Jacinta Price thanks nation for goodwill after voice referendum result

In rejecting the voice, Senator Jacinta Price says Australians have said No to division, gaslighting, and bullying, and the idea that this is a racist country.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Senator Jacinta Price address the media in Brisbane.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton says the defeated referendum is “good for our country” and paid tribute to Warren Mundine and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price for leading the No campaign and enduring “personal and offensive attacks”.

Mr Dutton said “what matters tomorrow (is) that this result doesn’t divide us”.

He said he respected Yes voters’ decision, even though he thought the voice was divisive, and a bad idea.

“This is the referendum Australia did not need to have,” he said.

Mr Dutton attacked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as not being across the detail.

“People from all sides of this debate are rightly and understandably disappointed with the Prime Minister,” he said. “He must take responsibility for it.”

Jacinta Price speaks on Sky News after the successful No vote. Supplied

Mr Dutton said Mr Albanese’s priority now needed to be on the cost of living, but recommitted the opposition to a royal commission into child sexual abuse.

“For the past year, the Prime Minister and the government have been consumed by this referendum, and they’ve been focused on the wrong priorities,” Mr Dutton said.

Senator Price thanked the Australian people for “believing in our great nation and the goodwill of this country”.

“The vast majority of Australians want what’s best for everyone of us, including the most marginalised Indigenous Australians,” she said.

Senator Price said Australians had said No to division, gaslighting, and bullying, and the idea that Australia was a racist country.

“It’s time for Australians to believe that (we’re a great country), to be proud, to call ourselves Australian,” she said.

She said it could not be demonstrated “how this proposal was supposed to support our most marginalised Australians” including her close family members.

The Alice Springs-based senator revealed her family had experienced three funerals yesterday, and said communities had been exploited for “someone else’s agenda”.

“A vast group of Indigenous Australians did not support this proposal and it’s been a shame that throughout this campaign that we have been accused of misleading this country through disinformation and misinformation, when it was a campaign of no information whatsoever,” she said.

“We called out when the Australian people were being misled.”

Senator Price said in the future, Australia needed to focus not on the voices of activists, but on the “most marginalised” Indigenous Australians living in remote communities.

With the referendum defeated, Mr Dutton said the Coalition would “continue a process” for Senator Price and fellow Indigenous Senator Kerrynne Liddle to look into the party’s Indigenous Affairs policies ahead of the next election.

Mr Dutton said the defeated referendum did not mean Australians had “rejected Indigenous Australians”, just that they rejected the voice.

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