Originally Posted by
Square Bear
As to QF response...I was a First Responder for some time...never ever thought myself in the same league as a Veteran, and most First Responders I interacted with would have had the same feelings.
Why Not? Our emergency services (please don't use the Americanised term First Responders, we've already got enough American cultural infiltration) have high rates of death and injury in the job, they put their bodies in harm's way to save lives of our citizens, sacrifice a lot of time away from home and their families and miss birthdays, holidays etc to serve the community, have high rates of trauma and stress as a result of their actions and for lot of them they do it on a completely volunteer basis for no monetary reward. They absolutely deserve to be in the highest league of people honoured in our country. I'd argue for police officers they do that while copping a fair amount of undeserved abuse from the public as well. A greater number of emergency service workers have been killed on the job in Australia since 2003 than military personnel killed in conflicts over the same time period.
Let's not get into a contest about which vital professions are more worthy or deserving of respect, either we single out every individual group for praise or we treat all citizens equally. I'd rather the latter.