In Ballarat, John Barnes, a former mayor, well-known environmental advocate and candidate in the 2022 federal election, has polled incredibly strongly, achieving an almost six per cent swing for the party.

"I'm very surprised and very pleased, it's all I might have hoped for," he said on Sunday.

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"It is promising (in Ballarat) with the state election ahead of us, but the result yesterday for me personally was very humbling.

"i might be old, but people are not ageist, it would appear, it's nice."

The Greens claimed 14.5 per cent of first preferences in Ballarat, absorbing the 4.28 per cent of votes from the Animal Justice Party and adding a bit more to boot.

Across the country the Greens have picked up seats, and are polling strongly in Queensland and some seats in NSW. It appears the party has taken the seat of Griffith with a 14 per cent swing, is doing well in Ryan and may take the seat of Brisbane on preferences. Adam Bandt has been comfortably returned for the Greens in Melbourne.

The independent 'Teal' threat has also delivered, with Liberals like Tim Wilson losing the seat of Goldstein to Zoe Daniels, Josh Frydenberg struggling to hold Sir Robert Menzies's former seat of Kooyong, Dave Sharma behind Allegra Spender in Wentworth, and Zali Steggall easily retaining Tony Abbott's former seat of Warringah.

"To have the major parties reduce their primary vote and to have Greens and independents who are all worried about addressing climate crisis and corruption in government increase their vote is very encouraging," Mr Barnes said.

"I think the message from the election is that a lot of voters don't want the adversarial approach, the divisive approach, that has dominated for the last decade - they want their representatives in Canberra to behave like adults and think of the country.

"I think it will be an opportunity for the whole parliament to work, rather than the executive, to crack the whip, and if the Gillard government is any indication, it resulted in lots of good legislation and did not result in poor governance - quite the opposite."

The UAP and One Nation have also increased their swings across the country, although not to the extent of the Greens and Teals.

In Ballarat, the One Nation candidate Rosalie Taxis, who never responded to any questions from this paper and was a ghost candidate in the electorate, achieved about the same number of votes as the UAP's Terri Pryse-Smith and the Liberal Democrats' Julia McGrath.

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All of these "freedom"-focused parties polled just under 4 per cent each on first preferences, as of Sunday afternoon.

As expected, the UAP polled more strongly in the 2022 election than in previous years, however the leading candidate for the party, former Liberal Party member Craig Kelly, lost his seat of Hughes.

In Ballarat, 4,073 informal votes were cast, about 5.07 of the total.

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