While the official result is still days away from being announced by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), a No vote across the country means the required double majority for the referendum to succeed looks an electoral impossibility.
As of 7.30pm, there seems to be no path to victory for the Yes vote with NSW, South Australia and Tasmania set to deliver a No vote.
Now the result is all but known, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who declared “I’ve done all I can” for the Yes vote before polls closed, is expected to address the nation from Canberra shortly in a call for unity across Australia following the divisive campaign.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will not speak tonight.
Opinion polls had consistently shown support for No had outweighed Yes voters in the months and weeks leading up to referendum day, and proved to be an accurate prediction of how the nation would vote.
That was despite a mammoth army of volunteers supporting the change – according to Yes23 director Dean Parkin, more than 80,000 contributed to the campaign today.
Julian Leeser, the Liberal MP who resigned as the party’s shadow attorney-general over its stance on the Voice, released a powerful statement once it became clear the referendum had failed to pass.
“To every Indigenous Australian I say, this was a vote about the Constitution, it was not a vote about you,” he said.
“It is an undeniable fact that you are our land’s first peoples and I honour you this night.”
Leading Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo told 9News supporters of the constitutional change had thrown everything at the referendum.
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“There has been so much hard work and I don’t think that we could have done anything different,” he said.
“I think there will be analysis later and we will see what those numbers have to say, but one thing is for sure, the No campaign has run a dishonest campaign, a lot of disinformation.
“But for us we have done everything right, we told the truth about what this is: simply recognition and listening to Indigenous people.”
In pictures: Australia votes on Voice to parliament referendum
That claim was rejected by No campaign leader Warren Mundine.
“We hadn’t done anything wrong,” he said.
“We have been clear on our messaging and our honesty in this whole campaign… we always had faith in the Australian people, we always believed in Australian people.
“But what we’ve got to do now, whatever the final result is tonight, what we’ve got to do is wake up in the morning and we’ve got to pull together as a nation, pull together as people and actually do the hard yards that need to be done.”
The result continued the trend of referendums requiring bipartisan support to succeed; of the 45 votes to alter Australia’s Constitution, only eight have succeeded, all of which were backed by the government and opposition.
