Who is Jess Wilson? The 36-year-old set to make history at the Victorian state election

It was a moment that no daughter would forget, even one not yet capable of understanding the profound consequences of what was happening.

On the last day of November, 24 years ago, 12-year-old Jess Wilson watched her father, one-term Liberal MP Ron Wilson, slowly realise that his political career was about to be smashed. Believing the Coalition could not be trusted to govern, Victorians delivered Steve Bracks’ government the most crushing Labor victory in State history.

Ron Wilson, the shadow health minister, had been allocated what looked like a safe seat after his first electorate was abolished. But the 9 per cent margin in Mount Waverley could not withstand the anti-Liberal forces sweeping across Victoria. His pre-teenage daughter had to watch as the man she most admired — who would never reach the high office he seemed destined for — was hit by one of the biggest anti-Liberal swings in the whole election.

That day convinced her that people are defined by the hardest moments in their lives and how they deal with them.

“I remember it very clearly,” Wilson says in an interview. “He knew very early on and I remember him saying to my mum: ‘This isn’t going to be good.’ (He was) putting his arms around all those who had been involved in the campaign and other colleagues.

“I think it’s that rule that politics — nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems — I think is quite true. You build resilience every day. You learn something every day.”

Firsts

Election day on November 28 may be the day the Wilson family avenges their 2002 defeat.

Although the Coalition’s lead is narrowing, polls and betting markets predict Jess Wilson will make history in multiple ways. She would be the first millennial premier, the youngest Victorian premier in over a century, Victoria’s first female Liberal premier, the second woman and first Liberal woman to win a State election from opposition, and probably the only Australian head of government whose first electronic device was a Tamagotchi.

Wilson’s ascension would be a turning point for Victoria too. Over two-and-a-half decades of only briefly interrupted rule, the Labor Party has made Victoria an example of proudly progressive government, an approach the Coalition hopes to reverse. From Melbourne Airport’s Naarm Way to the estimated $100 billion-plus Suburban Rail Loop being constructed in the city’s south-eastern suburbs, Victoria is a State of big government, big projects and big debt.

Wilson calls it the “gangster State”. She promises to fix it. First she has to win. She has a great advantage: Victoria’s government is in a similar position to Joan Kirner’s Labor administration in 1992 when 44-year-old Jeff Kennett took power with a 6 per cent swing that captured him 61 of the 88 lower-house seats.

Kennett was so energetic that he eventually wore Victorians out. Wilson is also a dynamo. She wakes at 5am most days and recently completed a five-week, 6000km tour of every electorate in a State the same size as Britain.

“I think I’m decisive,” she says. “Often leadership can come with decision paralysis and that can be diabolical in political environments. People often refer to me as a bit of no nonsense: focus, get on with it and move on.”

She can get teary too. On December 15, the day after the Bondi Beach massacre, she struggled to contain her composure at a memorial service at an Orthodox synagogue in Caulfield, a Melbourne suburb popular with many Jewish families.

No one judged her. When Elyse Schachna, the president of Zionism Victoria, told the congregation, which included most of the State’s senior politicians, that Wilson attended the synagogue to celebrate Hanukkah, the room erupted in applause. Jacinta Allan, premier at the time, was booed and hissed.

Getting to know her

Many opposition leaders struggle to get the public to take an interest in them. Wilson’s federal counterpart, Angus Taylor, has had this problem. And Wilson only took over the job in November after entering parliament in 2022. Polls show her to be unusually well-liked but also a mystery to many Victorians.

“Jess Wilson has a broadly favourable image in the electorate but a lot of voters still don’t know who she is or haven’t made up their minds,” says pollster Shaun Ratcliff, whose firm Accent Research tracks opinion in the State.

Her opponent, Premier Ben Carroll, was elevated on July 28, giving the Labor Party even less time to persuade Victorians to like him.

There are polls, and there is the mood. Wilson’s staff, Coalition candidates and party volunteers report a genuine interest in the young politician in a State tired of reports of corruption, political scandals and a general bitterness in public life that extends back to the pandemic.

For someone with few years experience of high-level politics, Wilson is a disciplined communicator. In interviews, she almost never misses an opportunity to turn the conversation to the government’s failings. She knows how to deliver scripted lines without sounding too rehearsed, a problem even more established politicians like former Labor leader Bill Shorten struggled to overcome.

