The Bachelorette Australia 2021‘s Brooke Blurton has broken down after Australia rejected the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
On October 14, every state and territory in Australia except the ACT voted against the Voice.
During the October 17 episode of her Not So PG podcast, Brooke, a proud Noongar-Yamatji woman, broke down whilst discussing the sad outcome of the vote.
The 28-year-old told her co-host Matty Mills that she was “f*cking devastated”.
“It makes me feel like everything I’ve worked for has been completely diminished in this country,” she said. “I’m a First Nations person forefront. I f*cking hate calling myself Australian.”
She added: “I don’t think that I identify with that because that invitation was put to the Australian people. And it was very f*cking un-Australian of you to say ‘No’ to us.”
The youth worker then explained that she felt outcasted by Australia and she was “scared” for the futures of the young Indigenous girls she works with.
The Bachelorette’s Brooke Blurton says she was in ‘damage control’ mode after the Voice was rejected
Matty, a fellow member of the Indigenous community, told Brooke that the “work she’s done isn’t going unnoticed”.
“The impact you have on those girls that you work with… they get to see you and succeed and be inspired by what you’re doing. That is the future,” he said.
However, Brooke claimed she’s been in “damage control” mode since the Voice was rejected.
“I’m sitting down with these girls [and] I feel like their voice has been stripped,” she said, speaking of the girls she works with.
“It’s like they’re fully diminished. [They] have no self-esteem already as f*cking teenagers and as women, as black women,” she continued, stating that the women she worked with already struggled to articulate why they felt proud to be First Nations people.
“They’re the ones that are lifting me up right now,” she finished, before breaking down in tears.
What is the Indigenous Voice to Parliament?
Australians were asked whether they supported amending the Constitution to recognise the First Nations peoples by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
The Voice, as an independent body, would have given advice to the Australian Parliament and Government on matters relating to Indigenous Australians, providing better outcomes on First Nations policies.
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