Polls: RedBridge, Morgan and more Newspoll, plus NT leadership change (open thread)

One poll with Labor ahead, the other with a tie, further numbers from Newspoll on the leaders’ traits, and a vacancy in the top job at the Top End.

Roy Morgan might plough on this week with a poll to be dropped next Wednesday or so, but what follows are most likely the last items of polling we will see for the year. The Australian traditionally drops aggregated Newspoll breakdowns in the dead zone after Christmas, but it will only have three polls to aggregate from on this occasion, unless it supplements them somehow.

• RedBridge Group has a federal poll showing Labor leading 52.8-47.2 (in from 53.5-46.5 in the last such poll in early November), though seemingly all reportage of the poll has painted it as disastrous for Labor because the small sample of respondents with trades qualifications has the Coalition ahead. The primary votes are Labor 33% (down one), Coalition 35% (steady) and Greens 13% (down one). The accompanying report includes extensive further questions on national direction, issue salience and immigration. The poll was conducted December 6 to 11 from an unusually large sample of 2010.

• The latest weekly poll from Roy Morgan has a tie on two-party preferred, erasing Labor’s 51-49 lead over the previous two weeks. The primary votes are Labor 32% (up one-and-a-half), Coalition 38% (up one), Greens 11.5% (down two-and-a-half) and One Nation 4.5% (down half). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1720.

• The Australian had further results from Newspoll on the leaders’ character traits, which it published in a comprehensive display showing earlier numbers for the results going back to 2008 which is worth seeking out if you’re interested in this sort of thing. Anthony Albanese had higher ratings for trustworthy (49% to 41%), in touch (46% to 41%), caring (61% to 45%), likeable (57% to 39%) and having a vision for Australia (59% to 55%), and was less likely to be seen as arrogant (45% to 57%). Peter Dutton led on experienced (70% to 66%), decisive and strong (58% to 48%) and understanding the major issues (57% to 54%).

• Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles resigned yesterday after nineteen months in the job, amid revelations she had failed to declare a conflict of interest relating to shares in mining company South 32. It presumably didn’t help that a RedBridge Group poll, conducted in the middle of last month from a sample of 601, had Labor trailing the Country Liberals by 40.6% to 19.7% (although the poll found Labor doing little better federally, and its age breakdowns included the implausible finding that the gap was 40% to 11% among the 18-to-39 age cohort). Names mentioned as possible contenders are her deputy, Nicole Manison, Infrastructure Minister Joel Bowden and Attorney-General Chansey Paech.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,596 comments on “Polls: RedBridge, Morgan and more Newspoll, plus NT leadership change (open thread)”

Comments Page 31 of 32
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  1. nathsays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 4:41 pm
    Andrew_Earlwood says:

    Here’s the thing Victoria: Melburnians do care – to the point of obsession – about what Sydneysiders think. We don’t care at all, but do occasionally get irritated by the fact that just about every conversation with a Melbournian soon descends into a dick measuring contest initiated and egged on by said Melbournian.
    ________
    that’s because when we get into something we take it seriously. We started a feud back in the 1890s and have no intention of giving up on it now. We don’t get into things willy nilly. We invented our own football code and actually attend games in huge numbers. Same with Food, theaters, Art, etc.

    What do Sydneysiders do apart from stew in humidity or wander vaguely towards the closest source of water? Who knows.

    ———————————————————————

    Give up Nath. Culture is sort of lost on them.

    Quote:
    “you have shown me the sky, but what good is the sky
    To a creature who’ll never do better than crawl?”

  2. Everyone knows Sydneysiders ‘don’t care. Never have.’

    They exported covid to other states over and over again just to prove it.

    No.1 in CGAF.

  3. Andrew_Earlwood says:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 4:47 pm

    “ We started a feud back in the 1890s and have no intention of giving up on it now.”

    Lols. Why? Despite all the lovely baubles you have accumulated over the following 130 years, you still resemble a man fighting with himself: your ‘protagonist’ simply doesn’t care. Never did.
    __________________
    Well we are getting towards the answer now.

