Riverina tracking towards No vote as Voice referendum defeated

About one third of votes from across the region had been counted shortly before 8pm on Saturday, with 73 per cent (31,670 votes), while 27 per cent (11,692 votes) voted for the constitutional change, according to the Australian Electoral Commission official tally count.

By 10.30pm, the No vote had dropped marginally to 70 per cent while the Yes vote had increased to 30 per cent with almost 60 per cent of the Riverina vote counted.

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On Saturday, people across the nation voted on a constitutional change to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

At the polls, the majority of Australians voted "no" to the question: "A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?"

Reflecting on the result at a small event held at the Kooringal Hotel on Saturday night, a grassroots organiser in the Wagga Vote No campaign, Cam O'Kane, said he was "really happy" with the result.

Mr O'Kane said he got the sense voters were not sticking to party lines and raised questions over whether the Labor working class backed the Vote Yes campaign.

He said many Riverina voters were tight-lipped about which way they would vote and said a number of Indigenous Australians who voted at the Tatton booth indicated they opposed the referendum.

"We had a lot of Indigenous Australians come up to us, take the Vote No card and be very firm the referendum was not good for them," he said.

Reflecting on the broader national No result, Mr O'Kane said it signalled that "Australians... [simply] didn't have enough detail to warrant a constitutional change."

Despite this, he believes it is important that First Nations people receive a balance of support and the chance to strive for success.

"I believe there is genuine will among Australians [to help our First Nations people], but at the end of the day this referendum was poorly thought out," he said.

Giving credit where it is due, Mr O'Kane praised Vote Yes leader Nick Spragg for his conduct during the campaign.

"He was wonderful and [the local Yes campaign] had very passionate supporters," he said.

For the referendum to have passed, it had to achieve a double majority. This means more than 50 per cent of voters in at least four states are required to vote for the constitutional change and over half of voters nationwide must back the Yes vote.

But by 8pm, with polls closed in all states but WA, the No vote had secured a clear lead in all states except Victoria, where voters against the change had less than 52 per cent of the vote.

Referendums have historically been challenging to win with only eight of the total 44 Australia-wide referendums since 1901 being successful, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission.

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