Prime Minister Tony Abbott told parliament that he called his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak to relay the "new and credible information" about potential aircraft wreckage.
Search teams involving 26 countries are trying to locate Boeing flight MH370, which went missing an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8 with 239 people on board, including five Indians and one Indian-Canadian.
"The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received the information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search," Abbott said.
Abbott said an Australian Air Force Orion has been sent to locate the objects and three more aircraft will follow this Orion. "They are tasked for more intensive follow up search."
"The task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult...And it may be they do not relate to the aircraft," he told parliament.
Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) official John Young said the objects were located in the southern Indian Ocean about 2,500km south-west of Perth on Australia's west coast and the largest one sighted is 24 metres long.
He said the objects were "probably awash with water and bobbing up and down over the surface".
Young said the weather conditions are moderate but poor visibility is hampering the search at the moment.
"We have been in this business of doing search and rescue and using sat (satellite) images before and they do not always turn out to be related to the search even if they look good," he cautioned.