    Most of those baubles were created before the 1890s. From the 1850 to the 1890s Melbourne was one of the great cities of the Empire, the streets were paved with Gold of course. The Land Boom, the train network has hardly been expanded since then. We were a Colossus.

    And then the 1890s depression, and shipping moved towards Sydney instead of Melbourne. Our Gold had run out but Newcastle Coal was killing us. We stagnated for decades. But we passed down an enmity that will never see its end.

    Melbourne will get back its Crown, its stolen destiny. Count on it sunshine.

  5. Ah the board is in Melbourne/Sydney people trying too hard to prove they’re the “big boy” town mode again.

    As an American friend once said about one of the towns being argued about on here (I’ll let you stew over which one): “It thinks it’s New York but it’s actually Des Moines.”

  6. Q: So what’s the difference between Sydney and a glass of milk?
    A: If you leave a glass milk in the warmth and humidity it will grow a culture.

  9. Wat Tylersays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 4:56 pm
    Ah the board is in Melbourne/Sydney people trying too hard to prove they’re the “big boy” town mode again.

    As an American friend once said about one of the towns being argued about on here (I’ll let you stew over which one): “It thinks it’s New York but it’s actually Des Moines.”

    —————————————————————–

    Obviously not the one that keeps being told it is Mexico City.

  10. Currently sitting outside JBs at Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast. Packed to the rafters median age about 22.
    Most of the customers wearing about $2000 worth of tatoos. I’ve spent $12 on 2 coffees waiting for my wife to surrender.
    Happy New year every body.

  11. Who could forget the cultural tropes in He Died with a Felafel in his hand? Which nicely skewered Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in turn. Particularly with reference to each states police force. That was very nicely done.

    Fortunately Victorian police no longer have the reputation that it had in the 1990s. Which is a blessed relief.

  12. Boerwarsays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Q. So what’s the difference between Melbourne and a glass of milk?
    A. None.

    ————————————————————-

    Nath i bet you knew i was going to reuse this quote on this.

    Quote: ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.’

  13. Cut Snake @ #1472 Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – 5:06 pm

    Currently sitting outside JBs at Pacific Fair on the Gold Coast. Packed to the rafters median age about 22.
    Most of the customers wearing about $2000 worth of tatoos. I’ve spent $12 on 2 coffees waiting for my wife to surrender.
    Happy New year every body.

    Ditto at JBs Erina Fair on the Central Coast.

    Guess who are the biggest whiners about the Cost of Living? Tattooed Tradies.

  15. Pueo @ #1470 Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – 5:02 pm

    “Discovered”?!

    Alexei Navalny discovered in remote Arctic penal colony

    Jailed Russian opposition leader ‘doing well’, according to aides, nearly three weeks after going missing

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/25/alexei-navalny-discovered-in-remote-arctic-penal-colony

    Don’t forget these guys:

    Others have been killed, narrowly escaped death or been exiled. Here are President Vladimir Putin’s best-known critics and where they are now:

    – Dead –

    Boris Nemtsov, a Kremlin critic and a former deputy prime minister, was shot dead in 2015 as he walked home across a Moscow bridge near the Kremlin.

    Five Chechen men were convicted of killing Nemtsov but the mastermind of the murder was never found.

    Nemtsov’s allies have pointed the finger at the Kremlin and at Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has denied the accusation.

    Nemtsov, a charismatic speaker, had criticised Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and regularly taken part in opposition protests. He was 55 at the time of his death.

    Nearly a decade earlier, in 2006, the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow home shocked the world.

    Politkovskaya, a reporter at Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s top independent newspaper, was a fierce critic of Kremlin’s tactics in Chechnya.

    The newspaper’s editor, Dmitry Muratov, dedicated his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to Politkovskaya and other Russian journalists killed for their work.

    – Jailed –

    Russia’s main opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-made nerve agent, on a trip to Siberia in 2020.

    He underwent treatment in Germany and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on landing at a Moscow airport.

    The 46-year-old is serving a nine-year sentence on embezzlement charges that his supporters call punishment for challenging the Kremlin.

