Dutton or Albanese: who was responsible for the failure of the Yes vote?

What happened to the Voice referendum - was it won by the No or lost by the Yes? Was the proposal poorly worded and badly explained or can we blame racism for the result? Thousands of readers told us how they felt about the outcome. Here are a few of their online comments and letters to the editor:

Is racism alive and well in Australia?

• We were asked to support a non-binding advisory body, to improve the life chances of an overwhelmingly disadvantaged people, and we issued a decisive No, wrote columnist Sean Kelly.

aussieken The Yes campaign did nothing to tell us all how a Yes vote would work if it passed, so it left the gate wide open for the so-called misinformation and lies of the No campaign. In that respect, Albanese is entirely responsible for the Yes failure.

Vivienne Freeman, Warrawee Racism is alive and well in Australia. The fact that we have politicians (with voting constituents) who have built their entire political careers on it, it is clear evidence that it exists.

John Homan Again the Westminster system stands condemned. It is top down, risk averse with inequality a major design factor. It is a system driven by power (and the fear of losing power). It is about winning, not about good outcomes. Shame, I thought we were better.

Warren Marks, Hill Top Just as Lady Macbeth sees the imaginary blood on hands from evil deeds committed, Peter Dutton’s political career will forever be tainted by his decision to oppose the Voice. As Sean Kelly bemoans, “They asked for so little. In the end, we couldn’t even give them that much”.

Binary Bill can this be a wake-up call to the woke inner-city chardonnay socialists. Your fellow Australians including First Nations people defeated this virtue signalling idea by almost two to one.

angekenn Each person voted the way they wanted to and their reasons for doing so will be theirs and theirs alone. That’s called a democracy. It seems to me that the government was ill prepared for the referendum.

Was it just a bad idea?

• The prime minister argued Opposition Leader Peter Dutton risked making himself irrelevant if he opposed the Voice. It was a fatal misjudgment, wrote Lisa Visentin, James Massola and Paul Sakkal

Cynthia Liu The No vote would have been even higher with bipartisan support. It was just a bad idea, made worse by so many thinking they could virtue signal using a bad idea. We are one. We are many. I am, you are, we are Australian.

AlexWestacott The appalling judgment of the PM has to give rise to questions of his fitness to continue in the role. I was disappointed with his speech regarding the devastating loss. He didn’t acknowledge that 60 per cent of the voting population did not agree with him.

Hee Haw The Coalition had seven years to come up with policies to make life better for First Nation people. You would think Dutton would have some ideas after trashing First Nation peoples’ request?

Ferret It seems many who voted Yes deride and seek to find fault in that huge majority of decent Australians who voted No. The whiter and richer a voter was the more likely they were to vote Yes. They are elites who do not represent the mood or beliefs of the nation.

Spinchecker The PM refused to change course as ship went down. It was a Titanic failure by Albanese.

Alison Stewart, Riverview Gloating and schadenfreude are never a good look. The Albanese government, with good will in its heart, had a real crack at closing the gap. Albanese acted, where years of Coalition government did not. Peter Dutton, sniffing a political opportunity, and abetted by lies and misinformation, said No.

Jenny Greenwood, Hunters Hill Albanese made an election promise and kept it, but one has to wonder whether he ever expected, perhaps even wanted, the Voice referendum to succeed.

Did everyone’s disadvantage matter?

• The campaign for an Indigenous Voice to parliament ultimately fell victim to a mix of education, income and a person’s birthplace, wrote senior economics correspondent Shane Wright.

The Doktor I’m educated, so your opinion only matters if you agree with me.

Christopher Hall It is amazing that the Yes vote faded the further it got away from the ACT, the one territory with quite possibly the lowest percentage of Indigenous people. It is obvious that those living in the Canberra bubble envisaged an overloaded gravy train heading their way and they were in a rush to get on board.

Irene Jennings Maybe ACT voters were just more educated on the issue, and knew how to identify the propaganda.

Roelf It stands to reason that those from poorer and less educated areas would more likely vote No. The Yes campaign put disadvantage linked to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People top of the campaign agenda. If you are disadvantaged and you perceive, not unreasonably, that the proposed Voice means other people’s disadvantage matters more than yours, naturally you would vote No.

Philip Shehan Once again Yes voters are trying to demonstrate just how intellectually superior they are with their incisive, well-thought-out analyses and arguments. I was always intending to vote No but those kinds of comments all through the campaign did nothing to make me warm to the Yes case.

Samantha Chung, Coogee Rather than focusing on the urban versus rural, more educated versus less educated divides, we should focus on the First Nations peoples versus non-First Nations peoples. Booths with high-levels of First Nations people voted Yes.

Wr Linda Burney, an Indigenous woman, is voted into parliament by her electorate, in which the majority voted No in the referendum. How can racism possibly be a factor? Maybe the idea was a dud!

• You can join the conversation at smh.com.au in the comments sections of each article and in letters to the editor in print and online. See you next Friday Yours. Sincerely. Pat Stringa, letters editor