The coalition has defended its leader Tony Abbott's baddies versus baddies description of the Syrian crisis as a sophisticated analysis.
The opposition leader has backed any US military action against Syria but says it has to be carefully targeted and proportionate so it doesn't make a bad situation worse.
A political solution to avoid the need for military action would be terrific but wasn't likely, Mr Abbott said.
He called the Syrian regime's use of poison gas against its own people an utter abomination.
"That said, any punitive strike has got to be targeted, it's got to be proportionate and it's got to be carefully considered to try to ensure that as far as is humanly possible we aren't making a bad situation worse," he told ABC television on Sunday.
Mr Abbott said the Syrian conflict was a civil war between two pretty unsavoury sides.
"It's not goodies versus baddies, it's baddies versus baddies and that's why it's very important that we don't make a very difficult situation worse," he said.
Labor seized on this phrasing as a reason why Mr Abbott is not fit to represent Australia in any international forum and should not be voted in as prime minister in the election on Saturday.
Labor campaign spokeswoman Penny Wong said Mr Abbott sounded like he was talking about a game of cops and robbers when discussing foreign policy.
"When asked about the difficult situation in Syria and what his view about this was, his view on foreign policy appears to be not always goodies versus baddies but it can be baddies versus baddies," she told Sky News.
But coalition campaign spokesman Christopher Pyne defended his leader's comments about the situation in Syria as an "extremely sophisticated" analysis as neither side was covered in glory.
"In the Syrian civil war, both sides are very unattractive ... it's actually more sophisticated to recognise that, than to try and pretend as Penny Wong does that there's somehow cowboys and indians and one side is good and one side is bad."
"In the Syrian conflict it's important to understand that both sides are deeply unpleasant and that trying to choose a side is a very foolish thing to do," Mr Pyne told reporters in Adelaide.
In the US, President Barack Obama will ask Congress to authorise military action against Syria, raising the possibility of immediate strikes on President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Mr Abbott said all Australian governments instinctively wanted to support our closest ally, the US, and also to uphold universal human decencies.
Just three nations possess the ability to take military action against Syria. These are the US, Britain which has ruled itself out and France, which has very limited capacity, he said.
President Obama has said the UN Security Council is completely paralysed.
Mr Abbott said that was a difficulty between the US, Britain and France on one side and Russia and China on the other.
"Where the security council is for whatever reason ineffective, there is precedent for right-thinking powers to take action and that was in the former Yugoslavia when Britain, the US and other countries took action in Kosovo," he said.
