Last Friday night, the ‘specials’ on the menu at Burwood’s RSL sold out fast.

Not just because they were great value for money in these penny-pinching times, but because many of the quietly-spoken early diners who rose respectfully when the Last Post sounded were there to join with others and to affirm a choice that they’d made earlier this month.

That choice was to say ‘No’ to the Voice – the ‘modest proposal’, as spruiked by the Prime Minister, that was neither modest nor a proposal. If passed it would have been a far-reaching mandate for unimagined change that was never specified in the run-up to October 14.

The event was not a celebration for many. It was more a feeling that a dangerous political manoeuvre had been circumvented; a few people said, not gloatingly but with a kind of thankfulness, ‘They won’t try it again for a while.’

These were not folk from the affluent Teal-voting suburbs of Sydney who said ‘Yes’ to the Voice. There, ‘Yes’ votes meant little more than gestures of virtue-signalling.

In John Howard’s battler suburbs, where small businesses scrape along to survive, the ‘Yes’ vote was a leap into the unknown. The people that had come along to this thank you for campaigning event – including those who worked at the pre-poll booths, letter-boxing, scrutineering – were from all over. One woman had come from the Central Coast and would catch the late train back to Gosford, then drive another hour home.

Others had come from the mountains, many by public transport or elderly gas-guzzlers; no BMWs in the car parks… They wanted to hear from Warren Nyunggai Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (her message from London unfortunately was scrambled in transmission and had to be read, without vision, by Mundine).

Over mini quiches and spring rolls, they met again. Men and women who first met as like-minded strangers who were now, in a way, companions-in-arms – a multiracial, multi-lingual multi-complexioned crowd.

In the space of ten minutes, I spoke to Australians of Greek, Hungarian, Indian, Indonesian, and Vietnamese heritage. They did not appear to be, as Indigenous Minister Linda Burney famously hinted at in that hot mic incident, ‘unbelievably racist’.

Certificates were handed out, including one to Pradeep Pathi, former endorsed Liberal candidate for Greenway, and stalwart of the Telegu Christian Fellowship. Local MPs made speeches, all mercifully short. People shook hands, exchanged addresses, and offered lifts.

Australians come together when they feel the need – over sports, bushfires, floods and this, the referendum that would have divided the nation by race.

A former Canadian, now an Australian academic, speaking on the ABC – where else? – labelled those who voted ‘No’ as ‘racially compromised’ and ‘secret assimilationists’ with an ‘assimilationist agenda’. I’d disagree with him on all those counts.