Labor aren’t left. The only real left party with a viable chance of winning is the Greens.

Somewhat. We have a large body of poorly-politically-informed swing voters that essentially decide each election.

Our historical primary challenger to the Labor party, whom they exchange power with every 2-3 elections is the Liberal party and the Liberal-National Coalition though.. And those idiots ate polling nowhere near Labor. So they could freely implement actual good policies currently, lots of them, but Albo is too busy thinking about keeping all his business and corporate friends happy. 'Gotta keep your options open for the post-politics golden parachute onto the board seats of several multinational corporations for the big bucks in semi-retirement. Those jobs cost a lot of political favours while youre in power I guess.

Or I could be entirely off base. I'm not a politician, but this is how it looks from the outside.

Things have changed a lot in the last year.

We previously had 1 centre left and 1 centre right major party, and an assortment of minor parties on each side.

However, our preferential voting system made our minor parties more influential than in the US.

At our last major election our centre right party was just demolished and demoralised. Its complex but now we ha e several mid size parties on the right, and one major party that was on the left but has really moved to the centre to capture more centrist votes while the right squabbles among themselves.

I do t really believe that the ratchet effect youre describing is a thing even in the US, but it certainly isn't in Australia. On most social policies we have been progressive over the decades.