What a weird consequence of the budget nightmare. Of all the surprises of this new Abbott Era, perhaps the biggest is that the Socialist Alternative still exists in this country. Those kooky, wild-eyed, communist kids who used to hang around in John Howard masks and disrupt visits by George W. Bush have come out from their Rudd-Gillard-induced hibernation. At last, they’ve been let loose on our campuses and even that exalted altar of television democracy, Q&A.

They were always there in the shadows, handing out pamphlets on everything from Palestine to animals’ rights to ‘why Lenin was a nice communist’ lectures, trying to grab the eye of vulnerable and irritated students passing by.

But until now, these fringe-dwellers found no common cause with their saner centre-Left cousins. Then the government’s first budget descended. The campuses have woken up at last and they’re in a state of horror. As a result, the sane, scared students of Australia have quite sensibly and admirably gone to argue their case in public and en masse, only for the Socialist Alternative to follow along and ruin the party.

The protests in May involved a lot of students who were pure of heart and worldly enough to understand the difference between protest and riot. They didn’t want a revolution or even to show support for opposition parties — I dare say some fraction of them voted Liberal in 2013 — they just want jobs, affordable degrees and low debt.

What we saw the following morning on the front pages were the party-poopers, the Socialist Alternative in their ‘F— Tony Abbott’ T-shirts attacking police and doing their best to disrupt the peace. In Melbourne, socialist and anarchist students even succeeded in attacking the Greens and Labor MPs who had come out to support their cause.

Some of the press commentary has been silly beyond belief. Most protestors are no feral wolf pack and they want nothing more than economic security. But the growing power of the Socialist Alternative and other radical student groups is a concern. As long as these violent groups get in the way by behaving like revolutionary show-offs, students with legitimate concerns will continue — quite understandably — to be vilified by a public that see them as ideologically driven agitators pushing and scratching their way onto the news.

It is at the very least bad politics to let these Socialist child-soldiers run rampant. Student unions — often run by Labor Right or Labor Left kids understudying their future roles as State and Federal MPs — are unable to drown out the noise, especially since these radical groups often hold some sway on student councils.

And Labor and the Greens do have more to do in this area. When Christopher Pyne called for Bill Shorten to condemn the attacks on Julie Bishop at Sydney University, shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen’s response of ‘Well, it’s not our fault’ was woefully inadequate. Nobody’s suggesting that Labor is planting mad communist children at Liberal party dinners but leadership means setting an example and being tough with your own flock. Both Bill Shorten and his shadow Education Minister Kate Ellis have been better, but the opposition needs to use its newfound poll power to promote calm debate and moderation.

Not that the government doesn’t have a lot to do in this area as well.

There’s plenty in this budget to really frighten young people. Think of the changes to Newstart which raised the eligibility age from 22 to 25 and refusing benefits for the first six months of unemployment. It’s a policy Jennifer Westacott, the chief executive of the Business Council of Australia and the farthest thing from a card-carrying socialist, described as ‘harsh’ and it doesn’t take into account the hazardousness of the youth job market and the inability of parents to look after kids who are out of uni and out of work.

And yet Christopher Pyne has some golden policies which — sold correctly — could turn those dreaded youth into the best electoral friends the Coalition ever had. The extension of the HELP scheme to diplomas and other forms of degrees (often taking place at TAFE) is a great step in helping disadvantaged young people — especially those that left high school early or without a university placement — to get the opportunity to study for trades or find a pathway into tertiary education.

And the deregulation of university fees — the centrepiece of student hysteria — can be very easily sold by both the university chiefs and the government as a wonderful opportunity to take tertiary education in Australia to the next international level. By gaining more funding through fees, that money can be put back into more teachers, more courses (who knows, we might get a revival of philosophy and history) as well as a research capability to match the great American universities.

The Liberals can paint the fee deregulation policy by offering it as greater opportunity and greater choice for students. It’s somewhere their party principles can really sing to a rather more conservative generation of youngsters intent on work and economic success. Alas, for the time being the message is lost in the rhetoric of the government’s hubris and all students see is more and more debt as a result of government bullying and this is pushing them from the comfortable prospect of the government’s sketch of future benefits into the arms of the Socialist Alternative’s fantasy of defiance.

It’s a grim picture on the campuses but the story of Sophie Mirabella at Melbourne University is surprisingly hopeful. The former Liberal frontbencher was giving a lecture on ‘Politics and the Media’ to a group of Melbourne University students when radical students began by chanting loudly and ended up pushing Mirabella around. It was reported that campus security had to whisk her away and an entire community was left wondering why on earth someone not in the government was being targeted by a pack of loons. Had the nation’s students taken leave of their senses?

Well, no. In fact the majority of students in that lecture theatre fought off the bullies and cheered Mirabella when she came back to finish her talk.

The students of Australia are no doe-eyed bunch of political idealists. They think with their hip-pockets in mind like everyone else. They have little time for radicals and rascals. It’s up to the government to show students they’re on their side — to sell them their good policies and ditch the bad ones no students can hack.

And it’s up to us all to show the Socialist Alternative that there are better ways to make a point than roughing up women in power and upsetting Tony Jones.