    From prison, Navalny has denounced Putin’s Ukraine offensive, calling it a “tragedy” and a “crime against my country.”

    Vladimir Kara-Murza, an opposition politician, was given the harshest sentence so far over comments critical of the Kremlin and the offensive.

    The 41-year-old was handed 25 years in jail on charges of treason, spreading “false” information about the Russian army and being affiliated with an “undesirable organisation”.

    He suffers from serious health problems which his lawyers say was due to two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017.

    In December 2022, opposition politician Ilya Yashin was jailed for eight and a half years for spreading “false” information about the Russian army, under legislation criminalising criticism of the Ukraine offensive.

    In August last year, Yevgeny Roizman, the former mayor of the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, was detained for his criticism of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

    After his arrest sparked protests, the 60-year-old opposition politician was released from custody to await trial on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army.

    – Exiled –

    Some of Putin’s high-profile critics have been abroad for years.

    They include former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison after challenging the Russian leader early in his rule.

    Khodorkovsky lives in London and has financed media projects critical of the Kremlin.

    Many of Navalny’s prominent allies fled Russia after his organisations were banned as “extremist”.

    But the decision in February last year to send troops into Ukraine, which ushered in an unprecedented crackdown at home, proved to be a final nail in the coffin for Russia’s opposition movement.

    Russians opposed to Moscow’s attack on Ukraine are now scattered around the world. Many have fled to Europe and Israel.

    TV presenter and entertainer Maxim Galkin, the husband of Russian pop icon Alla Pugacheva, has become an unlikely leading voice against the Ukraine offensive on social media.

    Based in Israel, the 46-year-old show star regularly uses Instagram to denounce the Russian army’s offensive.

    – ‘Foreign agents’ –

    Despite a rare intervention by Pugacheva — who is widely considered untouchable — Galkin has been branded a “foreign agent”.

    The epithet, which has Stalinist-era overtones, has been used by authorities to mount administrative pressure on critics.

    Putin recently toughened the draconian 2012 “foreign agent” law.

    Many journalists and Russia’s main independent media outlets have been branded “foreign agents”, making it much harder to operate.

    All main independent media organisations in Russia have been shut down or suspended operations.

    Other popular figures who have spoken out against Moscow’s Ukraine offensive — such as the hugely popular rappers Oxxxymiron and Noize MC, and exiled science fiction writer Dmitry Glukhovsky — have also been labelled “foreign agents”.

    https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/vladimir-putins-critics-dead-jailed-exiled/news-story/0be38e7cff390e4d115322afc0944af0

  16. 2023 is not done with me yet. Broken down on the side of the Princess Highway in the middle nowhere between Warrnambool and Terang
    RACV roadside assist a 2 hour wait. Have just reached the hour mark.
    Car goes, but all warning lights are on and engine misfiring badly. No guts. No power.

  17. I had a conversation with a ex journo mate of mine a couple of weeks ago. Asked me about the “cost of living crisis ” and I replied that when the tattoo parlours had closed, the bikies couldn’t sell their dope and huge utes were no longer the new car of choice I would believe there was a crisis coming but until then we just have a crisis of resource allocation.
    He was unhappy with my reply.

  18. “ From the 1850 to the 1890s Melbourne was one of the great cities of the Empire, the streets were paved with Gold of course.”

    ____

    A veritable Nova Roma. … in someone’s fever dreams. In truth that period simply marked a transition from bark huts to brick bungalows. So now you are saying that Melbourne is rightly passed at Sydney because the gold mining boom ended …

    But at last, Melbourne is in sight of sydeny for shit traffic jams … on account of the fact that both towns were meant to house no more than about 3 million people but are pushing past 5 million.

    Yay, Melbourne: No.1 – again – at last!!!!

    Meanwhile, I’m off to the beach tomorrow morning, followed by taking in Napoleon at the Newtown Dendy and then getting something multicultural down my gullet on King St or Enmore Road, and maybe finishing off the day at a craft brewery in Marrickville … or making some gin at Mark and Paulie McLeay’s distillery in Balmain.

