‘We have given our all’: Albanese pledges unity after defeat on Voice

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called for a “new national purpose” to tackle Indigenous disadvantage after a resounding defeat for the Voice, with 59 per cent of voters rejecting the proposal at Saturday’s referendum.

The campaign for change gained only 41 per cent of the national vote and lost in every state after years of debate over constitutional reform, igniting claims from the Yes camp that its rivals engaged in lies to fool the electorate.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the referendum result must be met with grace and humility. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Albanese took responsibility for the result but told voters he was a “conviction politician” who honoured his promise to Indigenous leaders to embrace the Voice and take it to a referendum.

“This moment of disagreement does not define us and it will not divide us,” he said.

“We are not Yes voters or No voters, we are all Australians. And it is as Australians, together, that we must take our country beyond this debate without forgetting why we had it in the first place.”

The prime minister sought to calm advocates for change who accused the No side of “horrible” tactics to destroy the Voice, which was proposed by Indigenous leaders in a statement at Uluru six years ago.

“The Uluru Statement from the Heart was an invitation extended with humility, grace and optimism for the future,” Albanese said.

“Tonight, we must meet this result with the same grace and humility.”

But he defended his carriage of the campaign by saying he and others pledged to give Australians the chance to decide for themselves whether the Voice should be approved.

“We have kept that promise. We have given our all. We argued for this change, not out of convenience but from conviction, because that’s what people deserve from their government.

“And, of course, when you do the hard things, when you aim high, sometimes you fall short.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton blamed Albanese for the failure and said voters should be frustrated with the prime minister for asking them to vote for the Voice without giving them details about how it would operate.

Dutton committed to an audit of spending on Indigenous programs and a royal commission into child sexual abuse in First Nations communities.

“Australians were always going to reject a proposition which divided us into different categories,” he said.

“One of the great attributes of the Australian public is that we all see ourselves as equal. It doesn’t matter if you came here six months ago … or 60 years ago, or [have] 65,000 years of ancestry in this country.

“We’re all equal Australians. And I think the Australian public rejected the prime minister’s proposition to divide us on the basis of ancestry or race – and that’s a great thing for our country.”

Coalition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, one of the most visible No advocates, said it was a shame the Yes side wrongly claimed there was misinformation when the case for change was a campaign of “no information”.

Price said voters had said no to “grievance” and the push from activists to suggest Australia was a racist country.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, said Australians were “always going to reject a proposition which divided us into different categories”.Credit: Dan Peled

“We are absolutely not a racist country,” she said.

“We are one of the, if not the, greatest nations on the face of the earth. And it’s time for Australians to believe that once again.”

The verdict from voters became clear shortly after 7pm, only one hour after polls closed on the east coast, in a sign of the strong mood against the call to enshrine the Voice in the nation’s founding document.

NSW voters rejected the Voice by 58 per cent in the count at 10pm, while Victorians were 54 per cent against. Queensland led the No vote, with 67 per cent against, followed by South Australia with 64 per cent opposed.

Tasmanian voters rejected the Voice by 59 per cent, and Western Australia was 60 per cent against.

While Albanese called for grace and humility, leading Yes campaigners turned on Dutton and the No camp in a blistering accusation that they had spread lies and misinformation in the campaign, a claim the No side denied.

“There has been some really horrible political campaigning from Peter Dutton and his No campaign. It’s been disgusting to be frank,” said Thomas Mayo, a union official and a key leader of the Yes side, on the ABC.

“I think that the Australian public were ready for this. I disagree when people say that, that they weren’t, I disagree that this was a bad idea.”

Mayo said voters should “look very closely” at those who had lied during this campaign when they next cast their votes, in a clear reference to Dutton and the next federal election.

“I think Albanese was courageous. I think he was empathetic. I think he genuinely wanted this change. And he has done the right thing by putting it to the people. So it’s not his fault,” Mayo said.

“It’s not the Australian people’s fault. It’s the people that have lied to us to the Australian people. They are the ones that we should be blaming.”

Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin told supporters in Sydney on Saturday night that the No side had used misinformation to win.

“We did everything we could to cast the net wide across the political spectrum and the legal spectrum to ensure that what we proposed was strong,” he said.

“But it is clear from the result that we were not able to reach you through that, and we were not able to reach you and cut through what has been the single largest misinformation campaign that this country has ever seen.”

Yes campaigner Marcus Stewart, the co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, said the message was that political leaders needed to do better.

“Australian people are not racist if they voted No. I want to be absolutely, categorically clear,” he said.

No campaign leaders, including the Fair Australia group that led the case against change, have denied using lies or misinformation in social media campaigns that cited advocates for the Voice who have called over time for compensation for First Australians.

Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe, who opposed the Voice because she wanted sovereignty and treaty instead, said she was not surprised by the result “given the country has not been taken on a journey and the referendum was ultimately a bad idea in the first place”.

“I’m not surprised we’ve got No votes coming out strongly because people either don’t know what it’s about, or, for the blak sovereign movement, we don’t want it going in the Constitution,” she said on the ABC.

Some of the strongest support for the Voice came from city seats held by the “teal” independents who campaigned for the change, with the Melbourne seat of Goldstein (held by Zoe Daniel) voting 61 per cent in favour in the early count and nearby Kooyong (held by Monique Ryan) being 60 per cent in favour.

The same pattern emerged in Sydney seats, with Mackellar (held by Sophie Scamps) in favour by 54 per cent, North Sydney (held by Kylea Tink) in favour by 62 per cent, Warringah (held by Zali Steggall) in favour by 61 per cent and Wentworth (held by Allegra Spender) in favour by 64 per cent.

Support for the Voice was 77 per cent in Albanese’s seat of Grayndler in NSW and the No vote was 60 per cent in Dutton’s seat of Dickson in Queensland.

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