If the Labor party was in any doubt whether or not its policies were having a strong impact, it need look no further than the collective lunacy of the government frontbench this week seeking to paint Bill Shorten as a socialist.

It is a rite of passage for every ALP leader at some point in their career to have the Liberal party label them as either a socialist or “more leftwing than [insert Whitlam or some other figure from the ALP past]”.

This week it was Bill Shorten’s turn.

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The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, led the way in a speech to the Sydney Institute in which he suggested Shorten was taking the ALP back to its “failed socialist roots”.

Not to be outdone, the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, argued Shorten was the most leftwing ALP leader since Gough Whitlam’s predecessor, Arthur Calwell.

But really this is all standard fare.

In 2007, Peter Costello revealed his panic at the likely loss of that year’s election when he said that should Julia Gillard be appointed treasurer she would be “in many respects more extreme” than Whitlam’s treasurer, Jim Cairns.

Costello that year also tried to link the ALP with Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez – something Malcolm Turnbull echoed during his stint as leader of the opposition in 2009 when he told parliament that Kevin Rudd was “in a universe of his own with Hugo Chavez, waging a two-man campaign against neoliberalism.”

It would seem the campaign now has a few more members.

But Cormann, not content with suggesting Shorten is getting away with a “socialist” agenda because 18% of voters were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, decided to fully rip the hinges off and tweeted a link to an article analysing Karl Marx’s position on inequality. Cormann then asked, “Bill Shorten says he will fight inequality everywhere. Who else used that sort of language?”

And while it is fun to laugh at such stupidity, what are we really talking about? What is this rampant socialism we should be fearful of? Because that is what really shows what the Liberal party is now against.

I always thought the gap between Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx was greater than a 0.5% point top tax rate.

Helpfully, Cormann listed five Labor policies in his speech that led to this opprobrium.

The first is to keep in place the deficit levy that the Coalition itself brought in, making highest tax rate 49.5%, compared to the 49% that was in place under the Abbott government.

I always thought the gap between Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx was greater than a 0.5% point top tax rate. I guess I was wrong.

Next up is the ALP’s policy to limit negative gearing. It seems standing alongside Karl Marx has gone from advocating for the end of private property to now just limiting the ability of people to minimise tax under a policy that fuels the housing bubble.

I wonder if Channel 7 executives know that Sunrise host David Koch, who has repeatedly called for changes that restrict negative gearing, is now presumably a “fellow traveller”?

Then Cormann mentions “an attack on self-funded retirees with its planned ban on limited recourse borrowing arrangements”. This ALP policy is aimed at preventing self-managed super funds from borrowing in the super fund to buy property.

An idea of Marx and Engels? No, it was actually a recommendation of the government’s own Murray inquiry into the financial system.

The inquiry argued that banning this practice would help “prevent the unnecessary build-up of risk in the superannuation system and the financial system more broadly”. It is a recommendation advocated by noted non-communist, Robert Gottliebsen writing in The Australian in May.

Now it seems Gottliebsen should be practising his singing of The Internationale.

Cormann of course also mentioned the ALP position on the company tax cut. But rather than talk about the cuts for large businesses, Cormann only mentioned the cut for small business – a cut the ALP has yet to announce whether or not it will reverse.

And finally, Cormann listed the ALP’s policy to tax income from trusts at 30%. This policy is designed to limit income splitting whereby one income earner uses the trust to split income among members of their family and reduce the amount of tax paid.

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Rather than as Professor Robert Deutsch, senior counsel of The Tax Institute told the ABC, the policy will only result in a tax rise for small businesses who use the trusts for income splitting.

Socialism really did use to be made of sterner stuff.

And that was it.

The list is so threadbare that Cormann has to invoke the example of a French tax rate of 75% for millionaires to get anywhere close to something that might actually appear socialist rather than policies which are barely left of centre.

The problem for the government isn’t that they are disagreeing with the Labor party over policy responses on hot issues, it is that they are opposing those issues themselves. The Liberal party is not just against the ALP, it is now doing what it can to present itself as opposed to tackling inequality, tax minimisation and efforts to make housing more affordable.

I noted last month that the ALP’s emphasis on inequality had left the conservative forces floundering in response. The eagerness with which they are now betraying how panicked they are must have those in the ALP wondering what they did to deserve such luck.