Barnaby Joyce suggests One Nation could welcome some refugees while barring other migrants

As a member of One Nation, Barnaby Joyce told Guardian Australia’s reporter Adeshola Ore in an interview that there ‘has to be a form of temperance with people who are in imminent threat of their lives … I don’t think anyone is suggesting that if your house is completely burning down we’re going to lock the doors and keep you in there’.

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.

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”.

A spokesperson for One Nation’s leader Hanson did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia about Joyce’s comments.

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.

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.”