"I don't believe this is the end for the Nats, I do believe we will come back in time," she said.

"I think it was very difficult to remove a popular incumbent who was telling many stories. I believe with another candidate we can do it next time because there was really feeling for us."

Mrs Hazelton said they had run a positive campaign.

"When I took on the role two months ago I was told we would be starting at zero," she said.

"I would like to acknowledge my opposition, the other candidates have fought very hard, I'm glad to say we ran a positive campaign, it was positive the whole way and I know the other side had runs of negativity but the voters of this electorate have chosen and I will accept that with as much grace as possible."

Country Labor's Luke Sanger said he hoped for more votes but was happy about how part of it turned out.

"It's looking good for Phil [Donato], and I always like seeing a 40 per cent swing against the Nationals.  [We] just need our count to tick up a bit," he said.

He conceded he wished he'd done more work in the community to get his name into the minds of voters.

"I didn't get involved in controversy, I tried to fight them on policy," he said.

"I want to send my heartfelt thanks to all my supporters and hard-working volunteers."

Greens candidate Stephen Nugent said he was surprised by the size of the swing to Mr Donato.

"I would want to say 'congratulations' to Phil Donato on a quite stunning result. By getting half, there was only half the votes left for the other eight candidates to compete for," he said.

"I would have liked to see our vote increase a little bit but it stayed where we were in 2016. Anything above 5 per cent [I said] I would be pretty happy with. It was an OK result without being a really great result."