First, listen to The New Government.
The new government was sworn in yesterday. That included the new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, her deputy Winston Peters, and all the Ministers – all 31 of them.
The new Minister of Immigration is Iain Lees-Galloway. He was elected to Parliament as a Labour MP in 2008, at the age of 30. When he was in Opposition, he was the spokesperson for Immigration. His job was to oppose the Minister of Immigration, so he knows a great deal about this topic. The new government plans to reduce the number of immigrants to a figure between 40,000 and 50,000. Last year we had the highest number of immigrants – 70,000, most of whom moved to Auckland. This has put pressure on housing, schools, transport, and other infrastructure in Auckland. Many people blame immigration for the high cost of housing and for traffic jams in Auckland.
One problem has been international students attending low quality business or language schools, hoping they would be successful in getting a job, and applying for immigration. Mr Lees-Galloway has said the government will close low quality schools. He will focus on important skills that immigrants can bring to New Zealand.
NZ will also double the number of refugees that we accept, from 750 a year to 1500 a year, by 2020. He is confident we can provide good support for refugees.
Vocabulary
• spokesperson (n) – person who can speak on this topic, someone who has the knowledge
• oppose (v) – give the opposite view, criticise the government
• infra-structure (n) – things like water, sewerage, electricity, roads etc that are needed for a city to function
• blame (v) – say that this is the fault of one person or one side