    Wept for me, and my lack of cultural or entertaining options in old sydney town.

  19. nathsays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 5:11 pm
    Entropy I liked the glass of milk analogy. Even more so if it was an original piece

    ———————————————————-

    I wish it was but alas no. I use to work in England in the 1990’s. As an Australian that was one of the jokes the Cricket team i played with liked to tell me. I just adapted it from Australia to Sydney.

    The team i played for was in the East Yorkshire league but we had lots of players from York University, who came from Southern England originally. One day we had to play at a ground in a village which had once had a Coal Mine init that Thatcher had shut. So before we went there our big fast bowler who was a Yorkshire man. Said, this village doesn’t like posh southerners, so all you with southern accents just stay quite during the match. So i asked “l’m from even further south than them, should i also keep quite”. To which i was told, you are from Australia, so they will consider you even lower class than themselves.

  20. Andrew_Earlwood says:

    Meanwhile, I’m off to the beach tomorrow morning, followed by taking in Napoleon at the Newtown Dendy and then getting something multicultural down my gullet on King St or Enmore Road, and maybe finishing off the day at a craft brewery in Marrickville … or making some gin at Mark and Paulie McLeay’s distillery in Balmain.

    Wept for me, and my lack of cultural or entertaining options in old sydney town.
    _________
    And in the meantime we will be smiling cos you are actually taking us seriously and need to name drop a fairly ordinary cultural itinerary, only demonstrating your inferiority complex.

  21. Taylormade @ #1520 Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – 5:19 pm

    2023 is not done with me yet. Broken down on the side of the Princess Highway in the middle nowhere between Warrnambool and Terang
    RACV roadside assist a 2 hour wait. Have just reached the hour mark.
    Car goes, but all warning lights are on and engine misfiring badly. No guts. No power.

    Pick up an oz lotto ticket on the way home. Your luck is due to change.

  23. nath says:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 4:54 pm
    Andrew_Earlwood says:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 4:47 pm

    “ We started a feud back in the 1890s and have no intention of giving up on it now.”

    Lols. Why? Despite all the lovely baubles you have accumulated over the following 130 years, you still resemble a man fighting with himself: your ‘protagonist’ simply doesn’t care. Never did.
    __________________
    Well we are getting towards the answer now.

    Most of those baubles were created before the 1890s. From the 1850 to the 1890s Melbourne was one of the great cities of the Empire, the streets were paved with Gold of course. The Land Boom, the train network has hardly been expanded since then. We were a Colossus.

    And then the 1890s depression, and shipping moved towards Sydney instead of Melbourne. Our Gold had run out but Newcastle Coal was killing us. We stagnated for decades. But we passed down an enmity that will never see its end.

    Melbourne will get back its Crown, its stolen destiny. Count on it sunshine.

    ____________

    If only Melbourne kept the Crown to itself. I blame the latest Packer.

  24. Kos Samaras
    @KosSamaras
    The full report of our recent Victorian State voting intention, and public opinion findings can be downloaded via this link. Note, this entire survey includes, state voting intentions, leadership rankings, views on public infrastructure and attitudes towards public protests that relate to the Israel/Gaza conflict.

    All responses were harvested via the one survey.

    https://redbridgegroup.com.au/victorian-state-politics-and-omnibus-poll/

  25. “I blame the latest Packer.”

    ———————————————————

    Just another dodgy Sydney wheeler and dealer.

  26. “ And in the meantime we will be smiling cos you are actually taking us seriously and need to name drop a fairly ordinary cultural itinerary, only demonstrating your inferiority complex.”

    Lols, we don’t care about your projections nath: we are just fully occupied doing stuff while you moan and put on faux airs. I think ‘Paris of the South’ is a fairly recent incantation that Melbournians bleat at night …

  27. “ If I win the 90 million ozlotto tonight the first thing I’m doing is buying a harbour mansion in steak and kidney.”

    ______

    Geez, even in your lotto fantasies you obsess about the Emerald City.

    Mine run to buying an Island in the British Virgin Islands.

