Victoria’s emergency services minister believes he is being followed and fears for his family’s safety after a bullet, etched with the word “RAT” and his former firefighter number, was left on his car on Saturday. The Herald Sun first reported on Monday that Paul Edbrooke had returned to his car after a community event in his Frankston electorate on Saturday and found the bullet on the bonnet. He later told reporters he had only been away from the car for about an hour and made the “chilling” discovery on his return.
It means someone knows what my car is, and that’s really quite scary. It comes just days after the alleged attack on the federal MP Helen Haines last week. There was no suggestion the two incidents were linked.
They’ve been in this car. It could have been them that found the bullet, and that terrifies me. It’s totally unacceptable,” Edbrooke said.
He said the five-digit ID number etched into one side of the bullet was from when he was a firefighter and would be a personal detail “only firefighters would be aware of” and was not commonly known by the wider community. He said the only people from whom he was receiving “aggressive threats” and abuse on social media were members of the United Firefighters Union. The union is taking action against Fire Rescue Victoria – an agency Edbrooke oversees – in the Fair Work Commission over the firefighters’ enterprise bargaining agreement.
The parties have been unable to resolve the EBA since 2021. The UFU has been campaigning against the state’s Labor government, vowing to run an expensive advertising campaign, staff polling booths with firefighters, and distribute authorised material urging voters to put the party in the lead up to next month’s election. It is also planning to hold a members’ meeting on the question of disaffiliating from the Victorian Labor party altogether.
But the union boss, Peter Marshall, said he condemned the threat against Edbrooke and said whoever had left the bullet “does not speak for [or] act for firefighters or this union”. Threatening anyone, including a minister we strongly disagree with, is the opposite of everything this union stands for,” Marshall said in a statement. He also defended a video posted to the UFU social media account on Friday, in which he warned Edbrooke and the premier, Ben Carroll, that they were “in the gun”.
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