This week the Australian government is being run from a make-shift bush camp on the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land, a region known as Yolngu. Prime Minister Tony Abbott's decision to run the government from time to time in remote indigenous communities is obviously symbolic but the sincerity is obvious. It indicates his genuine desire to tackle the chronic poverty, unemployment and social dysfunction in many Aboriginal communities.

It is no coincidence that Yolngu was chosen as the first such site as it was there, in 1963, that a famous bark petition to the Australian parliament was drafted in the form of two bark paintings. The petition stated, in part: "Doesn't matter if the country look the same, but there is a name and tribe living in two different area of the land - two landowners - the Yirritja on their land - and Dhuwa, we learn on our land."

The concept of native title was partly forged by this and four other subsequent petitions from the region presented to the parliament over the past 51 years. The most recent petition, presented in 2008, requested "full recognition of indigenous rights in the Australian Constitution." In the ensuing six years that request has grown into the Recognition movement.

Negotiations on recognition have been going on for 25 years. They have gone nowhere, for good reason, because a proposed constitutional amendment recognising indigenous rights enters the vexed areas of national sovereignty, national cohesion and a national abhorrence of legal divisions based on race.

Tony Abbott supports recognition and there is bipartisan support, in principle, across the major parties. But we agree with the warning the Prime Minister gave this week that any referendum seeking to impose a new set of rights based on race will fail: "There'd be nothing worse than having a go at this and finding it fails because we've been too ambitious or, in the process of trying to do something wonderful, we've ended up dividing the country."

The Herald agrees. A failed referendum is the worst outcome. The referendum proposal would fail if it proposes more than a change to the constitution which recognises and dignifies the special place the first people of this nation hold in Australian history. This is a sentiment around which the nation can rally. But an amendment which also seeks to introduce a special category of rights for Aboriginal people, enforceable in law, will fail.

Any failure of bipartisanship will doom the Recognise movement. It follows that the Prime Minister is correct to take a patient approach. The referendum does not need to take place in the government's first term. What will also doom a recognition amendment is any attempt to expand the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders in a way that is distinct from the rights of all Australians. Until Australia came into existence it was inhabited by hundreds of clans with no concept of national unity or a nation state. There is thus a fundamental disconnect between the ancient, pre-modern, pre-national Australia and the nation state that exists today. Ancient traditions can be preserved by the indigenous communities sustaining their languages, customs and culture. Modern law cannot truly substitute for cultural health.

We believe the Australian public will also not accept a referendum which opens the door to any concept of anti-discrimination or affirmative action legislation. There is an ingrained scepticism in Australia towards judicial and legal activism. The Prime Minister wants the recognition movement to produce something "wonderful". To do so, any constitutional amendment will need to be drafted in a way which grants dignity and gravitas to the ancient cultures, in a unifying national gesture. That respect must also sit within a larger unifying ideal - that Australia is one nation, one people, one inclusive democracy, under one set of laws.