PM Albanese's decision to send troops to the Middle East is "embarassing," Nick McKim has said

Australia has been "hitched at the hip" to the US and Israel's "catastrophic" war with Iran, Senator Nick McKim has warned, after dozens of Australian troops departed for the Middle East.

Australia is deploying surveillance aircraft, stocks of air-to-air missiles, and 85 military personnel to the UAE to defend the Emirates against "unprovoked attacks" by Iran, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Tuesday. Albanese insisted that Australia would not be "taking offensive action against Iran." 

Speaking in the upper house of Australia's parliament later that day, McKim, who represents the Green Party, accused Albanese of misleading the public.

These troops and assets, he said, "will be used in such a way to boost capacity for the United States and for Israel to continue to rain down horror on the Iranian people [and] to continue to bomb schools and hospitals in Iran."

"Labour was the first government anywhere in the world to cheer on [US President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's illegal war," he continued. "It was embarrassing, it was mortifying, watching Prime Minister Albanese obsequiously toady his way onto the international stage while the war criminals Trump and Netanyahu committed war crimes."

Hours after the first American and Israeli missiles hit Iran on February 28, Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong released a statement of support for the strikes. "We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security," the announcement read, adding that "Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression."

McKim condemned Trump for claiming that Iran had used a US-made Tomahawk cruise missile - which only a handful of countries actually have - to kill more than 160 schoolgirls in a strike on an elementary school during the opening salvos of the war.

"Aren't you embarrassed?" he asked his Labour colleagues. "This is the guy you've hitched us to at the hip. He is a fascist war criminal fantasist, and you have hitched our country at the hip to him through AUKUS, through your obsequious toadying."

Australia joined the AUKUS security partnership with the US and UK in 2021. Under the deal, the US agreed to provide the Australian Navy with nuclear technology to produce and operate Virginia-class submarines. China has described AUKUS as an attempt by the US to build an "Asia-Pacific version of NATO" based on a "Cold War mentality."