Labor holds on in Hunter, but not so tightly - ABC Local

The region's only existing marginal seat, Paterson, was held as expected by Liberal Bob Baldwin, the first of the local members to declare victory.

With a four percent swing in his favour, the seat can now be considered a safe Liberal seat.

Jill Hall was able to hang on to her seat of Shortland, but a high-profile campaign by her Liberal opponent, John Church, saw a swing to him of almost six percent, reducing her margin to just 7%.

In Newcastle, Labor's Sharon Claydon succeeded in taking over the seat from retiring MP, Sharon Grierson.

The seat remains the only original Federal electorate to never be held by the Liberals.

Unlike previous campaigns in what is usually seen as an unwinnable seat by the Liberals, this time they threw a strong effort behind their candidate, Jaimie Abbott.

She told 1233 ABC Newcastle's Jill Emberson she has no regrets despite her loss.

"I feel great because we gave it everything we could," she said.

"Even if we threw, say a million dollars at the seat, we had 2000 more people, I still think that's the result we would have got.

"We had TV ads, the radio ads, I was door-knocking, I gave up my job at the airforce base a couple of months ago to go full-time door-knocking.

"There's no stone left unturned and that was the best result we could achieve."

Denying reports that the Liberal Party had spent a million dollars on the Newcastle campaign, Ms Abbott acknowledged it was different to any previous campaign they'd run in the seat.

"The Liberal Party has never run a campaign like that in Newcastle before, and we picked up a whole heap of supporters," she said.

At only 31 years of age, Ms Abbott is open to having another crack at the seat.

"I wouldn't rule out running again in future," she says. "I don't regret anything.

"I mean, we did get 25,000 people in Newcastle put me as number one."

However, Ms Abbott was only able to chip away a swing of 3.2% from Labor's 12.5% margin.

In Hunter, former Agriculture Minister Joel Fitzgibbon held on but suffered the State's largest swing against the ALP.

The 8.6% swing has significantly reduced his previous margin of 12.5%, but Mr Fitzgibbon says much of the swing went to the Palmer United Party and not his National Party opponent, Michael Johnsen.

As for returning to Opposition, Mr Fitzgibbon described it as "deja vu" after previously spending 11 years there, and says "it's a tough place to be, Opposition".

He now sees his role as "protecting the Hunter from a tough time under the Abbott government".

"Under John Howard we got buggerall," Mr Fitzgibbon says.

He's concerned the new Prime Minister will bring back individual contracts, remove penalty rates and make big budget cuts.

Mr Fitzgibbon, while declining to tip who the next Labor leader will be, blames the party's problems on the decision to remove Kevin Rudd during his first term as Prime Minister.

"Not only did that have huge impact in the electorate, it caused ongoing internal divisions that never really healed," he says.

"And so the damage just went on and on and on."

In Charlton, vacated by retiring Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, Pat Conroy retained the seat for Labor and kept the swing against the ALP to under 3%.

Bizarrely enough, Liberal candidate Kevin Baker, who was disendorsed a fortnight before the election due to a scandal over a website, still attracted 40% of the vote.