'New way forward,' Albanese seek to unite Australia after Voice vote fails

An emotional Prime Minister addressed the federal press gallery at a late night media conference on Saturday with the Minister for Indigenous Australians by his side.

The popular vote, late Saturday night, was lost 41-to-59 per cent, with the double majority threshold not met. Based on the current count, none of the six states returned a majority of "yes" votes, while the ACT was the only jurisdiction to vote "yes" at 62-to-37 per cent.

Mr Albanese said he "had a duty as a conviction politician" to put the Voice to the Australian people as it was what Indigenous people wanted.

"As Prime Minister, I will always accept responsibility for the decisions I have taken, and I do so tonight," he told reporters.

"But I do want Australians to know that I will always be ambitious for our country, ambitious for us to be the very best version of ourselves. I will always be optimistic for what we can achieve together."

He was most emotional when speaking of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the "heavy weight' they had to carry. However, asked why people voted "no" and the vote failed, Mr Albanese took aim at the lack of bipartisanship.

"The analysis will go on for some time, no doubt. But the truth is that no referendum has succeeded in this country without bipartisan support. None," he said.

He sought words to unite the nation after an acrimonious, divisive debate.

"There is a new national awareness of these questions," he said. "Let us channel that into a new sense of national purpose to find the answers."

Minister Linda Burney declared, "This is not the end of reconciliation" and told First Nations people to "be proud of who you are. Be proud of your identity".

"We will carry on, and we will move forward, and we will thrive," she said.

"In the months ahead, I will have more to say about our government's renewed commitment to closing the gap, because we all agree we need better outcomes for First Nations people."

While Mr Albanese said, "we must seek a new way forward".

"Because 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."

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Meantime, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has told the Prime Minister to now focus on cost-of-living pressures and again slammed the proposal as divisive, while criticising Anthony Albanese over his leadership.

"So people from all sides of this debate are rightly and understandably disappointed with the Prime Minister," he told reporters in Brisbane.

"He has held the pen of this definitive chapter in our nation's history and if he has any strength in his leadership he must take responsibility for it.

"This result does not divide us as a people. What matters is that we all accept the result in this great spirit of our democracy."

Mr Dutton recommitted, if elected, to holding a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in remote communities and to conducting an audit into Indigenous funding.

Standing by Mr Dutton's side, prominent "no" campaigner and CLP senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price also welcomed the result as saying "no" to division in the constitution.

She also addressed the criticism of the work of the conservative lobby group Advance Australia, which led the "no" campaign.

"It has been a shame that throughout the 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.