Australians reject historic Indigenous Voice referendum

The rejection of today's Voice referendum is not unusual in Australia.

Australians have voted in 44 referendums since the Federation of Australia was formed in 1901, but only eight of those have passed.

The most recent one before today's vote was on whether Australia should become a republic. That was held in 1999 and returned a No vote of 55%.

It’s been more than 40 years since Australians last approved a change to their constitution. In 1977, the country voted Yes on a referendum consisting of three questions regarding a retirement age for judges, whether voters in Australian territories (not just states) could vote in referendums, and whether the government could hire covers for temporary vacancies in the senate.

But if it feels like Australia held a major non-political vote more recently, you might be thinking of the 2017 vote on marriage equality. That was a plebiscite, which is a non-binding, temperature-taking vote on an issue, which returned a 61% vote in favour of same-sex marriage.

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More comments from opposition leader Peter Dutton who says that Australians would always reject a proposition which divided its people into different categories.

"One of the great attributes of the Australian public is that we all see ourselves as equal. It doesn't matter if you came six months ago, or 60 years ago, or have 65,000 years of ancestry in this country. We are all equal Australians," he said.

"I think the Australian public rejected the proposition to divide us on the basis of ancestry or race and that is a great thing for our country. We shouldn't shy away from that. Our nation's rulebook is incredibly important. It underpins the success of our country.

"Australians have stood up today to defend that, to defend our history and to make sure that our future is certain."

The strongest Yes vote - 73% - was in the city electorate of Melbourne, typically viewed as one of Australia's most liberal. The seat is held by the leader of the Australian Greens party, Adam Bandt.

Meanwhile, the strongest No vote - 84.1%- was in Maranoa, a rural electorate in country Queensland, which is the seat of Nationals leader David Littleproud. The Nationals are the junior partner of the conservative opposition coalition. Mr Littleproud was one of the prominent opposition politicians out campaigning today and criticising the Voice.

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In light of the referendum results, the ABC earlier asked Warren Mundine, a leading figure in the vote No camp, if reconciliation is dead in Australia.

"No, just because a proposal put forward was rejected by the Australia public?" said Mr Mundine who is an Indigenous man.

"There are two things that I have heard in the polling booth is that people are sick of bad outcomes, and they are sick of governments making things up, they want it fixed," he said.

Mr Mundine said the referendum was a waste of time and resources, and should never have been called in the first place. "They were promised something that didn't exist," he said, "It was built on a lie that Aboriginal people did not have a voice."

"You sort of wonder why we spent hundreds of millions of dollars when we should have actually been spending that money on those communities that are struggling," he added.

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Aunty Shirley Lomas, in the room at the Yes campaign headquarters in Sydney, said she had grown up in a segregated Australia.

She said she was wearing blue, for autism, to represent her profoundly disabled son who received poorer health care and access as an Indigenous man.

“I don’t understand people voting No - visceral voters will always vote No because they have a deep seated ingrained fear.

"But we won’t go away. They’ve embarrassed themselves in front of the whole world.

"And tomorrow’s another day. We’ll be back. We’re not going anywhere. We’ve been here all this time you won’t push us around.

She said she wasn’t despairing - “we’ll just go back to the drawing board.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton characterises the Voice as "the referendum that Australia did not need to have."

"The proposal and the process should have been designed to unite Australians, not to divide us.

"What we've seen tonight is Australians literally in their millions reject the Prime Minister's defensive referendum."

Dutton added that Prime Minister Albanese "clearly was not across the detail, and he refused to explain or answer reasonable questions from Australians."

Albanese earlier criticised the conservative Liberal coalition for refusing to endorse the Voice proposal - noting that no referendum has ever passed in Australia without bipartisan support.

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finished speaking now - where he called for a new way forward.

"Tomorrow we must seek a new way forward with the same optimism," Albanese said, adding that he still believes the referendum was the right thing to do.

"We argued for this change, not out of convenience but out of conviction," he said.

"But when you do the hard things, when you aim high, some times you fall short and tonight we acknowledged, understand, and respect that we have."

"As prime minister, I will always accept responsibility for the decisions I've taken and I will do so tonight."

"This moment of disagreement does not define or divide us. We are not Yes or No voters, we are all Australians, and it is as Australians together that we must take our country beyond this debate."

