At the time of writing just two weeks out from the referendum, the average of five public opinion polls from Essential, Freshwater, Newspoll, RedBridge and Resolve shows No leading Yes by 60 to 40. Of course, they could all turn out to be wrong or voters might change their minds. Alternatively, if the trajectory from the last few weeks continues, the margin could balloon to 70 to 30. What went wrong for Yes which began with a 70 per cent generic goodwill?

For starters, the refusal to negotiate a sensible middle ground that could have seen recognition inserted in the preamble with cross-party consensus and a Voice to parliament enacted by simple legislation that could subsequently be tweaked if need be and eventually repealed after its shelf life was over. Rejecting calls to institute accountability mechanisms for the billions being spent on Aboriginal peoples and instead demonising anyone calling for an audit as racists. Mixed messaging that described the referendum as ranging from a modest response to a warm and generous outreach from Aboriginal communities seeking a unifying moment of reconciliation, based in simple good manners, all the way to treaty and reparations. People soon wised up to ever-escalating and racialised demands for special treatment of the activists, their ingratitude for all the efforts already made and money spent to fund their self-serving agenda, and their responsibility for the policy mess that has done so little on the ground for Aboriginal women and children in remote communities. By contrast the No side kept its messaging simple, consistent and disciplined.

The offence caused to growing numbers with the acknowledgment of and welcome to country, the subtext of which is that the rest of us, from first to nth-generation Australians, can never claim Australia as our home but will always be guests instead. Ignoring the hardships of substantial numbers of European settlers and later immigrants and their sustained work to turn Australia into a prosperous and egalitarian democracy. The near-unanimous unity of the intellectual, cultural, banking, financial and sporting elites in their condescending advice to prove our moral goodness by voting Yes. Albanese casting his lot with Qantas and its much-reviled former CEO in an especially egregious act of self-harm. The No leaders made a virtue of the 20-to-1 disparity in their respective war chests, describing it as the little people refusing to tug forelocks and instead standing up to the self-anointed superiors. When asked, ‘If not now, when?’, the people are choosing to send back the message: ‘Not now, not ever’.

This has proven to be the debate we had to have. For that we should be forever thankful to Albanese. For example, once the decision was made to put race at the centre of a brand new chapter in the constitution, the question of criteria for determining Aboriginal identity became unavoidable. It could no longer be shoved aside as irrelevant racism. More importantly, the debate registered the reality that many accomplished and articulate Aboriginal leaders who care passionately about the welfare of their people hold fast to an alternative, positive and compelling vision. Its end point is a seamless blending of different ethnic groups into one national identity. People solidified a principled opposition to racial division and privilege, elevating one ancestry-based group over all others, and hitched it to cynicism about the practical outcomes projected to be delivered by presenting the Voice as a magic wand.

Furthermore, as people realised that many others share their views on the better and worse pathways forward, both morally and with respect to outcomes in redressing disadvantage, a self-escalating willingness to engage in the public debate and a self-accelerating fall in support for the Voice took hold. That is, the more that polls began to slide, the easier it became for more people to come out of the deplorables closet, which then caused a further slide in the polls for Yes. This was reinforced with the vitriol and abuse directed at No campaigners by many self-righteous, virtue-signalling scolds and sneerers. Jacinta Price – who emerged as the one rock star of the campaign and the only one on either side with the elusive X-factor – has been subjected to ugly, vicious and racist bullying via voicemail (with callers obviously missing the irony of the unintended pun on Voice), as detailed in a Ben Fordham episode on 2GB radio on 25 September. The campaign justified in the name of closing the gap has revealed instead the reality of a cultural chasm between city-based activists and the rest of the country.

Finally, the last desperate effort to convert the sceptical with the cynical attempt to guilt them into voting Yes has backfired spectacularly. Many prominent politicians, Yes advocates and media cheerleaders warned us that a No outcome will ‘confirm us as a frightened, insular nation’ (Chris Kenny). The general reaction to this in letters to the editor and online and on-air commentary has been revealing. People said such an outcome would prove that Australians still stand firmly for democracy and reject misguided attempts to divide our citizens by race; that we are not sheep to be tricked, simpletons to be swayed nor cowards to be cowed into surrendering equality of civic citizenship as the most cherished principle and ‘one person one vote’ as the gold standard of democracy; if anything, in today’s culture of cancellation and abuse it takes courage to say No; that indeed the great unwashed have a better understanding of equality before the law than the sophisticated elites. Australians reject a policy that is premised on the stereotype that those with Aboriginal ancestry are something other than Australian and require special political privileges. This is a morally deficient model of recognition that attempts to reverse the singular achievement of the 1967 referendum that Australians are one unified people.

People were not convinced they should pay for reparations for things they did not do, to individuals who did not suffer the harms. Instead, they were persuaded that the Voice would be the pathway to entrenching in perpetuity a victim mentality and the grievance industry. They fear that the politicians and the activists will use the new power, if and once granted, for self-interested purposes beyond the stated justification. Rather than being trapped in the prison of what happened over the past two centuries, they choose to look ahead and move forward together. Emotional abuse of the naysayers by the nattering nabobs of ‘positivism’ and the chattering intellectual and media class turned out to be offensive, off-putting and counter-productive: who’d have thought? Or that the average Australian voter is smarter than the Prime Minister, even if that is proving to be not a very hard challenge? In other words, we choose to vote No, not because we don’t care, but precisely because we do care, and care very deeply, emotionally and intellectually. We are not the frightened but the enlightened, committed to reinvigorating Australia as a unified nation and renewing the political project of a liberal democracy where the government stays in its lane and there is equality of citizenship and opportunity for all Australians.