Australians have roundly rejected greater rights for Indigenous citizens, scuppering plans to amend the country’s 122-year-old constitution after a divisive and racially tinged referendum campaign.

With 88 percent of polling places reporting, around 59 percent of people had voted against a proposal to acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders within the 1901 constitution for the first time.

The reforms would also have created a consultative body — a “Voice” to Parliament — to weigh in on laws that affect Indigenous communities and help address profound social and economic inequality.

The often spiteful campaign exposed the deep racial fault lines still running through the so-called Lucky Country.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who campaigned for a “yes” vote, urged a divided nation to now come together in a “spirit of unity and healing”.

He added that the defeat would be a “heavy weight to carry” and “very hard to bear” for the vast majority of Aboriginal Australians who supported the referendum.

“From tomorrow we will continue to write the next chapter in that great Australian story. And we’ll write it together. And reconciliation must be a part of that chapter.”

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal woman elected to sit in the House of Representatives, said “Today is a day of sadness”.

Indigenous Australians expressed anger and anguish that the white majority had rejected calls for a reckoning with the country’s bloody colonial past.

“This is a difficult result, this is a very hard result,” said Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin.

“We did everything we could and we will come back from this,” he said.