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.