How many reasons are there to hate the Abbott government? Is the problem its blatant agenda to rob from the poor to feed the rich? Is it its ambition to Americanise the university system with $100,000 degrees? Maybe you object to Joe Hockey’s attempts to throw pensioners and sole parents further into poverty? Or to the government’s inquisitorial royal commission aimed at smearing the trade union movement?

Perhaps it’s the attitude of senior ministers who treat the public purse as their own, such as parliamentary speaker Bronwyn Bishop’s $5,000 taxpayer-funded helicopter trip from Melbourne to Geelong to attend a Liberal party fundraiser?

What about treasurer Joe Hockey in the 2014 budget trying to prevent young unemployed people from claiming the dole for six months? Or the prime minister advising bosses to “employ” young people for a month on no wages on a “try before you buy” basis? Maybe it’s the government’s environmental vandalism, such as Abbott’s declarations that coal is “good for humanity” and his war on renewable energy.

Everyone opposed to racism has plenty of reasons to hate the Abbott government. There’s his rejoinder, “Occasionally, I dare say, things happen” when confronted with evidence of rampant abuse of asylum seekers imprisoned in Nauru. And his measures to further demonise Muslims, the demands on them to disown acts overseas for which they bear no responsibility and his attempts to whip up paranoia about the Islamic State, which is apparently “coming for everyone”.

There is the closure of Aboriginal homelands in Western Australia and the stripping of $500 million from support services at the same time as stuffing billions of dollars in tax relief and subsidies into the mining companies.The list of reasons to hate the government goes on and on. They are all part of a single narrative: to serve the interests of the capitalists by boosting profits, attacking the living standards of the working class and dividing and thereby disempowering workers and the poor.

The opposition that isn’t

Given the unpopularity of Tony Abbott, who rates a miserable 36 percent popular approval, it shouldn’t be difficult for an opposition leader to earn public acclaim. Who could fail to strike some blows on a government that has offended just about anyone who isn’t a multi-millionaire in its less than two years in office?

Bill Shorten, that’s who. The Labor leader rates down in the basement with Abbott.

Shorten’s unpopularity is hardly surprising. When it comes to taking the fight to Abbott, the Labor leader and his colleagues are as useful as a box of wet matches. The satirical website The Shovel got it right in mid-July when it ran a story “Search for Bill Shorten continues”. It reported disappointment that the Pluto fly-by had failed to discover the whereabouts of the elusive opposition leader: “There had earlier been hopes that a small dot sighted on the dwarf planet was evidence of Mr Shorten, but it was later confirmed to be an inert block of rock”.

It’s true that Shorten is a dull nothingness incapable of quickening anyone’s pulse, but he’s not alone there – when was the last time you strained to listen to a speech by a member of the opposition?

The Labor opposition doesn’t oppose the cruel and inhumane treatment of refugees; in June it voted with the government to prevent staff from reporting abuse of asylum seekers in detention centres.

Labor makes much of the threat of education minister Christopher Pyne’s $100,000 degrees, but it supports fee deregulation and planned to cut $2.3 billion from higher education before it was turfed out at the 2013 election. Labor opposes Hockey’s cuts to age pensions, but Labor in office raised the pension age for the first time since it was introduced in 1907.

The opposition-that-isn’t has supported the government’s task force to crack down on “welfare cheats” and voted in favour of stopping the planned increase in the tax-free threshold, which would have assisted low income earners.

Labor goes out of its way to support every new piece of legislation that strips away our civil rights in the name of “fighting terrorism”. Bill Shorten says that “Labor’s in this together with the Liberals” when it comes to ever more repressive national security laws, despite these laws being condemned by the Law Council of Australia.

And what can Shorten say in response to the proposed forced closure of Aboriginal communities when Rudd and Gillard continued the Howard government’s intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, in which soldiers and police trampled on the rights of Indigenous people? It’s not just right wing grubs like Shorten who are responsible for this. The left in the party is equally culpable. Leaders like deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek and shadow infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese march in lockstep with Shorten and treasurer Chris Bowen.

That Labor actively supports most of the government’s attacks, or is at least complicit in them given its own record in office, is the result of its overall agreement with Abbott’s agenda: govern for the rich and businesses.

Labor politicians may throw in the odd phrase here and there about “fairness”, but this is mostly window dressing. Labor supports the same dog-eat-dog system and is only biding its time until it can get back into office. When it does, it will dole out miserable measures similar to those that it only half-heartedly opposes today.

The Greens are more progressive on a range of issues. But as the party’s popularity has risen over the past decade, so too has the party leadership’s desire to be taken seriously as a “responsible party of government”. In this capacity, the Greens propped up the Rudd and Gillard governments for six years, no matter what appalling measures they passed. They have been in government in Tasmania and the ACT and passed cuts in spending on schools. And in June, in the name of being “responsible”, the Greens helped the Abbott government push through cuts to age pensions.

The ALP and the Greens both want to govern capitalism. Ultimately, that means pleasing the people who run capitalism – the bosses. It means proving that you can make “tough choices”, which is code for cutting state spending to allow for reductions in corporate taxes, and giving handouts to the top end of town while pushing down the welfare payments of those at the bottom.

The capitalists whistle, and Labor and the Greens stand to attention. After all, to do otherwise might invite the accusation that they are “irresponsible”. But it’s high time for a bit of irresponsibility if that means taking a stand against what is called responsible politics today.

We need a socialist party

We’ve had nearly a quarter of a century of uninterrupted economic growth, and done everything that the high priests of neoliberalism say is responsible, but where are we today?

“Responsible” controls on social welfare have pushed one in seven people below the poverty line, including 363,000 children aged under 15.

“Responsible” policies have created a situation in which 770,000 unemployed people are chasing 150,000 job vacancies.

“Responsible” housing policy has created a public housing waiting list of 200,000 while the number of property speculators has boomed.

The “responsible” treatment of Aboriginal people has forced them to endure an existence worse than many in the Third World and an imprisonment rate higher than Blacks under apartheid South Africa.

Since 1972, national income per head of population has more than doubled in Australia. If national wealth has increased so much, why can’t we afford free education, or adequate child care or visits to the GP or the dole for young people? This is one of the richest countries on the planet, and we are lectured about ending the “age of entitlement” and are expected to work harder for longer.

The reality is that we could have free health and education, and decent housing for all. The problem is that more and more of the wealth that is created by workers has been stuffed into the pockets of the rich. The top 20 percent now have 71 times as much wealth as the bottom 20 percent.

The richest seven individuals own more wealth than the poorest 1.73 million families.It’s the same old story all over the world – the rich get richer; the poor are left to pick up the crumbs. That’s called “being responsible”.

Socialists have a different set of responsibilities – to the working class and the downtrodden. Our side creates all the wealth in society; there is plenty to go around. Socialists want to challenge the status quo and to make the fat cats pay their share. But we also need to get rid of the whole rotten system that generates huge profits for the minority and hardship for the many.