I personally don't think that "extreme left" equals a single party state.

I think extreme left is abolishing private control of capital, not necessarily something like stalinism.

To me, socialism necessarily means democratic control of society by and for the workers and people. Authoritarian states (current and past), in my opinion, cannot be considered socialist because they are/were authoritarian and created a new ruling class - just based on party position rather than wealth.

I think the notion of people ever 100% agreeing is absurd, so there'll always be different parties/factions/groups - provided you're actually committed to democracy, which any true socialist is.

The "far left" quality of a party, under my worldview, is concerned with what you think about the control of capital, rather than what you think about how decisions should get made (through democracy or dictatorship).

Though, I will also admit that I am very biased, that I believe a truly democratic far right society is impossible, because of the influence of concentrations of money over politics.

I actually prefer mixed member proportionality with a concentrated left leaning bias.

I encourage people to think beyond tinkering with how we vote for our representatives, to notice that even with our representatives being elected, they're only beholden to us ever 3/4 years (or 6 in the case of senators), and in the meantime they're able to scratch backs and get sweet cushy jobs after they're done, and/or a sweet parliamentary pension.

Community organisations mostly have a right of recall over their elected positions, based on varying thresholds depending on their org's rules. It's wild that we don't have this ability at a federal or state level.

Though, I also agree we should still tinker with the voting system in the meantime. I would love lower house seats to be MMP as you suggest. My pet idea is to increase the number of lower house seats by 50%, and then send 3 members from 75 electorates (combine current electorates in 2s).

Retains the local nature of the candidates (and they should try spread themselves out across the electorate), while providing better representation in the lower house.

Thanks for engaging with me on this!