When Anthony Albanese officially launched his election campaign in Perth on May Day 2022, most of the focus fell on promises to deliver low-cost housing, cheaper medicines, sovereign manufacturing and electric vehicles.

Standing before a banner declaring "A Better Future", Albanese vowed there would be "no one held back, no-one left behind" under his government.

Few remarked on three paragraphs in his speech to the party faithful in which he "proudly" promised to implement "in full" the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a 2017 petition written and backed by Indigenous leaders.

"This will be an uplifting moment of healing and unity for our country, in the same spirit as the national apology to the Stolen Generations, delivered by prime minister Kevin Rudd," he said.

Two and half years on — and 12 months since the referendum was resoundingly defeated — those words ring hollow.

Reconciliation seems like an ever-more-distant prospect.

Rather than uplifted, many who were intimately involved in campaigning for a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament remain either too bruised or dismayed to speak publicly.

The unity that did emerge was among the three in five Australians who voted No.

Rather than a national apology-style watershed, October 14 has become an anniversary many Indigenous people and the more than 6 million who voted Yes want to forget.

Has Video Duration: 6 minutes 12 seconds.

Watch 6m

The Voice loss continues to take on baggage

While much of his 2022 campaign agenda has been put into motion, the Voice referendum has come to define and overshadow Albanese's prime ministership more than any other issue.

It cemented a damaging view that his government was focused on the wrong things during the worst cost-of-living crisis in half a century.

Conventional wisdom, circa early 2023, was that the political risks were weighted asymmetrically. Victory would write him into history — certainly in Albanese's own mind that was what he hoped for and privately told people. Defeat would be seen as noble and worthy.

Yet now, 12 months on, the loss continues to take on additional baggage.

It threatens to become the definitive event of his term in the Lodge.

It marks the moment in which his post-2022 election honeymoon, which crested at the Aston by-election in April 2023, evaporated.

It points to the squandering of already modest political capital.

If further underlines our contemporary political parable that bold and risky change is a fast road to voter rejection.

And perhaps worse, it leaves Albanese without an Indigenous agenda of any bearing or significance. Many feel he has not been held to account for that.

"The Voice is the battle that changed life for Albanese," says opposition frontbencher Barnaby Joyce, one of the first Coalition MPs to derail any prospect of a bipartisan campaign when he joined Pauline Hanson for one of the earliest No rallies in April 2023.

"He invested too much in it; it showed he couldn't read the sentiment of the public; he was lacking the brilliance of Hawke and Howard where they could sniff the public breeze.

"It's where questions started to be asked of him. It wasn't just the loss of the Voice, it was his loss."

Joyce would say that, of course, but the polls tell the story.

Labor's fortunes have never recovered, with support slumping to about 31 per cent in primary terms, according to election analyst William Bowe. That is just below the historically low 32.6 per cent Labor secured at the election.

For all the government's attempts to turn the tide — including the stage 3 income tax cuts and tens of billions of dollars in new spending on the care economy – Albanese's polls have never recovered.

An average of voter surveys also published by Bowe shows Labor led the Coalition by more than 57 per cent to 43 per cent a year ago.

Today, it stands at about 50:50, which is equivalent to a 2.2 per cent swing against the government since May 2022.

Were an election held today, Albanese would almost certainly lose his narrow majority.

Such an outcome, whenever the election takes place, would put a clock on Albanese's ability to retain his party's internal support.

"Fundamentally, the story of the Voice is a tale of overreach," journalist Michelle Grattan noted last week. "Overreach by Albanese" who deluded himself that people would vote for something that was not properly defined, "that he could sell it as much on emotion as on practicalities".

In the immediate aftermath, TV presenter and lawyer Waleed Ali made the related observation that the Voice campaign tried to thread an "impossible needle".

"It had to present itself as modest, yet meaningful; to show it had no formal power, but would nonetheless make a practical difference. And it had to convince an electorate that it would achieve greater equality by treating citizens differently. In the end, that proved too complicated a task, the No vote too varied to assail, the referendum process too formidable a beast."

A coming power shift

Many who want Indigenous reconciliation will be pained by this anniversary.

But there is another way to look at it.

Political change is always overlaid by generational imperatives. Baby Boomers, most of whom are now in their early 60s to early 80s, will likely give way to a more politically progressive Millennial wave.

An ANU analysis of the Voice referendum found No voters were "more likely to be male, older, speaking a language other than English at home, with low levels of education, living outside of the capital cities, and living in low-income households".

Furthermore, the study found signs that Australians voted No because "they didn't want division and remain sceptical of rights for some Australians".

Some pundits suggest Albanese should have pulled the referendum when it was clear the effort was doomed.

Megan Davis, one of the architects of the Uluru statement, told the ABC's David Speers last week that she "would've been up for that discussion".

While that puts the blame on Albanese for not making the call to withdraw, it also smacks of Monday-morning punditry. For one thing, he would have been crucified by the left for lacking the courage of his convictions.

As with the inevitable coming political power shift from boomers to younger voters, the Indigenous leaders that are now seen to have overreached on the Voice will also one day give way to another generation.

"In retrospect, the Voice will be seen as the transition point between the old [Indigenous] leadership and the new," Michael Dillon, a former staffer to three Labor Indigenous affairs ministers, told The Conversation.

"The leaders coming through are yet to find their voice and their stride. And this is creating an unfortunate vacuum for Aboriginal aspirations."

Albanese's prime ministership is far from terminal. Voters are historically inclined to give governments a second term. And he has plenty of achievements to be positive about, including addressing climate change.

But if they don't, the Voice will be near the top of the reasons why.