Refugee resettlement experts are confident Australia can rise to the occasion of welcoming 12,000 refugees from war-torn Syria, following the Federal Government's announcement of the one-off humanitarian intake earlier this week.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott will meet with experts, ethnic community leaders and religious groups this morning to discuss the influx.

The first refugees who have fled war-torn parts of the Middle East are likely to arrive by Christmas, under the $700 million plan announced on Tuesday.

Refugee advocate and the chief executive of the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, Paris Aristotle, said accommodation was not the sole concern.

"People will arrive elated, incredibly grateful and feeling incredibly positive about what we've been able to do for them," Mr Aristotle said.

"Then they'll go through a period of adjustment where the reality of family, of loved ones that they've lost, coming to grips with learning a new language and finding employment and so forth will start to weigh on them.

"The level of expertise that's available in Australia in fields of torture and trauma, in terms of settlement services, employment programs, English language programs are first rate."

Mr Aristotle said the intake of refugees was an "incredibly positive" development.

But he argued greater direction was required to ensure planning for their arrival was underway, as it was an almost doubling of the nation's yearly intake.

"We have the capacity to provide the services that are necessary no matter what people have been through, however horrible that may have been," Mr Aristotle said.

"One of the realities is that Australia is probably the best country in the world at providing settlement services to refugees. The High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said that publicly a couple of years ago.

"We'll have to coordinate them at a high scale, we'll have to be prepared to gear up to accommodate a larger intake, but I'm extremely confident that we'll be able to do that."

Uniting Care Australia national director Lin Hatfield Dodds is another to be invited to contribute to today's discussion.

She said Australia's response to refugee resettlement had been strong for many years, but service providers needed to gear up for the influx.

"People need help with food and food vouchers, assistance with telephone bills, navigating the Australian language if they don't have English," Ms Hatfield Dodds said.

"Pharmacy, health, education, jobs, public transport, there's a whole lot of very practical ways that settlement services operate, and I do think Australia has an extraordinarily good response in that regard."

Ms Hatfield Dodds said she had never been more proud to be an Australian following the outpouring of support from the community to the plight of Syrian refugees.

"There are still details to be ironed out in the plan ... so that we're not just bringing them in and dropping them into Australia, but that we're making sure people are safe where they are ... and then bringing them here with a view to, as the Prime Minister said, permanent settlement in Australia," she said.

"The challenges are going to be identifying persecuted minorities, stabilising people and bringing them here, and making sure that Australian communities and organisations like the Uniting Care network are ready to go.

"Could we do more? We probably can, but let's get going welcoming and settling these 12,000 people."