The Rural Fire Service has denied the South Coast volunteer firefighter who criticised Prime Minister Scott Morrison in a viral clip was fired for bad language.
Speaking on Channel Ten's The Project on Sunday night, Paul Parker said he was asked to leave the Rural Fire Service "because of [his] allegations and foul language against the Prime Minister".
Paul Parker has claimed he was fired from the RFS after his criticism of the Prime Minister.Credit:Seven News
"Didn’t know you could get sacked from a volunteer organisation," he said.
Tweeting on Monday morning, the RFS said Mr Parker's claim he had been sacked was false.
"We can confirm Paul remains a member of the NSW RFS and has not been dismissed," the tweet read.
A spokesperson for the RFS said they were able to confirm Mr Parker was still, formally, a member of the service and had not been dismissed.
However, they were "looking into" what had occurred at a brigade level to determine exactly what communication Mr Parker had received.
Speaking on Monday morning, Mr Morrison said he was "pleased" to hear Mr Parker had not been formally stood down after his comments.
"I understand Paul was feeling incredibly exhausted, and incredibly drained by those events and he was working his tail off defending his community," Mr Morrison said, adding that he believed Mr Parker was responding to his comments that RFS firefighters enjoyed volunteering – remarks the PM says were misreported.
"What I said was they want to be out there defending their communities," Mr Morrison said.
The Prime Minister was quoted in December as telling media: "The fact is these crews, yes, they’re tired, but they also want to be out there defending their communities. And so we do all we can to rotate the shifts to give them those breaks … in many cases you’ve got to hold them back to make sure they get that rest."
The RFS has previously said Mr Parker left the RFS due to exhaustion.
"It was for his own welfare that he was asked to take a break [from firefighting]," an RFS spokesperson told Seven News in January, adding the direction was "absolutely not" due to the video.
Mr Parker, from the tiny South Coast town of Nelligen, achieved notoriety last month after a video of him leaning out of his truck after returning from fighting the Clyde River fire was shared widely on social media.
"Are you from the media?" Mr Parker asks in the clip, which was aired on Seven News. "Go and tell the Prime Minister to go and get f---ed from Nelligen."
He adds, sarcastically: "We really enjoy doing this shit, f---head."
He said his anger was sparked "because, when Morrison had been asked whether [RFS] volunteers should be paid, he'd said no, because they enjoyed what they did".
Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last week, the licensee of Mr Parker's local pub, Nelligen's Steampacket Hotel, said members of the public were supporting Mr Parker's sentiment.
"Pretty much every day someone comes in and puts their money down, telling us to buy a few beers for that bloke who got stuck into the Prime Minister," licensee Joel Alvey said.
Mary Ward is Deputy Lifestyle Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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