Referencing claims by No supporters that the Voice will insert race into the Constitution, Albanese said there had been “extraordinary ignorance, including from sections of the media, who know better, during this campaign. Race is in the Constitution now. There is a race power”.

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But he would not be drawn on the consequences of a No vote, including whether he agreed with leading Voice advocate Noel Pearson that rejection of the referendum proposal would leave reconciliation in tatters and reveal Australia to be a “hard” country.

If defeat is the outcome “there will be no path to the kind of reconciliation that I believe is underpinned by justice,” he told law firm Gilbert + Tobin earlier this week, reported by the Australian Financial Review.

Instead, Albanese asserted the Yes campaign was built on “optimism and hope” – a claim that contrasts with increasingly despondent remarks from Pearson and other prominent Voice campaigners in recent days as numerous polls put the referendum on track to defeat.

Writing in The Saturday Paper, Indigenous academic Marcia Langton declared reconciliation was dead even if Australians voted for the Voice, claiming the “nation has been poisoned” and accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of injecting “fear and race hate into his campaign”.

“Whatever the outcome of today’s vote, whether the double majority required to make this alteration to the Constitution is achieved or not, reconciliation is dead,” she wrote.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney joined NSW Premier Chris Minns in voting at the Carlton South Public School in Kogarah in Sydney’s south-west, where she sought to channel a message of optimism.

“Post-mortems, if you want to call it that, are perhaps going to happen in the next week. But I truly feel optimistic. I truly feel that Australia understands that we can’t continue with the disadvantages experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” Burney said.

Minns said a Yes vote would make a “major difference to First Nations people right across this country”, telling voters to “cast that Yes positive vote for change, you’ll feel better about yourself”.

In the progressive heartland of Melbourne’s inner north, many voters in Fitzroy were writing Yes on their ballot papers, but were sceptical of their side’s chances.

Victoria came the closest to voting Yes at the last referendum in 1999, with strong support for the republic proposal in inner Melbourne.

It will need to be even more supportive of the Voice at this referendum to counter expected losses elsewhere in Australia if the Voice is to have any chance.

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Stephen Riches was one of the first to vote at Saint Mark’s Community Centre this morning as a long line snaked around the church building.

He voted Yes because he said “it was the right thing to do”.

“Around here, I’d be surprised if it didn’t get up, but nationally, it’s a different story, I think,” he said.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.