A major trade union with formal financial links to the Australian Labor Party has launched a digital advertising campaign targeting Victorian Opposition Leader Jess Wilson, portraying her alongside One Nation figures and warning voters that “they’re not on your side” ahead of the November state election.
The United Workers Union campaign is appearing in paid online advertising and on a dedicated election webpage, where Wilson is pictured alongside One Nation federal leader Pauline Hanson and Victorian leader Warren Pickering.
One advertisement declares: “They’re not on your side”, while claiming Wilson, Hanson and Pickering would together deliver “$40 billion in cuts to services Victorians rely on”.
The campaign goes further on the union’s website, asserting:
“Polling shows that Jess Wilson & the Liberals can only form government with the help of One Nation.”
But the union webpage does not identify the poll, provide field dates, publish a seat projection or explain the modelling behind that claim.
That distinction matters.
A recent Freshwater Strategy poll conducted between September 24 and 28 put the Coalition on 29 per cent of the primary vote, Labor on 24 per cent and One Nation on 22 per cent, with the Coalition leading Labor 53–47 on a two-party-preferred basis. Polling can indicate statewide voter sentiment, but it does not by itself establish that the Liberals could “only” form government with One Nation support because Victorian governments are determined seat by seat.
The increasingly aggressive campaign also raises questions about how independently voters should view the union’s political messaging.
The United Workers Union is not simply an outside workers’ organisation commenting on the election from the sidelines.
Its own audited financial statements show substantial formal affiliation payments to branches of the Australian Labor Party.
For the financial year ending June 2025, the union recorded $196,996 in affiliation fees to the Victorian branch of the ALP. Across Labor branches in Queensland, NSW, the ACT, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, those affiliation fees totalled more than $880,000 for the year.
A year earlier, its accounts recorded $193,528 in affiliation fees to Victorian Labor.
That financial relationship does not make the union’s claims false, and trade unions are legally entitled to campaign on issues affecting their members.
But it is highly relevant context for voters seeing paid advertisements presenting the campaign principally as a warning from workers about Wilson and One Nation.
The union itself says it represents workers including cleaners, teacher aides, hospitality workers, manufacturers and security guards and argues that political decisions can affect wages, conditions and job security.
Its campaign urges voters to ask who will protect workplace rights and “stand with workers when powerful interests push the other way”.
Yet the most prominent political target of the advertising is Wilson.
Wilson placed alongside Hanson and Pickering
The strategy appears designed to connect the Liberal leader visually and politically with One Nation at a time when Hanson’s party is polling strongly in Victoria.
The union’s webpage devotes one section to Hanson and Pickering before turning directly to Wilson and the Victorian Liberal Party.
It points to comments by Hanson about workplace laws and claims One Nation has advocated making it easier for businesses to terminate employees. It then notes Wilson’s refusal in June to decide preference arrangements months before election day.
Wilson did indeed leave the question of preferences open when questioned in June.
But her full comments provide more context.
She said preference discussions would occur closer to the election once the Liberals knew the parties, candidates and policies involved. Asked whether Hanson had approached her, Wilson replied: “No.”
By September, Wilson was publicly saying she was campaigning to win a majority government.
“I’m not really interested in the other parties,” she told ABC’s 7.30, adding that she had not spoken to One Nation Victorian leader Warren Pickering.
That does not settle how preferences will ultimately be allocated or what would happen in a hung parliament.
But it makes the union’s presentation of Wilson and One Nation as an emerging governing combination more politically loaded than a simple description of an existing agreement.
There is currently no announced Liberal–One Nation coalition in Victoria.
Where does the $40 billion claim come from?
The second major attack in the advertising is the claim that Wilson and her allies would deliver $40 billion in cuts.
It is a figure Labor itself has repeatedly used.
Then-Premier Jacinta Allan’s government claimed in May that Wilson had announced a plan to remove $40 billion from the state budget and argued such reductions could not occur without affecting hospitals and schools.
