As the Prime Minister uses public money to jet off and have dinner with the Murdochs does he appreciate what it’s like to watch my husband walk in the door again and again with soot all over him and a flimsy disposable face mask between his precious lungs and the toxic smoke?
Or how angry I am that the fire fighting budget was allegedly cut last winter by his colleague and fellow Liberal, Gladys Berejiklian in her capacity as our state’s premier? (Please see images below before asking me to fact check).
How about some helmets for volunteers with proper filters? Does he appreciate that a P2 facemask is the best they can offer my husband and that on his last shift he came home with the lower-rated P1?
The P1 is the kind of thing you put on to move mulch or open a bag of potting mix. Even the P2 is supposed to be well fitted to work properly and nobody seems sure that it’s appropriate for smoke in any case.
Does the Prime Minister understand that my husband has just one set of yellow protection gear, known as PPE, so after he wears it for a shift he has two choices; he can wash it and hope it’s dry in time for his next shift or he can wear it smelly and dirty.
Does the PM know that in order to get any new item my husband needs to hand in a damaged one or get special clearance from his captain for a second set? It’s not like he’s going to wear his PPE to do the gardening, but giving everyone two sets of gear is apparently too expensive.
I wonder if the Prime Minister has ever fought a fire? If not, why not? Can he imagine what Graham’s night was like a few days ago when everyone was urgently called out at around 4pm. It was around 1am after a night of back burning that Graham and his captain and crew leader, Rob, were finally told to go home.
Can the Prime Minister even comprehend what it was like for them to see a tree fall across the path of their truck just as they got the message to stand down? Or the sinking feeling they must have had when they realised they had walked backwards and forwards under that tree all night?
I’m guessing it hasn’t even crossed the Prime Minister’s mind. Nor has the effort required after a long shift to cut the tree up so that they could get out. They needed two chainsaws because the first one became blunt while Graham was cutting.
They are supposed to resharpen the chainsaws as soon as they return to the station but Graham left it until the next morning and did it then, on his ‘day off’. It’s possible the Prime Minister doesn’t appreciate that volunteers also do all the routine maintenance of their gear.
No, Mr Morrison, my husband does NOT want to be fighting fires. He would rather be writing or playing music, or building things for the garden, or teaching permaculture or any one of his many hobbies.