  29. Taylormade @ #1478 Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – 5:19 pm

    2023 is not done with me yet. Broken down on the side of the Princess Highway in the middle nowhere between Warrnambool and Terang
    RACV roadside assist a 2 hour wait. Have just reached the hour mark.
    Car goes, but all warning lights are on and engine misfiring badly. No guts. No power.

    Buy an EV! 😉

  30. Douglas and Milko says:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 6:20 pm

    It would be a fun little experiment to see what they grow by Easter 🙂

  31. Entropy says:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 6:05 pm
    “I blame the latest Packer.”

    ———————————————————

    Just another dodgy Sydney wheeler and dealer.

    ____________

    I’ll pay that 🙂

  32. Andrew_Earlwood says:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 6:11 pm
    “ And in the meantime we will be smiling cos you are actually taking us seriously and need to name drop a fairly ordinary cultural itinerary, only demonstrating your inferiority complex.”

    Lols, we don’t care about your projections nath: we are just fully occupied doing stuff while you moan and put on faux airs. I think ‘Paris of the South’ is a fairly recent incantation that Melbournians bleat at night …

    _____________

    nath did talk about bath time. A different form of cultural itinerary 🙂

  35. Andrew_Earlwoodsays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 6:13 pm

    Geez, even in your lotto fantasies you obsess about the Emerald City.

    ——————————————————————–

    Says the faux Sydneysider.

    Quote: “You can take the boy out of the Echuca, but you can’t take the Echuca out of the boy.”

  38. ”
    Taylormadesays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 5:19 pm
    2023 is not done with me yet. Broken down on the side of the Princess Highway in the middle nowhere between Warrnambool and Terang
    RACV roadside assist a 2 hour wait. Have just reached the hour mark.
    Car goes, but all warning lights are on and engine misfiring badly. No guts. No power.
    ”

    TM
    Buy an EV.

  39. ”
    Cut Snakesays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 5:20 pm
    I had a conversation with a ex journo mate of mine a couple of weeks ago. Asked me about the “cost of living crisis ” and I replied that when the tattoo parlours had closed, the bikies couldn’t sell their dope and huge utes were no longer the new car of choice I would believe there was a crisis coming but until then we just have a crisis of resource allocation.
    He was unhappy with my reply.
    ”

    LOL CS.
    Ofcourse he would be unhappy with your reply. He expected you to winge against current Federal government. 🙂

  40. ”
    Douglas and Milkosays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 6:20 pm
    Someone asked about Easter:

    Christ was only born a day ago. But at Coles they’re ready to kill him off. pic.twitter.com/kIYMjNCXJ9— Mike Carlton (@MikeCarlton01) December 26, 2023

    ”

    Pueo
    Your prayers are answered. 🙂

  41. ”
    C@tmommasays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 6:26 pm
    Taylormade @ #1478 Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – 5:19 pm

    2023 is not done with me yet. Broken down on the side of the Princess Highway in the middle nowhere between Warrnambool and Terang
    RACV roadside assist a 2 hour wait. Have just reached the hour mark.
    Car goes, but all warning lights are on and engine misfiring badly. No guts. No power.

    Buy an EV!
    ”

    Snap C@tmomma.

  43. Ven @ #1503 Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – 7:11 pm

    ”
    C@tmommasays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 6:26 pm
    Taylormade @ #1478 Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – 5:19 pm

    2023 is not done with me yet. Broken down on the side of the Princess Highway in the middle nowhere between Warrnambool and Terang
    RACV roadside assist a 2 hour wait. Have just reached the hour mark.
    Car goes, but all warning lights are on and engine misfiring badly. No guts. No power.

    Buy an EV!
    ”

    Snap C@tmomma.

    No more chitty chitty bang bang. 🙂

  45. Now back to the real world

    Biden orders strikes on Iranian group in Iraq after 3 US service members wounded

    https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/4376890-biden-orders-strikes-on-iranian-group-in-iraq-after-three-us-service-members-wounded/amp/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQGsAEggAID#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17035744055634&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fhomenews%2Fadministration%2F4376890-biden-orders-strikes-on-iranian-group-in-iraq-after-three-us-service-members-wounded%2F

    ”
    President Biden ordered strikes on three locations in Iraq after three U.S. service members were wounded, one critically, in an attack on Erbil Air Base early Christmas morning credited to a militia group backed by Iran.

