新西兰英语 403 Julia Gillard visits New Zealand

　　The Prime¹ Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, visited New Zealand for two days, yesterday and today. The reason for her visit was to meet our Prime Minister, John Key, and talk about a closer partnership². In 1983, New Zealand and Australia signed a free trade agreement. This has helped New Zealand companies to do business in Australia and Australian companies to do business in New Zealand because they don’t have to pay import tax. Many of our biggest suppliers of frozen³ food, canned food and packaged food, are Australian. The major banks – Westpac, ANZ National, ASB and BNZ – are Australian-owned. New Zealand sells washing machines and dishwashers to Australia.
About 1m New Zealanders visit Australia each year and about the same number of Australians visit New Zealand.
Prime Minister Gillard, spoke⁴ to our Parliament⁵ this morning. She talked about a special relationship with New Zealand and she said that we are “family”. We have helped each other in emergencies.
The two Prime Ministers want to make it easier for people to invest⁶ money in both countries without getting special permission. They also want to work together to solve the problem of boat people. Listen to July 22nd 2010 for more about the boat people.
There are some things where the two countries will have more difficulty working together. One is border control. When Australians visit New Zealand, we check very carefully that they do not bring food into our country. They also need a passport and New Zealanders need a passport to enter Australia.
The two countries will probably not be able to have a single currency like the Euro, because the Australian dollar has a much higher value than the New Zealand dollar. At the moment, the A$1 is about the same as US$1, but the NZ$1 will only buy about A75c or US75c. The Australian economy is much stronger than ours.
Questions
1. How can New Zealand help with asylum⁷ seekers?
2. Why is the economy of Australia much stronger than ours?
3. Julia Gillard supports Australia becoming a republic. Probably John Key does not support this. If Australia decides to become a republic, will we do the same?

1 prime   

adj.首要的，主要的；最好的，第一流的

参考例句：

• The prime minister spoke of the general insecurity in the country.总理谈到了全国普遍存在的不安全。
• He met with the Prime Minister of Japan for an hour.他和日本首相会见了一个小时。

2 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

3 frozen   

adj.冻结的，冰冻的

参考例句：

• He was frozen to death on a snowing night.在一个风雪的晚上，他被冻死了。
• The weather is cold and the ground is frozen.天寒地冻。

4 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

5 Parliament   

n.议会，国会

参考例句：

• She won a seat in Parliament at the election.她在选举中赢得了议会中的席位。
• The drug was banned by an act of parliament.议会的法案明令禁止该药品。

6 invest   

v.投资；投入(时间等)；授予，赋予

参考例句：

• I have decided to invest in a new car.我已经决定买一辆新汽车。
• The best time to invest is now.现在是投资的最佳时机。

7 asylum   

n.避难所，庇护所，避难

参考例句：

• The people ask for political asylum.人们请求政治避难。
• Having sought asylum in the West for many years,they were eventually granted it.他们最终获得了在西方寻求多年的避难权。