Referenda in Australia have always been a hard ask. According to Wikipedia, only 8 out of 44 have passed since Federation.
So let's not waste this chance.
I suggest there is another referendum on the drawing board that would do more to reconcile all Australians with their immediate neighbors, and do this where they live, than another reminder of the division between aboriginal and non-aboriginal. I am referring to a Constitutional recognition of local government. A Constitutional amendment would remove the legal cloud now hovering over Federal grants to local governments.
With direct funding of local governments, the emphasis will shift from the State to the region. And we live in regions, we live with our neighbors, and, mostly, we manage all right. When we need help, it's often in the form of funding.
Reconciliation starts on the street where we each live. Allow the locals to assume a position that will directly influence the structure and dynamics of their own communities, and as we work together, different views will be reconciled.
I think this is much more important than anything symbolic, and I worry about the odds of anything passing if we flirt with referenda overload.

"Our research suggests non-Aboriginal Australians consistently affirm a need for reconciliation that is not diminished by their differences of opinion about what forms it should take."

What rubbish. You were looking for it, and found it .. as in another article on OLO, this is confirmation bias.

Reconciliation is only talked about in terms of

1. Some aboriginals demand reconciliation and usually in the context of $ compensation .. to the rest of us, they appear to have zero interest in reconciliation beyond compensation.

2. Whitey has to do this and it's a one way street, as usual.

Did we ever get a big, "it's OK", or a "thank you", after the Rudd apology? Have they accepted it?

It was SUCH a big deal for years, but I suspect now that it was just a tool used by the left, supporting aboriginals only because it suited their cause, not any kind of principle.

When someone apologizes, the polite thing to do is to accept it, graciously, or it looks like it was always about the money.

Immediately after the apology, nothing. Most of us will never forget the treatment given to Brendan Nelson though.

I'm still waiting for all the aboriginals who turned their backs on him, political tools that they were, to apologize to him and the rest of us for what was a disgusting display of ungratefulness.

Do you wonder why most of us just don't care any more?

Without focus groups carefully grooming participants, without rigged loaded question polls, there is no interest in a referendum, except from the guilt driven victim industry.

Reconciliation is a hollow vessel. We have nothing to feel the need to reconcile and the aboriginals do not accept it anyway (without $), see above, Brendan Nelson .. that's exactly what we all expect will be the response to anything we do.

I don't think the aboriginal victim industry realize the damage that imagery did to their cause. (nor do they care)

What happened to Brendan Nelson?

What referendum? Heard nothing about this.

Is it time for some of the leading and quite noisy Indigenous people, like the Pearson chap, to consider 'reconciling' themselves to the altered situation Indigenous people find themselves in?

And then encouraging them to join the mainstream activities of education-jobs-homes-respect for the law?

I'm not sure what they will be doing in these desert/distant camps when their land is split up into private land titles and the rich scammers have come in to buy the land off the unsuspecting locals.

There will still be no work in these places, and no income to pay off a house.

What is there to 'reconcile' if Indigenous people are going to remain trapped in avoidable poverty?

TAR .. Just after PM Rudd gave his apology in 2008, to great response, Brendan was up to give his support to it. Rudd's press group, salted through the crowd outside parliament near a big screen setup for the event, all turned their backs on Brendan.

Then all the aboriginals did as well ..

So the political mileage was clearly far more important than the principle of the thing ..

What could have been a step forward, to better relations and towards becoming a more cohesive society, was trashed.

If Rudd's people alone had done it, it would have looked stupid, but all the aboriginals all saw the opportunity to humiliate a man, a good man, to make a political point and took it .. so much for "reconciliation" eh?

Every Australian saw that, and when you mention the Apology, that's what we remember ..

Much better that aboriginals adapt to their lot, and we adapt to helping them, rather than being constantly chided and abused and still expected to put up the money and tug the forelock to the perpetual victims.

I don't remember it Amicus. I do remember that happening to Howard. And I do recall nelson as education minister- a terrible outcome.

He probably deserved a turned back.