An Australian aircraft searching for the missing Malaysian jetliner has spotted two objects in the ocean, different from those found by a Chinese plane earlier, and they can be retrieved within hours or around early Tuesday at the latest.

"The crew on board the (P-3) Orion reported seeing two objects, the first a grey or green circular object and the second an orange rectangular object," Prime Minister Tony Abbott told the parliament on Monday.

Abbott said Australia did not know whether any of these objects in the southern Indian Ocean were from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. "They could be flotsom," he said.

But he added: "Nevertheless, we are hopeful that we can recover these objects soon and they will take us a step closer to resolving this tragic mystery."

The Boeing 777-200, with 239 people on board, went missing on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein also told a press conference Monday "two orange objects approximately one meter in length and one white colored drum were sighted by search aircraft."

"HMAS Success detected two radar targets within the search area, but could not locate the targets on further investigation of the area," the minister said.

He added the ship was in the vicinity and it was possible the objects could be located within the next few hours, or by tomorrow morning at the latest.

The objects were spotted in the search area about 2,500 km south-west of Perth about 2:45 p.m. local time (0345 GMT), according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).

"The objects identified by the RAAF Orion are separate to the objects reported by the Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 to AMSA earlier today," the statement said.

Earlier Monday, a Xinhua correspondent aboard a Chinese IL-76 aircraft said the searchers saw two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered within a radius of several kilometers on the southern Indian Ocean.

A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft was unable to relocate the objects reported by the Chinese aircraft.