NSW Premier Mike Baird has challenged Prime Minister Tony Abbott to do more to help Syrian refugees, saying "stopping the boats can't be where this ends".

Mr Baird has taken to his Facebook page on Saturday afternoon to express his "overwhelming sorrow", despair and anger at the image of the drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi, whose body was washed ashore on a Turkish beach this week.

Mr Baird says the photo "changes everything".

"I turned away, but that image will never leave me. That photo isn't just a story of one tragedy. It is the story of thousands of real people in a fight for life itself," Mr Baird writes.

He said the crisis unfolding in Syria has been apparent for a while.

"But that photo. That little boy. I found that as the feeling of anger dulled, my next response was…. surely we can do more. But what is "more" and what does it look like?"

He said NSW had the strongest economy in the nation and it was ready to help the vulnerable beyond its borders and do whatever is needed.

In a challenge to the Abbott Government's policy on border protection, Mr Baird writes that the federal government needs to go beyond its commitment to increase its humanitarian intake over several years.

"And we should do it now," he writes.

"It is a great thing that we don't have children drowning at sea trying to get to our shores. That has been a significant humanitarian achievement. But stopping the boats can't be where this ends. It is surely where humanitarianism begins."

Mr Baird said he would discuss the issue with the Abbott government, and how NSW could work with it to do more, in the coming days.

"We cannot see the images we have seen, and feel the things we have felt, and then go back to business as usual," he writes.