If you despise what the Abbott government is doing to Australia, your best shot at ending the carnage is to join the Labor party. You may vehemently oppose some of their positions – Manus Island springs to mind – and that is the very reason you should join. The Greens cannot help you. To lead a nation you must govern it; the Greens will never win the votes required to hold government.

Since the second world war, all progressive change in Australia has required Labor – think of Medicare, free education and ensuring the largest migration program in the world made all feel welcome through multicultural policies.

But in order to connect with a new audience, and a potential new party base, it’s critical to acknowledge that Labor governments have made mistakes as well. It was the Hawke and Keating who ended free tertiary education, that was a huge mistake, as was much of the privatisation that took place in the 1990s, the sale of public housing, and the ghastly treatment of refugees.

Now even Barack Obama, in the wildly capitalist United States, is seeking to make community colleges free. This provides an opportunity for Labor to boldly fight for a just Australia where tertiary education does not leave people with a debt sentence. It’s time for visionary policy, not governing by bean counting.

Labor must fight for free education, not because it is something nice to have, but because it is essential to have if we want to live in a knowledge economy with high wages into the future. The fight will happen within the party from its left factions. The Labor party’s right has been growing stronger with the loss of left-leaning members.

People need to participate in party politics to get the parties they want. Parties are made up of people – if you want a more progressive Labor party, make it. It can be easily done.

There is a curious cognitive dissonance when it comes to politics in Australia. A great many people are willing to take to the streets to protest over free education and the Abbott government’s unfair policies, but not as many are willing to join the governing party of the left to ensure it is more progressive – to ensure free education, same sex marriage, a working wage and a meaningful response to climate change threats.

Many on the left ignore basic political science and have a loss maximisation strategy. Duverger’s law – the propensity for single member constituencies to form two party systems – and parental socialisation effects are the institutional and sociological drivers of party stability. Labor is not going anywhere fast, nor is the Coalition.

The Greens are not an answer to the ending the Abbott government. Holding power is a necessary preliminary to ridding the country of Abbott’s horrid policies, and this is something the Greens cannot attain. Labor was created by the union movement as a political wing to fight the Tories.

When the CFMEU or NTEU give $1m each to the Greens and Labor, they fight over Grayndler and Melbourne. These are seats that have traditionally gone to Labor. The scarce resources we have on the left could be better used against the Liberals, rather than each other, in marginal seats such as Banks or Brisbane. The Greens do not fight Tories, Labor does. The Greens presently weaken the capacity of Labor to fight Tories and prevent a progressive party from holding government.

The words “in solidarity” have been forgotten. The division of the left is wasteful. Everyone can reasonably accept that the Greens were formed in critique of capitalism’s exploitation of the environment; for Labor, it was capitalism’s exploitation of workers. Both parties share the same concerns, if not intensities of focus. Parties critical of capitalism fighting each other instead of the capitalist’s party is proverbially pissing money into the wind. When fighting the limitless donations the Liberals receive from big business, and the Murdoch press to boot, this is no laughing matter.

Politics is a choice between the preferable and the outrageous. By becoming a member of the Labor party, you can help ensure that mistakes like ending free education don’t occur again.

In 2014 I witnessed NSW Labor fail to make same-sex marriage a binding issue at national conference. The vote was lost on the floor narrowly by 72 votes. An additional 1,080 left-leaning members of the ALP would have made that vote a victory for progressive politics (there is 1 vote per 15 members on conference floor).

In 2011, 10,000 people walked through Sydney during the Labor national conference to call for a binding vote, not the current shame of a conscience vote. If those people were to have joined the party, the change would have been made. There is a disconnection between the ends people seek and the means they are willing to achieve such ends.

Australians who believe in progressive politics must realise that a Labor government is the only option to protect the vulnerable. While I am highly critical of Labor’s flaws, such as its treatment of refugees, the party remains the structural barrier that has protected workers’ rights, the environment, welfare, health care, education and every other social institution the 2014 budget sought to destroy.

If you do not approve of this Abbott government, what are you going to do about it? Man the barricades! Join Labor to give Australia the party of the left it deserves: a party stronger both in numbers and morals. A party Gough Whitlam would be proud of.