Prime Minister Tony Abbott has told parliament the government will announce its response to the Syrian refugee crisis within 24 hours.
Labor leader Bill Shorten asked Mr Abbott on Tuesday whether the government would support the opposition's call for 10,000 places to be added to the refugee and humanitarian intake.
"We do need to be prudent, we do need to plan ... and I expect that within 24 hours, the government will have much more to say on this matter," the prime minister said.
Mr Abbott said that in the last full year of the Labor government only 98 people from the Syrian conflict were resettled.
"In the first full year we took 1000 and in the second full year, the last financial year, we took 2200 from the Syrian conflict," he said.
However Mr Abbott acknowledged the Labor government had provided a "considerable amount of money", supported by the coalition.
Australia would be doing more to ensure the people of Syria are no longer "caught between the mass executions of the (Islamic State) death cult and the chemical weapons of the Assad regime".
"It will be a decent and a compassionate response but it will also be a strong response," he said.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie moved to suspend question time and debate a motion calling for the government to resettle 30,000 Syrians.
"The scale of this humanitarian crisis cannot be underestimated," he said.
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