    In a statement Monday, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Biden directed the strikes against three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, which claimed credit for the initial attack against U.S. personnel.

    The groups, the U.S. said, are all connected to Iran.

    The attack was carried out by a one-way attack drone, according to the statement, which said the three locations were “focused specifically on unmanned aerial drone activities.”

    The statement said Biden ordered the retaliatory strikes after learning of the attack that wounded the U.S. service members.

    “President Biden was immediately briefed on the attack this morning, and he ordered the Department of Defense to prepare response options against those responsible. Those options were then presented to the President during a call this afternoon with Secretary of Defense Austin and members of the President’s national security team,” the statement read.”

    So not on Houthis but on Iraqis.

  46. I rarely consume commercial TV and radio news, but I have Chanel 7 “News” on now. It’s just a series of infomercials. Virgin Cruises, Coles (the hot cross buns), a random human interest story. Maybe there was actual news at the start which I missed.

  47. Griff

    It would be a fun little experiment to see what they grow by Easter

    😀

    I really wonder what they are thinking.

    Maybe something along the lines of the first person who served my future DIL in Leichhardt at the seafood shop, last Thursday.

    She asked to buy 2 dozen oysters, to be picked up on Christmas Eve. The server showed her the two boxes, and said she would put them aside.

    FDIL then asked to talk to someone senior, who then explained to the server (probably bewildered 15 year-old with new holiday job?) that you did not put oysters aside for a few days, but rather took the order to add to the pile for Christmas Eve pickup.

    Anyway, 1 dozen Pacific and 1 dozen Sydney rock oysters were a great treat yesterday. Some of the freshest and best I have tasted.

  48. Vensays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 7:15 pm
    Now back to the real world

    Biden orders strikes on Iranian group in Iraq after 3 US service members wounded

    ———————————————————————

    Take out the Iranian missile factories. Forget about the middle men. Keep taking out their ability to produce weapons till they come to the negotiation table. Then at the negotiation table everyone should give some ground in the name of peace.

  49. Taylormade,

    Commiserations on your breakdown.

    I hope you were able to get going quickly.

    And to those who said “get an EV”, I understand the sentiments, but the truth is that at the moment EVs are quite expensive, and even if you can afford one, you need to go on a waiting list to get one.

  50. ‘Entropy says:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 7:51 pm

    Vensays:
    Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 7:15 pm
    Now back to the real world

    Biden orders strikes on Iranian group in Iraq after 3 US service members wounded

    ———————————————————————

    Take out the Iranian missile factories. Forget about the middle men. Keep taking out their ability to produce weapons till they come to the negotiation table. Then at the negotiation table everyone should give some ground in the name of peace.’
    =================================
    When Trump wanted to go to war with Iran he was strongly advised not to by the US high command. We just lost a 20 year war against Afghanistan. Iran has a far greater military capacity in its own right and through its proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

    ‘Taking out missile factories’ is, IMO, facile war talk . You would basically be triggering a general Middle Eastern War.

    Iran has enough missiles to destroy the capacity of trading nations to insure POL moving through the gulf. China would almost certainly use the overland belt and road infrastructure to re supply Iran almost indefinitely. China’s (40-50% of oil and gas from the Gulf) economy would be smashed. Australia’s economy would be smashed.

    We would be looking at a serious smashing of the global economy and an unwinnable war for as long as we might like to fight it.

    One of the consequences would a sharp drop in global CO2 emissions.

    IMO it would be far more effective to fund a non state actor discreetly to fire drones and or missiles at ships moving Iran’s oil and gas through the gulf – focusing specifically on ships which are destined to do an on-sea oil sanctions busting oil transfer to ships that then carry it to China.

    My guess is that the Houthi military assaults on freedom of navigation would then come to a sudden stop.

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