Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Has Fire and Emergency NZ overreacted here?

So, Fire and Emergency New Zealand has launched an investigation into the firefighter in the video with the Prime Minister. You’ll know what I’m talking about, you’ve probably seen it already. It’s been doing the rounds since Friday.

It’s the video of the PM touring the devastation on the East Coast last week. As he’s walking back to a Defence Force helicopter, he stops to talk to a volunteer firefighter who’s wearing the old high‑vis with 'Fire' written on the back. He does his political schmoozing - having the chat, getting up in the face, clapping the arm - then he heads off toward the chopper.

The firefighter turns around, looks at the phone filming her and makes a crude gesture, which the Hauraki boys would describe as “feeding the birds".

I saw that on Friday, I smirked, I thought, “Oh, that’s a bit funny,” and then I shut it down and got on with my life.

Fire and Emergency NZ, however, does not think it’s funny at all. They’ve completely overreacted to it and, after questions from the Herald, have decided to launch an investigation into this firefighter.

If they're open to taking some feedback, I would urge them to drop the investigation here. If there’s been a bad call, the really bad call isn’t the firefighter doing something silly in front of her mates who are filming - it’s the person who put the video online, which was the truly unwise thing to do in this modern age.

And it doesn’t seem to be the same person, by the way, given the TikTok account is run by a man and the firefighter is a woman. But even if they were the same person, it’s just really not a big deal, is it?

Politicians should expect - and do expect - this kind of reaction when they go around doing their political schmoozing. And if people have a laugh about the PM doing his schmoozing, who cares? It’s not threatening or intimidatory, it’s just mocking.

We have a shortage of volunteer firefighters in this country. We shouldn’t be lifting the expectations of volunteers to the same level as what we expect from professionals to the point that volunteers are dissuaded from giving us their time, which we frankly should be grateful for.

And there but for the grace of God, etc, right? Because we all do stupid things - we just hope the people around us don’t put it on TikTok.

I don’t want to live in a world where we get investigated over something as silly as this. Hopefully they drops this investigation because surely - surely to God - Fire and Emergency NZ has more important things to do.

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