Firefighters near Moruya, on the south coast of New South Wales, on 4 January 2020. Photo: Rick Rycroft / AP
Firefighters near Moruya, on the south coast of New South Wales, on 4 January 2020. Photo: Rick Rycroft / AP

By Kate Shuttleworth
17 February 2020

MELBOURNE, Australia (The Washington Post) – At the height of Australia’s bush fire crisis last month, the exhausted firefighter’s emotion was raw.

Paul Parker had been battling blazes around Nelligen, in southern New South Wales state. Seven homes had been lost in the village, and his own residence severely damaged, on the day his comments went viral.

“Tell the prime minister to go and get fucked, from Nelligen. We really enjoy doing this shit,” he told a television news crew as he leaned out of his firetruck window, accusing Australia’s leader, Scott Morrison, of providing inadequate support for the volunteer brigades on the disaster’s front lines. Morrison had faced public anger for vacationing in Hawaii as the fires escalated, and for pinning responsibility on state-level officials to shoulder the burden of the emergency response.

At the end of that day, 4 January 2020, Parker collapsed on the roadside.

Bushfire survivors with debris from burned houses protest the country’s climate policies at Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra on 11 February 2020. Photo: Tracey Nearmy / AFP / Getty Images
Bushfire survivors with debris from burned houses protest the country’s climate policies at Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra on 11 February 2020. Photo: Tracey Nearmy / AFP / Getty Images

Parker says that after his political rant received wide media coverage, he was removed from his position as a volunteer with the Rural Fire Service, which is largely responsible for battling blazes outside the state’s urban areas. He says he received a message from his local brigade telling him he had lost his role because of his remarks, and to return his truck because the RFS was about to send the police to look for him. […]

Parker faced a backlash of his own on social media on Monday when it emerged that he was a supporter of Pauline Hanson, leader of the far-right One Nation party.

Regardless of the merits of his claim, Parker has come to embody the anger of Australia’s fire-choked summer, while shining a light on the burden shouldered by volunteers who account for the bulk of the country’s firefighting force. [more]

In Australia, spat over firefighter’s political rant caps a summer of anger