Welcome to 9news.com.au's live coverage as Australia heads to the polls in the historic Voice to parliament referendum. Polls have now closed in Victoria, NSW, the ACT, South Australia and Tasmania. For the referendum to succeed, more than 50 per cent of voters across Australia must vote Yes, and there must also be a majority of Yes voters in at least four of the six states.
- Follow our results tracker
- When you can expect a result
- In pictures: Australia goes to the polls
When asked about the strong No vote in early results in the Voice referendum, prominent No campaigner and Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe said she was not surprised.
"The referendum ultimately was a bad idea in the first place, so I'm not surprised that we've got No votes coming out strongly," she told the ABC.
Yes campaign leader Thomas Mayo said he wouldn't contemplate the referendum not passing until the count was complete.
"I'm feeling a bit nervous right now. We are seeing the numbers come in so obviously we are a little bit behind at the moment on the Yes side but we are going to hold onto hope, as we have for a long time," he told Peter Overton on the live 9News live coverage.
He said there were 70,000 volunteers involved in the Yes campaign and this year he'd only been at home in Darwin for 24 days as he worked.
"We've thrown everything we can at this," he said."I don't think that we could do anything different."
9News political editor Charles Croucher says the polling in Tasmania is concerning for the Yes campaign with the No vote leading so far.
"Right now that is a concerning number for the Yes campaign because we have quite a bit of the count and given it's a small state, there are fewer voters, 57.7 per cent say No at the moment with a 20 per cent count, which is significant," he said.
Croucher said it was "a real worry for the Yes campaign".
Coming up in a few minutes, you can watch the results of the historic Voice referendum live on 9News.
Peter Overton, Brooke Boney and political editor Charles Croucher lead special referendum coverage as the votes are counted.
Tune in from 7pm AEDT on Channel 9 or on 9Now here.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney said regardless of the outcome of the referendum, the millions of Australians who voted in favour of the Voice have brought the nation one step closer to reconciliation.
You might notice our early results are showing a huge majority of No votes – well in excess of anything predicted by the opinion polls.
That's due to a quirk of the counting and reporting process.
We're getting results from smaller centres in regional areas – where No votes are expected to comfortably outnumber Yes ballots – well before the larger, inner-city booths where the Yes vote will likely be stronger.
The Australian Electoral Commission will count every single ballot cast today, as well as a majority of the more than five million early votes cast over the last two weeks.
Postal votes, though, will take up to two weeks to be fully counted.
Unlike elections, the ballots themselves are expected to take far less time to count, as there's only two options to count and no preferences to take into consideration.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to deliver an address to the nation later this evening regardless of the referendum result, 9News political reporter Eliza Edwards says.
The PM won't be speaking at a Voice event and will instead deliver a speech from a "neutral location" in an attempt to unify the country after what has been, at times, a fierce debate.
Albanese is set to have three versions of his speech on hand: one in the case of a Yes or No outcome and another if the result is too close to call.
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