Frustration with the government was enough to swing some crucial marginal NSW electorates back to Labor but likely not enough for it to win a majority of seats in the parliament, with counting to continue following the close election results.
Tallying the votes from Saturday's election continued late into the evening and so far it appears the coalition has won 22 of the 47 NSW electorates, with Labor holding 23 and two not yet determined, according to the he Australian Electoral Commission.
The result follows a 3.42 per cent national swing to the ALP on a two-party preferred count, which helped it pick up several prized marginal seats.
One of the seats to return to Labor was Barton where former NSW opposition deputy leader Linda Burney successfully made the jump to national politics and has become the first indigenous woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.
She has credited Labor's success to the party's campaign focused on potential changes to Medicare, which had been dismissed by the coalition as baseless scare tactics.
Ms Burney, who secured the southern Sydney seat of Barton from Liberal MP Nick Varvaris, said Sydney voters were concerned about Medicare privatisation.
"The other issue was the fact that the Turnbull government ... made an announcement that they would not support the full six years of Gonski funding," she told reporters in Sydney.
The popular MP made the switch to federal politics after 13 years as state member for the safe Labor seat of Canterbury.
Ms Burney said her biggest priority for her new job in Canberra would be to push for the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Dr Stewart Jackson, Australian politics expert at the University of Sydney, said Labor had done well across Sydney, likely due to frustration with the government.
"When you look at where the swings are in the outer west ... if those voters are not happy, for example with problems like housing or rail infrastructure, then they're prepared to take it out on the government," he said.
And when counting is finished he expects about a dozen seats to be held with margins between one and two per cent.
The southern seat of Eden-Monaro may lose its long-held reputation as a bellwether, with Labor's Mike Kelly likely to win the seat he lost in 2013, despite experts predicting a coalition government.
"It's not held a change of a government at this point," Dr Jackson said.
"Eden-Monaro is still there with the Labor Party, perhaps its bellwether is status over."
Nationally the coalition had 72 seats in the 150-seat lower house, Labor 67, Greens 1 and independents four, after a swag of pre-poll votes was added to the national count early on Sunday morning.
Six seats remain in doubt with Labor leading in four, and the coalition ahead in two.
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