Votes are being counted in Australia’s general elections with the Labor Party opposition tipped to win based on exit and opinion polls.
The party could win as many as 82 seats in the 151-seat House of Representatives, where parties need a majority to form government, according to a Galaxy exit poll.
As results came out it emerged former Liberal PM Tony Abbott had lost his seat of Warringah which he had held for 25 years.
Commenting on the votes, Labour deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said: "I feel positive. I feel like we are ahead, but I am more cautiously optimistic than confident.”
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said he was confident Labour would win.
Opinion polls also suggest the conservative Liberal Party-led coalition will lose its bid for a third three-year term. This would see Scott Morrison have one of the shortest tenures as prime minister in the 118-year history of the Australian federation.
Mr Morrison is the conservatives' third prime minister since they were first elected in 2013 and replaced Malcolm Turnbull in a leadership ballot of government colleagues in August.
On the day of the votes he was campaigning in the island state of Tasmania, in seats he hopes his party will win from the centre-left Labour Party.
After that he flew 560 miles home to Sydney to campaign and vote.
He would not be drawn on a prediction and said: "Tonight the votes will be counted up and we'll see what the outcome is. I make no assumptions about tonight.”
Previously Mr Morrison, a 51-year-old former tourism marketer, said he had closed Labour's lead in opinion polls during the five-week campaign and predicted a close result.
Mr Shorten contained his campaigning to polling centres in his home city of Melbourne and voted there on Saturday morning.
He said he expected Labour would start governing from Sunday and said his top priorities would be to increase wages for low-paid workers, hike pay rates for working Sundays and reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.
"The world will know that if Labour gets elected, Australia's back in the fight against climate change," he said.
Mr Shorten, a 52-year-old former union leader, has also promised a range of reforms, including the government paying all of patients' costs for cancer treatment and a reduction of tax breaks for landlords.
An opinion poll published in The Australian newspaper on Saturday put Labour ahead of the conservatives 51.5 per cent to 48.5.
The Newspoll-brand survey was based on a nationwide canvass of 3,038 voters from Monday to Friday and has a 1.8 percentage point margin of error.
Voting in Australia's eastern states, where most of the 25 million population lives, ended at 6pm, 8am GMT.
Polls close on the west coast two hours later.
