Indigenous Voice to Parliament lost as 'no' voters sink referendum

After a bruising and increasingly racialised campaign, the proposal from Aboriginal leaders to recognise indigeneity with a non-binding advisory committee has been sunk and the constitution will remain at eight chapters.

There was no possibility for a double majority result early in the count, with Tasmania, NSW and then South Australia returning a "no" vote.

The result was apparent before the West Australian vote counting started.

ABC election analyst Antony Green called the result at 7.24pm. At print deadline on Saturday night, the "no" was at 55.43 per cent of Australians for "no" to the Voice, and 44.97 per cent voting "yes."

"No" figures have claimed the victory in the first popular ballot since the 1999 republic referendum, while "yes" proponents are devastated.

Prominent "yes" campaigner Thomas Mayo said he was devastated and there was no Plan B.

"We put our faith in the Australian people and I think they were ready, but there has been some really horrible political campaigning from Peter Dutton and his "no" campaign," he told the ABC.

"It's been disgusting to be frank. So we're going to take stock now."

Liberal MP and prominent "yes" campaigner Julian Lesser is disappointed, but will accept the result.

"Naturally, I am disappointed and my thoughts are with every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian who is feeling a sense of sadness tonight," he said in a statement.

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"Though the "yes" case is lost tonight, I know that the cause of reconciliation will ultimately succeed."

The ACT defied the national vote, returning a 65 per cent "yes" vote. However, the ACT does not count towards the state tally needed for a double majority result.

Queensland recorded the lowest "no" vote, at the time of print, at 31.57 per cent, while Victoria had the highest state "yes" vote at 48.19 per cent.

NSW had a "yes" result of 43.82 per cent and a "no" result of '56.18 per cent.

The result aligns with polling trends throughout the campaign showing winning support for the Voice at the start of the year dropping to a clear indication of defeat in the past few weeks.

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe told the ABC that Australian voters had not been taken along for the ride and she believed the Voice was a "bad idea".

The Prime Minister has said he will respect the result and would not attempt to now move to legislate a Voice now that the voters have spoken.

Liberal "yes" campaigner Andrew Bragg said it was a "very sad night for the country."

"I think there will be a lot of people in pain tonight and people who have done a lot of work over many years to try and get a structural change. And I think that, unfortunately, the process was defective here," he told the ABC.

Former Liberal Prime Minister and leading "no" campaigner Tony Abbott has backed Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as "very courageous" in the wake of the failure of the Voice to Parliament referendum.

Mr Abbott was a leading "no" campaigner for the 1999 republic referendum and is on the advisory board of Advance Australia, the conservative lobby group which supported the campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Advance was behind the "if you don't know, vote 'no'"' slogan.

"There were many people who said the polls were with the Voice and he should have just gone with the flow," Mr Abbott told Sky News.

"But he said "no" the Voice is wrong in principle and it would be bad in practice and the job of the opposition is not to go along with something that is against the long-term national interests.

"The job of the opposition is to often say "no". Saying "no" to the Voice was, as we've often said, saying yes to constitutional inequality."

Meantime, prominent "no" campaigner Warren Mundine insists there will be no celebrations for the "no" camp which has gathered in Queensland, the state with a very high "no" vote.

"We made it quite clear from the beginning, it's not a celebration. Sure people are happy because they worked really hard on the campaign and they were out there copping abuse and everything like that. But for us, it's about tomorrow," he told Sky News.

He said the biggest issue for voters was the plea for details.

"I'd say there's a lot of people out there who wanted to vote yes, but they couldn't because they wanted that detail. So it was a massive mistake by the government," Mr Mundine said.

"The other massive mistake was no partisan referendum ever got up and so they should have reached out to the opposition and sat down and had those conversations."