An anti-Iraq war activist in Sydney hurls a pair of shoes at Australia's former Prime Minister John Howard during a live television broadcast.

"That is for the Iraqi dead," Peter Gray shouted as the shoes missed their target. "I did it for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dead and those that are still living," he told ABC Radio and added that he wanted to attract as much attention as possible about the folly of the Iraq war.

The incident mirrored a similar attack in 2008 when an Iraqi journalist Muntathar Al Zaidi lobbed both his shoes at former US president George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq.

This is not the first time that Howard has faced a shoe attack. In November 2009, a critic and anti-war protester threw a boot at him during a speech at Cambridge University and accused him of being racist.

The former premier sent Australian troops for the US-led invasion of Iraq and was a staunch supporter of Bush and his so-called war on terror.