RAAF aircraft have conducted their first training missions ahead of a likely deployment to Iraq, as federal cabinet prepares to make the final decision on joining a US-led assault against Islamic State.
Australia's task group includes six F/A-18F Super Hornets, an E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft and KC-30A airborne refueller.
All conducted preliminary flights from Australia's Middle East base, Camp Baird, on Sunday, Defence told AAP in the United Arab Emirates.
If the government go-ahead is given this week, it will be the first combat mission for all of the aircraft in the task group and will come 11 years after Australia committed troops to the war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
A 200-strong ground force, including special forces, will advise and assist Iraqi and Kurdish military.
Cabinet will meet in Canberra on Tuesday following a national security committee meeting. The opposition will then be briefed on any decisions.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who arrived back from New York on Sunday after security talks at the United Nations, is then likely to provide an update to federal parliament.
The developments come as US President Barack Obama acknowledged the US had underestimated the rapid rise of the militant IS, also known as ISIL, in Iraq and Syria and how quickly Iraqi forces would be overrun in the country's north.
"There is a cancer that has grown for too long that suggests that it is acceptable to kill innocent people who worship a different God," Mr Obama told CNN.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said countries had been taken aback by the speed with at IS had claimed territory and the effectiveness of its "perverse" use of social media to rally support and reach out through the internet.
Ms Bishop said in recent years some had believed the threat from terrorism - which reached its peak after the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001 - was over.
"Regrettably, we didn't have the focus in the last few years that we should have," she said, adding the government had recently put an extra $630 million toward national security.
Australia's role in Iraq would be "proportionate and prudent".
The government was taking its time to put in place the legal framework for the Iraq mission, which would conducted at the invitation of the Iraqi government.
Despite Syria not being part of Australia's plans at present, the efforts in Iraq would have a flow-on effect.
"If we are able to starve ISIL of funds and foreign fighters and resources from outside and within Iraq, then that will have an appropriate flow-on effect into Syria," Ms Bishop told reporters on Monday.
To date about 50 passports have been cancelled on national security grounds, including three in the past week.
Australian Greens leader Christine Milne said a debate should be held in both houses of parliament this week on whether the deployment of the ADF in Iraq is in Australia's best interests.
"There needs to be accountability," she said.
