The Yes vote lost: the Prime Minister is to blame

"He let it get away from him and he didn't bring the parties with him, and he was warned not to divide our country," Littleproud said.

"He is the one who has taken this to the people, he runs the parliament, he runs the country, and this sits squarely at his feet."

Peter Dutton, Leader of the opposition, also said much of the blame for the drop in support rested on Mr Albanese's shoulders.

This opinion writer, although a believer that Dutton was also a major reason why the referendum lost, believes that Albanese is the major reason. Neither of our opposing political leaders served the country well. They did not tell us that Australia's first citizens are suffering major disadvantages. Aboriginal elders have since told us: "We now know where we stand in our own country".

The problems Australian Aboriginals face are immense.

Australian Aboriginal children are eleven times more likely to be removed from their families by child protection services and to end up in care.

Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated people in the world. 3.3% of Australian population is aboriginal, 30% of prison population is aboriginal. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up around 2% of the national population and they constitute 27% of the national prison population.

About 20 per cent of Aboriginal people in the major cities are estimated to live in poverty. A 2016 report from Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research found the situation is much worse in remote areas.

They have a much lower life expectancy rate. The gap stands at 8.6 years for males while indigenous females expect to live 7.8 years less than everyday Australians.

The underlying reason behind these problems is undoubtedly the massacres of aboriginals and the dispossession from their lands. They are beaten people, savaged in the wars to take over their land, now with little land and little self-respect. University of Newcastle historian Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan estimates more than 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives were lost in more than 400 massacres. "More massacres happened in the period 1860 to 1930 than in the period 1788 to 1860," Professor Ryan said. The aboriginals resisted the taking over of their lands, as anyone anywhere in the world would. Frequently raiding parties of settlers and police would attack aboriginal communities, driving them off their lands. Some of the coverage, notably Calla Wahlquist in the Guardian, refers to overall estimates of the number of deaths, which may be as high as 65,000 in Queensland alone.

Between 4,000 and 7,000 Aboriginals were in Tasmania, then Van Diemen's Land, when the British military arrived with a group of convicts in 1803. Within 50 years, all but 200 of the Aboriginals were dead.

The Australian Wars is a three-part 2022 documentary series about the Australian frontier wars by indigenous Australian filmmaker Rachel Perkins made for SBS Television. Using interviews, re-enactments, archaeological research, and original documents, it explores massacres of aboriginals in NSW, Tasmania, and Queensland.