Queensland's government is willing to provide homes for another 3500 refugees from Syria and Iraq.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says the sunshine state will welcome 29 per cent of the 12,000 additional Middle East refugees the federal government announced it would resettle earlier this year.
"I have no doubt Queenslanders will open our hearts to our newest arrivals," she told parliament.
"We have been working with refugee services to establish just how many of those 12,000 people could find homes in Queensland; how many people we could offer fresh hope and a new life.
"I always said that we would take our fair share, but this offer exceeds that."
Western Downs mayor Ray Brown told SBS News he had made an offer to the Queensland government to welcome 500 refugee families to homes spread throughout six towns in the Darling Downs.
"We certainly have the capability and the capacity to do it, [but] it's whether the general population has the compassion," he said.
"We have a huge amount of rental vacancies."
Cr Brown said the Western Downs region, which had a permanent population of about 34,000, had low unemployment and a strong agricultural sector.
But he acknowledged further help would be needed from the federal government, if his offer is taken up, to provide the support and language services the refugees would need.
Cr Brown said accepting the refugees would be one way the Darling Downs area could give back after the help the region had received following the devastating floods in 2010 and 2011.
"I would advocate unstead of money being given in welfare, have vouchers like we were given, so the local businesses benefit," he said.
He said there had been some backlash, particularly on social media, following his offer to the Queensland government, but he said a lot of the negative comments had come from outside the area.
"The majority of people are in favour of it," he said.
The refugees would be encouraged to integrate into the local communities, like Vietnamese refugees had done previously, Cr Brown said.
"If the federal government is keen to make a difference then we can actually help."
- with AAP
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