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  3. The lower house of Australia’s Parliament passed sweeping changes in immigration policy on Wednesday that are meant to discourag

The lower house of Australia’s Parliament passed sweeping changes in immigration policy on Wednesday that are meant to discourag

admin2015-03-25  61
问题     The lower house of Australia’s Parliament passed sweeping changes in immigration policy on Wednesday that are meant to discouragedeter asylum seekers who try to reach the country by the thousands each year on rickety, overcrowded ships and boats.
    In a major reversal, the measures would reopen a chain of offshore detention centers that human rights groups have criticized as inhumane and possibly illegal. The Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard largely abandoned use of the detention centers when it came to power in 2007.
    The measures passed the lower house with the backing of both the governing party and the opposition coalition, with only two lawmakers voting against them, and the upper house is expected to approve them this week. But the debate was emotional and contentious, descending at times into a shouting match.
    "This is not the end of the efforts to deal with what is the very, very, very, very pernicious trade of people smuggling, which trades on people’s lives and gives people the expectation that in return for very significant sums of money they can be brought to Australia for passage," Chris Bowen, the immigration minister, told the lower house.
    Though the opposition coalition voted for the measure, it seemed determined to score as many political points as possible from Labor’s change of course. Many Labor members left the floor in protest as their rivals excoriated the government. The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, demanded a formal apology from Ms. Gillard for Labor’s previous policy, which he said encouraged risky attempts to reach Australia.
    "After, tragically, almost 1,000 deaths at sea and after $4.7 billion has been blown because of the government’s border protection failures, the prime minister has finally seen the sense of what the opposition has been proposing all along," Mr. Abbott said, adding, " This government’s failures gave the people smugglers a business model. "
    Australia has tried for years to find a policy that will deter would-be immigrants from trying to make the 220-mile crossing from Java to Christmas Island, a remote spot in the Indian Ocean that is Australia’s closest point to Indonesia. More than 600 migrants bound for Australia have died in accidents at sea since 2009.
    Domestic and international human rights groups have condemned the practice of detaining the asylum seekers for long periods in camps overseas while their cases are processed, saying that the practice is cruel and violates Australia’s obligations under the United Nations refugee convention.
    David Manne, a prominent human rights lawyer who succeeded in blocking a proposal last year to process migrants in Malaysia, called the new legislation the product of "interminable political jousting to see who has the harshest policies for dealing with these people. " "Really, all that deterrence policies like this do is sweep vulnerable people from our doorstep to dangers elsewhere," he said before the vote in Parliament.
Why is the change in Australia’s immigration policy called a reversal?
选项 A、Because the new policy can change the present trend of human smuggling.
B、Because it is backed with both the government and the opposition coalition.
C、Because it includes the reuse of some measures that were abandoned before.
D、Because it has caused the accusation of many human rights groups.
答案C
解析 推理判断题。根据题干关键词reversal定位至第二段第一句。该句指出，按照新的移民政策，澳大利亚将重新开放海外拘留中心。而该段第二句又说，自2007年以来，这些拘留中心大多都已经被弃置不用。由此可推断，[C]与原文意思相符，故为答案。该题的关键词为reversal，意为“逆转，回转”，[A]中非法移民趋势的改变、[B]中政府和反对党都支持法案的通过以及[D]中人权组织的指责都无法被称为逆转，故排除。
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