Minutes after the projection that the Northern Territory had also voted No, the room here in Darwin fell silent as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared on screen.

Several people cried, others shook their heads as he addressed the nation “I never imagined or indeed said that it would be easy. Very few things in public life worth doing are,” he said.

“Just as the Uluru Statement from the Heart was an invitation extended with humility, grace and optimism for the future, tonight we must meet this result with the same grace and humility.

“And tomorrow we must seek a new way forward with the same optimism.”

Directly addressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Australia's prime minister Anthony Albanese asked them to maintain hope.

He said he realised the campaign has been a "heavy weight to carry" - and that the result would be very hard to bear.

"So many remarkable Indigenous Australians have put their heart and soul into this cause, not just over the past few weeks and months, but through decades, indeed lifetimes, of advocacy. I have been honoured and humbled to stand by you and witness your extraordinary courage and grace, your great love for our country and your deep faith in our people," he said.

He added that while constitutional change may not have happened tonight, "change has happened in our great nation".

"Maintain your hope and know that you are loved," he said.

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Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is addressing the nation on the outcome of the vote.

Click the play button above to watch live.

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I'm at the Yes campaign headquarters as the director of the campaign Dean Parkin addresses the crowd gathered there. He thanked the estimated seven million Australians who voted Yes, and the 80,000 volunteers.

"This is a very difficult result, a hard result. Thank you to the millions who've joined us and accepted us in this movement. But obviously this was not the result we were seeking, not the result anyone of us wanted.

Campaigners and activists, supporters next to me had tears in their eyes. The man next to me was wiping tears from his face.

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Mr Parkin addressed both the supporters in the room and those who voted No "with hardness in their hearts".

"What we've done in the seven months since this campaign took off, we've created a base of one million people a month, seven million Australians who voted Yes. We've now created a base of support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country. It is a base, not a summit. We will build on this."

Polls in Western Australia, where Perth is located, only close in about 30 minutes. So voters are still standing in line to cast their ballots.

That's despite the outcome of the result already widely declared across the country.

One woman who was set to vote Yes found out about the results while in the queue at the polling station. She told the ABC that she felt deflated and disappointed.

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If you're just joining us, the latest news is that Australians have voted No and rejected a historical Indigenous referendum known as the Voice.

Here are some details about what the referendum was about and what we know about its outcome.

What is the Voice?

The Voice sought to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander body to advise the government on the issues affecting their communities. As well as creating an advisory body, the amendment sought to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as Australia’s First Peoples in its constitution.

What did the No campaign say?

The official No campaign said the Voice was a "radical" proposal that would "permanently divide" the country by giving First Nations people greater rights than other Australians.

It also argued the Voice is "a leap into the unknown" because it hasn't been "road-tested", pointing to the lack of detail about how it would operate.

Grassroots groups - such as the Indigenous-led Black sovereign movement - have spoken out against the Voice for other reasons though. Their argument is that it would be "another powerless advisory body" and that treaty negotiations should be prioritised instead.

What did Yes campaigners say?

They said Constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples as the first inhabitants of Australia would drive practical change and argued that having an Indigenous-led elected advisory body would deliver real improvements in areas such as life expectancy, infant mortality, health, education and employment.

They believed such a body would also help governments use funding more effectively and also symbolically give Australia a chance to reconcile with its past as it charts its future.

How was the vote called so quickly?

In order to succeed, the Voice needed a majority of voters in a majority of states. That means over 50% of the population and at least four out of the country’s six states would have needed to say Yes. But early vote counting showed very quickly that three states - Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales - had voted No, meaning that the referendum could not pass.

Stay with us as we bring you more updates on reactions to this outcome.

As the votes count continues to roll in, we'll bring you all the reaction from across the country.

Yes figures are already expressing heartbreak and frustration, but we're yet to hear from key No campaigners, who are gathering in Brisbane tonight.

"I'm devastated," Thomas Mayo, the leader Yes campaigner, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in response to the rejection of the Voice to Parliament referendum.

"We need a voice, we need structural change." he said. "But we have seen a disgusting No campaign that has been dishonest with the Australian people, and have lied to the Australian people."

He said he doesn't know what's next, but that he remains sure that the public is ready for the reform.

"I disagree that this is a bad idea, we needed this foundational change to be recognised and a representative body, not politicians who purport to speak for us, but for us to choose our leaders ourselves," he said.

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