David Speirs still has the keys to his house.

While most state Liberal leaders around the nation were sheltering under the kitchen table during the six-week voice referendum campaign, trying and failing to keep their party rooms from splintering, the South Australian Liberal chief was standing on a chair, not backwards in coming forwards.

He claims to be the only Liberal leader who held his party room intact against the voice, with no defectors – not even, as he says, Michelle Lensink, the party’s upper house MP who leans cantankerously to the Left on social issues.

At the end of week one, he belled the cat on the myth that SA was a “crucial swing state” in the vote to enshrine an Indigenous voice to parliament in the Australian Constitution.

Instead, he told The Australian’s David Penberthy he believed the Yes vote was in “freefall” here, declaring: “I would almost bet my house on it losing in SA.”

He argued “a lot of younger blokes in white vans” in his southern suburban electorate of Black think “all this time and attention is a distraction from other issues that matter more”, like how to pay their mortgages, power bills and feed the family.

SA was a crucial swing state, just not the sort of swing state Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had in mind when he inexplicably launched, and closed, his referendum campaign in Adelaide.

The “blokes in white vans” – code for men and women in outer suburban seats, a 40-minute congested drive from the CBD – were waiting in their carports with cricket bats for this vote.

They swung them hard at the voice, belting it out of the ground.

All across Australia, they did the same.

‘People now audibly sigh when the welcome to country is done,’ says David Speirs.

The bollocking dealt by the ‘burbs and the bush was brutal.

With 80 per cent of the vote counted, the national No vote stands at 60.8 pc to 39.2 pc for Yes, and the margin is widening as postal votes dawdle in.

When the SA figures rolled in to the Australian Electoral Commission computers on Saturday night, they killed any hope the PM had of securing the four-out-of-six state majority he needed to secure the voice.

The No vote in SA stands at 64.8 per cent to 35.2 per cent for Yes, and again is likely to edge even higher with postals.

It was the second highest in the nation after Queensland, which sits on a No-Yes split of 69-34.

Not one of SA’s 10 federal electorates carried a Yes majority. The giant rural seats of Grey and Barker recorded No votes just shy of 79 per cent.

Even in Adelaide, Boothby and Sturt – in the Tesla Belt – the Yes vote could only muster numbers with a four in front of them.

The great mystery is why anyone with even a vague grasp of Adelaide’s demographic and economic profile would think it would deliver a thumbs up to changing the constitution, let alone changing it for a poorly-sold, ill-defined “non-binding advisory committee”, as the PM stooped to describing the voice.

We are the nation’s greyest capital city, with a median age of 39.4 years. Outside of Adelaide, the median age in the rest of the state is 46.8 years – real Zimmer-frame territory.

The national median age is a sprightly 38.5 years. Happy birthday, everybody.

We consistently compete with Tasmania as the nation’s poorest state on all household income indicators. SA has the second worst paid workers in the nation, with median annual pay packets of $72,800.

In Yes-voting Canberra, the median annual salary is $93,600, the nation’s highest.

This combination of age and lower incomes makes us conservative and cautious – the worst place to expect a thumbs up for a contested and controversial change to the constitution.

Perhaps the PM was blinded by the light of Premier Peter Malinauskas, who delivered a legislated voice through state parliament, but shelved it during the national campaign.

A week ago, he told the ABC’s Q&A program, on one of its rare forays to Adelaide outside of festival party time: “For the life of me, I don’t know why, in our hearts, we would say no to such an elegant and simple proposition.”

For the life of him, he must be struggling to nut out how 65 per cent of voters in his state rejected such an elegant and simple proposition.

Over a mid-week coffee in Unley, David Speirs admits that while he bet his house on the Yes vote losing in SA, even he was surprised by the extent of the rejection.

“I was surprised by the level of push back by people, saying ‘What’s this about, this voice?’,” he says.

“It’s a phenomenal defeat.

“People don’t even know there’s a state voice. They’ll get a shock when the elections begin.”

He’s referring to the elections for indigenous members of SA’s new voice, now slated for March next year.

Labor had a clear election mandate for a state voice: it was openly and fairly debated in parliament, it is legislated so is not set in stone and its structure and scope were not hidden under a bushel like the PM’s incredible shrinking voice.

But Speirs says his party, which opposed the SA voice, will throw its support behind the Bill, introduced this week by One Nation’s upper house MP Sarah Game, to repeal it in the wake of the national referendum defeat.

He also flags that if he wins government, he will happily either amend the state voice, or move to dump it completely if it turns out to be “a complete shambles”.

While still waiting for all the postal votes to lob, the Liberal leader believes the numbers in SA take “a bit of the pressure off” the party’s hopes of holding two key seats that may go to by-elections: Dunstan, held by former Premier Steven Marshall, and Unley, held by former minister David Pisoni.

While Pisoni denies he’ll retire early, it’s interesting his leader should single out those two seats, both on knife-edge margins.

It’s clear he’s had a forensic look at the voice referendum results overlaid on state seats, rattling off booth numbers from King, Newland, Davenport, Gibson and suburbs from Hallett Cove, where he says the Yes vote dropped the further south you drove.

Speirs believes the result reflect more than the rejection of a change to the constitution, but are a “punishment” on a deeper level, and this creates what he calls “opportunities” for the Liberals.

“People are pushing back against the creeping ‘woke’ agenda,” he says.

“People now audibly sigh when the welcome to country is done.”

He says local government especially should just “stick to your knitting”, citing the “ridiculous gesture” by Adelaide Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith to fly the Aboriginal flag at half-mast in the CBD.

All this may be wishful thinking by the Liberal leader.

But one point is beyond doubt after Saturday’s vote – future attempts to change the Constitution, on any issue, are now cactus.

Loyal InDaily reader, DPW of Burnside, points out that the 1999 referendum that rejected a republic with a 55 per cent no vote also had a second question – to recognise indigenous Australians in a preamble to the constitution. It was rejected by 60.66 per cent of voters – almost identical to last Saturday’s Voice collapse.

The last successful constitutional referendum was 46 years ago, and that was to make judges retire at 70. It may be another half century before another one gets up, and that’s probably optimistic.

The electorate is increasingly cranky, paranoid and deeply suspicious of government and our major institutions – often with good cause.

Even if you bowled up a Free Beer Friday referendum proposing to give all Australians of drinking age an enshrined right to free grog and schnitties on Friday, it’d probably go down the gurgler.

Constitutional reform? Bartender, make mine a shandy.

Matthew Abraham is InDaily’s political columnist. Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.