The warm sound of Swahili gospel songs fills the air in the small church hall.
Worshippers sway in the pews. A woman dancing spills into the aisle. A trio of women at the front harmonise: “Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.”
It is just past midday at the Armidale District Baptist church’s weekly Sunday service for the regional New South Wales city’s growing Congolese community.
Fernand Numbi, a community leader, beams as he claps his hands at the front of the hall.
“Higher, higher, higher,” he chants at about 30 worshippers.
“Higher,” the congregation responds in unison.
Numbi and his wife, Anne, were the first Congolese family to settle in Armidale in February last year under the Australian government’s refugee resettlement program.
As the pair began rebuilding their lives in the NSW high country, an intensifying debate on Australia’s political right over multiculturalism and social cohesion emerged.
Last December, the area’s federal MP, Barnaby Joyce, defected from the Nationals to One Nation, saying he was “philosophically aligned” with the rightwing party.
On a national level, One Nation is pushing a vision of a “monocultural” Australia alongside an anti-immigration agenda. But in the electorate of the party’s most high-profile recruit, a different story is playing out.
Refugees tell Guardian Australia about arriving in Armidale and being embraced by the local community. Years after arriving, many refugees are buying their first homes, putting down roots and choosing to call Armidale home. There are the bonds that are forged over shared meals and weekend football matches.
Stories of community goodwill – the plot of land on the outskirts of the city, donated by local Rotary Club member Bruce McCarthy for the Yazidi community to grow vegetables – are easy to come by.
‘We have a good relationship with Barnaby’
Nine years ago, as deputy prime minister and Nationals MP for New England, Joyce was instrumental in supporting a resident-backed campaign for Armidale to be a site for resettling refugees, spruiking its benefits for reducing regional skills shortages.
Yazidis – an ethnoreligious minority targeted by Islamic State’s genocide campaign in northern Iraq in 2014 – were the first cohort of refugees to begin arriving in 2018 after the city became a designated refugee resettlement site. Many spoke no English when they landed in Armidale, community members tell Guardian Australia.
Joyce’s newly adopted party advocates limiting incoming migration to Australia to those who can speak English. One Nation’s website states the party’s policy is: “If you do not speak English, under no circumstances should you be able to settle in Australia”.
Speaking to the Guardian in Armidale last week, Joyce suggests there could be an exemption for refugees under a One Nation government because they are a different cohort than “general immigration”.
Asked whether the English-requirement policy would apply to refugees, the New England MP says there needs to be “a form of temperance” for people whose lives are under threat.
“I don’t think that anybody’s suggesting that if your house is completely burning down we’re going to lock the doors and keep you in there,” he says.
A spokesperson for One Nation’s leader, Pauline Hanson, did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia about Joyce’s comments.
Salam Qaro, a Yazidi refugee who spoke no English when he arrived in Armidale in 2019, says he hopes refugees would be exempt from the policy should One Nation succeed in having it implemented.
“If they want to include Yazidis under that policy it’s going to be very hard,” he says.
“We have a good relationship with Barnaby and hopefully through him they can do some exemptions.”
Hanson has also said a One Nation government would ban immigration from “radical Islamic countries”, but Joyce says the blacklist wouldn’t necessarily apply to entire countries.
Joyce also says he had “no problem” with the current number of refugees continuing to settle in his electorate but added that the area needed “real jobs”, pointing to the empty shopfronts in the city.
“Ultimately what I want for the Yazidis is to have their own businesses,” he says. He notes that as Yazidi children had enrolled in schools the community had come ahead “in leaps and bounds”, but the older generation had typically found employment in lower-skilled jobs.
When asked whether there is a gap between One Nation’s policies on multiculturalism and the success of the refugee program in Armidale, Joyce – who has repeatedly declared he doesn’t “believe in multiculturalism” but rather “an Australian culture” that has “guardrails” – says: “Armidale is made up of people who’ve come from a whole range of cultures, a whole range of ethnicities and a whole range of religions.
