Labor MPs already saying government lost

The federal coalition will win government, a number of Labor MPs say.

Defence minister Stephen Smith was the first to admit Labor would lose at 6.05pm - minutes after polling booths closed in eastern Australia.

"The government will be defeated tonight," Mr Smith, who is retiring at this election, told ABC television on Saturday.

Labor would need to start rebuilding its stocks with a new generation of MPs, he added.

Labor Speaker Anna Burke said she had been feeling Labor wasn't going to get over the line for the past two weeks.

"The Liberal Party will win this election," she told Fairfax radio.

"It will just depend on the numbers that it falls to whether it is a landslide or it's a comfortable majority."

But cabinet minister Tanya Plibersek wasn't giving up.

"I'm not conceding defeat yet," she told ABC television.

Former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke told Sky TV it was a sad day for the party.

"Sad, because we had a very good period back there in the 1980s and 1990s," he said.

He blamed personality politics for the way the election campaign had gone.

"It's been disappointing to see the way in which the sort of standards and values which we established and which were embraced by the Australian people seem to have been, to some extent, lost," Mr Hawke said.

"I really believe this is an election lost by the government rather than won by Tony Abbott."

The coalition needs a net gain of just one seat to form government and two seats for an absolute majority in the lower house with its own Speaker.

Labor needs a net gain of five seats to remain in power.

But exit polls point to a clear win for Tony Abbott's Liberal-National coalition.

The coalition is tipped to pick up 14 seats in NSW, seven in Queensland, three in Victoria and one in Western Australia - which would take their numbers to 97 in the 150-seat parliament.

The Seven Network's election panellists were asked to raise their hands if they still believed Labor could win. The sole believer was Sports and Tourism Minister Don Farrell.

"Your loyalty is disarming," former Howard government minister Alexander Downer told him.

Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said voters were punishing Labor for disunity.

"You do get marked down when there's a perception or reality of disunity and no doubt that's one of the issues that's come through in terms of the election campaign itself," he told the Seven network from his Sydney electorate.

Ms Plibersek said she was "very nervous about nine seats in NSW."

However, Labor was quietly confident of Treasurer Chris Bowen retaining his western Sydney seat of McMahon.

Early counting of votes across a number of electorates are pointing to large swings against Labor, basing on first preference flows.

In Eden-Monaro in NSW - a seat which has been won by every sitting government since the 1970s - there was an early swing against Labor MP Mike Kelly of 11.45 per cent, with 0.6 per cent of the vote counted.

In Braddon in Tasmania, Labor's Sid Sidebottom was looking at a swing against him of 13.66 per cent with 1.82 per cent of the vote counted.

Former Queensland premier and Labor's candidate for the seat of Forde Peter Beattie said the vote was the result of public anger over "leadership divisions that took place over the last six years".

"People didn't like the division and that played into Tony Abbott's views about change," he told Seven.

"That is the reason why this election is going the way that it is. That is the core issue."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seized the leadership from Julia Gillard in June, three years after she toppled him in 2010.

Mr Albanese said the Labor party spent "too much time talking ourselves down, whether on behalf of Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard."

"The electorate clearly has view that we need to be united, they want to vote for a united party."

Mr Smith said there had been "some hope" earlier in the election campaign that Labor follow the 1993 example of former prime minister Paul Keating who beat the coalition's John Hewson against the odds.

But as the campaign drew to close, it was obvious the result was going to be more like 1996, when John Howard defeated Mr Keating after a six per cent swing against Labor.

"This is a 1996 type election," Mr Smith said.

"The question will be how far will the blows go to the loss of Labor seats."

Australian Workers Union boss Paul Howes said there'd been a 10.5 per cent swing against Labor across Tasmania.

"That will make the seats of Braddon and Bass very very difficult for Labor."

He also said Page, in NSW, was seeing an 8.5 per cent swing against Labor.

Labor strategist Bruce Hawker was reluctant to talk to media ahead of Mr Rudd's arrival at Labor's election function at the Brisbane cricket ground in Queensland.

"Maybe tomorrow, but not tonight," he told AAP, while holding a glass of wine.

In the room was actor Rhys Muldoon and Queensland Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk.

It was pointing to Labor losing the Tasmanian seat of Lyons, held by Dick Adams, as well as Braddon, and the northern NSW seat of Page held by Janelle Saffin.

But Mike Kelly appeared to be rebounding in Eden-Monaro, with the swing against him narrowing to 3.81 per cent on a first preference basis, with more than 20,000 votes counted.

Former treasurer Wayne Swan also appeared to be holding on in his Queensland seat of Lilley.

Results were yet to come in for Mr Rudd's seat of Griffith.

Mr Smith said: "If we end up with a number of seats with a five in front of it then I'll be pleased at the end of the night."

Mr Kelly said the tough battle to hold his seat of Eden-Monaro had been tough, as it was for Labor MPs across the country.

"It's always tough to run a campaign in circumstances where you've got a foreign billionaire telling his empire how to campaign against you," he told ABC television, referring to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia newspapers.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Julia Gillard's old seat of Lalor also looks likely to retained by the new Labor candidate Joanne Ryan.

Ms Gillard used Twitter to send her congratulations, saying Ms Ryan would be a strong voice "for a proud community we both love".