In the early days of 2020, in the thick of Australia’s worst bushfire season on record, volunteer firefighter Paul Parker told Prime Minister Scott Morrison to “get f**ked from Nelligan.”
His rage came after Scott Morrison said volunteer firefighters don’t need monetary compensation for their work because they “want to be there”.
“We really enjoy doing this shit, dickhead,” Paul Parker told Scott Morrison, who had just taken a family vacation to Hawaii as two firefighters died in Australia.
Parker had spent the past days saving the lives and homes of the Nelligan community and was on the brink of exhaustion when he came across the Channel Seven camera crews and erupted.
The video went viral, with many praising Parker for expressing “succinctly what pretty much a whole country was thinking”. But what the public didn’t see was the aftermath of that video.
Watch: The moment firefighter Paul Parker condemned Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Post continues below.
Shortly after, Paul Parker was allegedly dismissed by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.
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I guess I can understand the chap was at the end of his tether. Who amongst us haven’t had a moment like that?
On the other hand, to go on and say the only politician who knows what they are doing is Pauline Hanson is really pushing it when your wearing the uniform. How would we react if it was a soldier in uniform or police officer making overtly political comments?
You can’t compare a volunteer firefighter to a paid, trained soldier. And if a soldier came back from 3 months of active duty in a war zone and swore at the PM, I think the media would be asking some pretty hard questions about what he’d seen that caused that reaction and expecting a decent follow up from the defence force, not an off-handed sacking.
But yeah on the Pauline Hanson thing. Really the media shouldn’t have put it to air, it’s hardly ethical to publish what people say in a moment where they’re tired, stressed, horrified and possibly in shock.
Well volunteer firefighters are trained and every trained solider we have is a volunteer.
If a soldier mouthed off like that in uniform or out and identified as a defence member, they would be charged under the DFDA with at a minimum, prejudicial behaviour. Police I believe have similar regulations.
You make a good point about the media though. They no longer stand outside funerals and try and interview mourners as long as the mourners don’t do something newsworthy. Perhaps that kind of restraint would have been good in this emotional time as well.
Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences yada yada...
He made a poor choice, even if an understandable one, and this is the consequence. I understand he was tired, worn out to the bone and under a shit ton on pressure but it in any other situation would it be acceptable?
I would hope he is shown a bit of leeway in the circumstances and possibly kept away from camera's.