“But I stick to it, that you’ve got to – once you’re in Australia – you’ve got to work within guardrails.”
Joyce, one of Australia’s most recognisable politicians, has represented New England since 2013. He retained the seat for the Nationals at the last election with a 17.6% margin. The One Nation candidate won 9.96% of first preference votes.
But Joyce’s defection to One Nation last year has flown under the radar for some locals.
On the sidelines of Armidale’s Doody Park, Catie Smith and Laura Jones are cheering on the East Armidale United football club during a Saturday afternoon football match. The pair were unaware their local member Joyce was now a One Nation MP. Smith, 35, says it is “heartbreaking” to hear about the party’s position on multiculturalism and vision for a “monocultural” country. She says the community has overall been “welcoming and accepting” of its new arrivals, learning about Yazidi and Congolese culture.
When Guardian Australia approached another group at the match, a man cheered when Joyce’s move to One Nation was mentioned but declined to speak.
‘Home forever’
On a gumtree-lined cul-de-sac in Armidale, 21-year-old Zina Almuhama and her older sister bought their first home this year.
When Almuhama arrived in the city as a 14-year-old, the only words she knew in English were “yes” and “no”. An intensive English course and enrolment in a local high school followed. Last year, she began working at a local childcare centre and was granted her Australian citizenship.
“From the first day we came, I still feel very welcome,” she says.
“The people, the culture and the safety of the country that make me want to stay here. This is the home forever.”
Her dream, she says, is to become a primary school teacher.
When Almuhama and her family moved into their new home in March, they cooked a Yazidi festive meal of rice and lamb and dropped off containers to their elderly neighbours.
Food is woven into the connections that have been formed between the long-term Armidale locals and the Yazidi community. Everywhere you turn, locals remark about the Yazidi flatbreads that are passed over back yard fences.
Tim Gray from Settlement Service International – the organisation contracted to help refugees adjust to life in Armidale – recalls when Yazidis first arrived in Armidale there was a “whole lot of talk about flatbread”.
“I know that sounds silly, but that was the Yazidis’ connection first,” he says.
“There was a lot of connections developed without any language initially.”
He says the community support for refugees in Armidale – a university town that has long had an international student community – has endured since the government program began. Since 2018, more than 1,200 refugees have resettled in Armidale, according to SSI. Last year, refugees from the African Great Lakes made up 75% of new arrivals.
Armidale’s new Congolese residents have rebuilt their lives after fleeing the decades-long conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Many have spent at least a decade in refugee camps in countries like Uganda and Zimbabwe. In their new home, they have found jobs in employment agencies, the local racecourse and agriculture.
While polling data suggests Australia is undergoing a historic decline in support for multiculturalism, refugees in Armidale describe the practical challenges of rebuilding their lives as their most pressing concerns. Public transport is limited, learning to drive takes time, the job market is smaller than in capital cities and they speak about missing traditional foods from home that are not available in Armidale.
After more than a decade living in limbo in refugee camps, some refugees shrug off experiences of discrimination.
Numbi, who is undertaking a traineeship at the Baptist church, fled the DRC and spent 13 years in Zimbabwe as a refugee before arriving in Australia. He recounts an experience after arriving in Armidale of a group of men yelling “you black African” to him. “I feel like my heart was … burning,” he says.
But the encounter has not been representative of his time in Armidale. He describes Armidale as a community that has embraced its multicultural makeup. Last month, during DRC Independence Day celebrations in Armidale, a group of locals joined the Congolese community as they danced to rumba music, Numbi recalls.
“We feel like we are very free in Australia.”
Numbi and his wife are expecting a child and plan to stay in Armidale.
Numbi’s friend William Simba has lived in Armidale for 17 years and has seen the Congolese community expand in the past 18 months. He says opposition to the city’s multiculturalism is a minority view.
“When it comes to politics, people bring their agenda just to get elected … But I think in general, Australia is a multicultural country and that gives the strength of this country.”
