A grindingly slow count of postal votes

Electoral officials insist the counting of votes from the weekend federal election is proceeding in a progressive and orderly way.

In other words, grindingly slow.

After about five hours of counting on Tuesday we're no closer to knowing the outcome in any of the nine seats too close to call, let alone which of the two parties won the election.

Labor scrutineers in the NSW south coast seat of Gilmore claim counting there has been suspended for the day because Australian Electoral Commission officials didn't have an implement to open thousands of envelopes containing postal votes.

The commission rejected the claim.

Preferences in the South Australian seat of Grey, which could make or break a majority for the coalition, have been distributed in only six of the 124 polling booths.

But the commission blames the slow count on the laws that govern elections and date back to 1918.

Its focus was on integrity and the one-person-one-vote principle, the AEC said in a statement.

That means determining whether each person is entitled to a vote before taking the ballot papers out of each envelope and then conducting the count in batches of between 1000 and 2000.

All divisions in Victoria, Tasmania and Northern Territory have completed the initial steps.

In other states that process is expected to be completed later in the day.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the long count was not unprecedented.

"I know many Australians find this sort of frustrating, the wait, and you can imagine that we are among them," he told reporters in Sydney.

"I'd be amazed if it wasn't resolved within a week."