Identity crisis

These are dark days for the Australian Labor Party. Its consistently bad opinion polls-the party's primary vote hovers in the early 1930s -- is but one of the symptoms of its seemingly incurable malaise. Just under a year ago, Labor thought that changing its leader would improve its standing with the electorate. The result was that Labor was the first government in 70 years to lose majority power. Nothing exemplifies more perfectly the confusion and dislocation that are ravaging Australia's oldest political party than climate change. Meanwhile, prospects for a global deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions remained virtually zero. China, India and Brazil were chugging along the smoky path to prosperity. The US Senate was failing to debate, much less pass, the most loophole-ridden version of cap and trade. On other immigration-related issues, meanwhile, Labor recently announced it will appoint a 10-person multicultural council, establish a national anti-racism strategy and reinstate 'multiculturalism' in the title of the parliamentary portfolio for immigration.