The first two Syrian refugees of the 250 slated to come to Canberra under the Federal government's special intake of 12,000 have arrived in the city.
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Community Services Minister Yvette Berry has welcomed the pair, believed to be an adult mother and daughter, to the ACT and said the territory was ready, willing and able to take more.
"The ACT has recently welcomed two Syrian refugees to Canberra under the additional intake of 250 refugees through the Commonwealth government's resettlement program," she said.
"Along with the community, we are ready to take more Syrian refugees when asked to do so by the Commonwealth."
Ms Berry said that in addition to the two Syrians, the ACT had also welcomed nine families, totalling 36 people, from Iraq who had been fleeing ISIS.
These are part of the "baseline intake" under the 2015-16 humanitarian program for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
Once refugees have been cleared for entry to Australia by Immigration and Border Security and national security agencies, their resettlement is handled by the Department of Social Services.
"As at May 9, 2016, 1433 Syrian and Iraqi refugees have resettled in Australia under both the 2015-16 Humanitarian program and the additional 12,000 places [announced on September 9 last year]," a DSS spokesman said.
"The additional 12,000 places are being delivered in parallel with the annual humanitarian program intake for Syrians and Iraqis which, this year, is 4850 out of the total program of 13,750.
"[A total of] 55 people have arrived in the ACT under the humanitarian intake from Syria and Iraq. Humanitarian entrants will continue to arrive in Australia during the election period."
Kathy Ragless, the director of Canberra-based asylum seeker support service Companion House, said it had been "a long wait".
"There was an enormous community response to the increase in the humanitarian program [when it was first announced]," she said.
"We are looking forward to more following. There are already Syrians in Canberra who have come here in other ways and some have established businesses and are raising families.
"As people start building their own futures they help build the future for the rest of the ACT as well."
Archbishop Christopher Prowse, the Catholic Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn, hopes the new arrivals will be the first of many.
He saw the conditions in the refugee camps in Iraq and Lebanon first hand during a visit to the Middle East in 2014.
"I have never met a single refugee who wanted to leave their home," he said. "People flee because they have to. They have much to teach us and their experiences raise questions about what it means to be free."
He said Canberrans who helped refugees and asylum seekers integrate into the community were thinking globally and acting locally.
"Our recent arrivals are the human face of something most people have only seen on the news."
Immigration and Border Protection has been criticised in the past for the time it has taken to start moving Syrian and Iraqi refugees through the system.
Fairfax reported in February that Canada had resettled 20,490 Syrian refugees in the same time it had taken Australia to process 26.
