival, so it's pretty incredible to see that they were still in contact and still helping. Norman'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 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 favorite subject was, and he said it was English.
So what did Merriman and Alan have to say about their experiences of the Crisp overall.
Really positive things?
You know?
She said that when you come to a new country, it's really hard. She described it as you have eyes, but you can't see.
When you come new country, it's very hard, very bad, very sad. No family, no language, not anything. I have eyes, but I don't see.
She really felt that CRISP gave her an immediate sense of belonging in friendship that she just wouldn't have had otherwise. Narriman 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 waiting 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 Norraman's living room and you're looking around at 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 ask Narraman why she thinks the manly ges go out of their way to help her.
Because good, because the nice people, because the heart very clean.
She reached across the table and held Beck's hand and they both began to tear up. It was a very emotional moment.
Thank you.
And Norman told me that, you know, in spite of their choices to leave, they they did love Manly.
I love money, I love I love, I love every day.
I'm so which She said that whenever she is driving around in a car and she catches the scent of the ocean air, she thinks about Manly.
I hope every refugees coming to Australia is monadistic.
Shane, thanks for your time.
Thank you.
Read more of this report in tomorrow's edition of the Saturday Paper. Also in the news today, Foreign Minister Pennywong has issued a video message urging Austrains in Lebanon to leave immediately following the killing of a top Hesbala commander in the country. Fair intentions could escalate between Israel and Hesbella and Alexis Wright has won the sixty thousand dollar Miles Franklin Award for her novel Praiseworthy. This is the second time Wright has won the award after a two
thousand and six novel. Carpenteria also took out the prize. You can hear Alexus right on a special edition I'd read this out today. Seven Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. If you like what you hear, we will love you to share it with a friend. Seven Am is hosted by Ruby Jones and me Daniel James. It's produced by Shane Anderson, Sultan Fecho, and Zaia Artangral. Our senior producer is Chris Dangate. Our technical producer is Adigus Bastow. Sarah mv is a head
of audio. Eric Jensen is our editor in chief. Mixing by Travis Evans, Adigus Bastow and Zultan Facho. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio. I'm Daniel James. This is seven Am. See you next week.