Labor MPs have repeated the figure extensively in parliament and government media releases, linking it to proposed reductions in the size of the public service.
The United Workers Union is now using essentially the same attack line in its election advertising.
But the Coalition disputes Labor’s characterisation.
During a May parliamentary debate, Coalition MPs said Labor was describing what they said was a $22 billion plan as more than $40 billion in cuts, accusing the government of running a scare campaign.
That difference is important.
The advertisements state the $40 billion figure as a straightforward consequence for Victorian services. The underlying political dispute about how that number is calculated is substantially less visible.
The union webpage says:
“You can’t make cuts that deep without impacting services. It’s everyday Victorians who will pay the price.”
That is an argument, not an independently established outcome.
A familiar election playbook
The United Workers Union is no stranger to large-scale political advertising.
During the 2025 federal election, The Guardian reported that Australian Unions and the United Workers Union together spent about $1.85 million on digital advertising, including more than $826,000 on geographically targeted YouTube and Meta advertisements.
The union is also one of Labor’s substantial organisational financial supporters.
Australian Electoral Commission data reported after the 2022 federal election showed Labor had recorded $947,148 in receipts from the United Workers Union during the relevant disclosure period.
The latest Victorian campaign therefore fits into a much larger political relationship between organised labour and the Labor Party.
There is nothing unusual in unions campaigning politically.
Business groups, environmental organisations, industry bodies, lobby groups and wealthy individuals all spend money attempting to influence Australian elections.
The question for voters is transparency.
When an organisation with financial and institutional connections to one side of politics buys advertising attacking the other side, those connections form part of the story.
The UWU advertising does contain an authorisation stating it is authorised by G. Bullock of the United Workers Union in Docklands.
What most voters encountering a brief display advertisement may not immediately know is that the same organisation paid almost $197,000 in affiliation fees to Victorian Labor in its latest publicly available annual accounts.
One Nation becomes Labor’s preferred attack line
The campaign also comes as Labor increasingly tries to make One Nation central to its case against Wilson.
Government statements have repeatedly used formulations such as a “Liberal-One Nation Coalition”, despite no formal coalition between the parties having been announced.
Premier Ben Carroll has intensified those warnings as One Nation support has risen.
The political logic is clear.
One Nation is now drawing support from voters who might otherwise have backed both major parties, including in parts of Melbourne’s west and regional Victoria. ABC reporting has found the party’s rise is complicating the electoral calculations of Labor and the Coalition alike.
For Labor and Labor-aligned organisations, linking Wilson to Hanson creates an opportunity to frame the election not simply as Labor versus Liberal, but as a choice between Labor and a potential conservative bloc involving One Nation.
For Wilson, the challenge is the reverse: attracting voters dissatisfied with Labor without allowing Labor to define her campaign through another party’s policies.
Unions entitled to campaign — voters entitled to know who is campaigning
The United Workers Union has every right to argue that Liberal or One Nation policies would be bad for its members.
It also has every right to purchase political advertisements and participate heavily in the Victorian election.
But the advertisements deserve to be understood for what they are: political campaigning by an organisation with an established financial affiliation to the Australian Labor Party, not independent voter information detached from party politics.
Its own accounts establish that relationship.
Its election webpage establishes its target.
And its advertising makes clear the central message it wants Victorian voters to absorb: Jess Wilson, Pauline Hanson and Warren Pickering belong politically in the same frame.
Whether voters accept that argument is another matter.
There is no announced Liberal–One Nation coalition. Wilson says she is seeking majority government and says she has not spoken with Pickering. The union’s claim that polling proves the Liberals can only govern with One Nation is presented without an identified poll or seat analysis on the campaign page. Meanwhile, the $40 billion figure at the heart of its attack remains fiercely contested between Labor and the Coalition.
What is beyond dispute is that, with Victoria heading towards a volatile November election, one of Labor’s major union affiliates has entered the advertising battle — and Jess Wilson is firmly in its sights.
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