“I got into this job to do something, not to be someone,” she says.

Probed on her personal life, she admits to enjoying romantic comedy movies. Her favourite is Notting Hill, the 1999 hit about a famous actress who falls in love with a witty nobody. Wilson loved the film so much, when she briefly lived in London as a student she explored the neighbourhood looking for the private garden where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts’ characters shared their first serious kiss.

Politically and culturally, Wilson represents the “moderate” or left wing of the party. She is no Peta Credlin, the News24 broadcaster and former Liberal political adviser who many conservatives once hoped would be running for premier today.

The younger woman combines a commitment to capitalism with a more culturally sensitive outlook. She supports fighting climate change and voted for an Indigenous Voice in the constitution, positions that distance her from the more conservative federal party.

Still, Wilson is a long way from woke. Unlike former Liberal leader Sussan Ley, she says she has never been subjected to sexism. She opposes gender quotas to secure more women MPs for the Liberal Party.

Her policies have been welcomed by the Institute for Public Affairs, the free market think tank where her husband, Aaron Lane, worked as a research fellow before becoming a barrister. She promises to make Victoria better for business by lowering taxes, reducing regulation and shrinking government.

“In the private sector I witnessed the combination of risk, talent, hard work and agility and the ‘alertness’ required to take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunity,” she said in her first speech in Parliament.

Apart from two years as a graduate consultant at KPMG, her professional experience before winning the seat of Kew in 2022 was at the intersection of business and politics. She was an adviser to former Liberal deputy leader Josh Frydenberg for one year and five months, when he was environment minister, and five years helping set policy at the Business Council of Australia, a big business lobby group.

She became close to the group’s chief executive, Jennifer Westacott, a pragmatist who combined advocacy for business interests while building a friendly relationship with Anthony Albanese and other Labor ministers.

‘Hope of the side’

Within the Liberal Party there is tremendous optimism that Wilson is their best shot at government. What is unclear is how the Coalition’s campaign apparatus will fare against a formidable and experienced Labor machine.

The Liberal State director, Alyson Hannam, was hired last November. She ran the Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party campaign in 2024 when it stormed into power by delivering the second-worst defeat of a government in the territory’s history.

But as a Queenslander, Hannam has never run a State campaign and has no direct experience of Victorian politics. If One Nation’s popularity persists until the election, there is a fear in the Coalition wavering, centrist voters could shift back to the Labor Party rather than risk a minority Wilson government reliant on One Nation support.

Hannam’s out-of-state status likely means party president Brian Loughnane will play an important role. Credlin’s husband, Loughnane is a party legend. As federal director he ran four elections for the Liberals, two of which the Coalition won.

The public attention will be on Wilson. The party establishment, desperate to return to power after 11 years of Labor rule, is determined to unite behind her and end factional infighting that has triggered almost weekly internal brawls for years.

“Jess is the hope of the side and has done exceptionally well since becoming Opposition leader,” former deputy leader and treasurer Josh Frydenberg says.

“As an adviser in my office she impressed everyone with her intellect, work ethic and ability to get across complex policy areas quickly. She was often the first in the office and the last to leave. She has good judgment, strong values and would make a great premier.”

Priorities

The Wilson campaign is going high and low.

Her top priority is a royal commission into alleged union-linked corruption on the “Big Build” infrastructure projects across the State. Even though the government has already started one, Wilson says she is prepared to shut it down and begin again if it does not go far enough. She would seek to put three of her predecessors in the witness stand, Daniel Andrews, Jacinta Allan and Ben Carroll, to help determine if there was corruption in the Cabinet.

“There are former cabinet ministers, former premiers that must be called as witnesses,” she says. “They need to be called to understand what they knew, when they knew it, what decisions they made.”

She has promised the Budget will deliver a “cash surplus” by 2032, a figure that includes infrastructure such as tunnels, bridges and hospitals. The current government promises “operating” surpluses for the next four years. They will exclude investment and add to what is already the biggest State debt in Australia.

To reach a comprehensive surplus, independent economist Saul Eslake estimates Wilson would have to raise taxes or cut spending by around $8 billion a year, a huge sum that would hit services and could trigger a political backlash.

“Should we be given the honour of governing, there are going to need to be disciplined decisions that we make,” Wilson says. “We cannot continue to see debt grow.”

At the same time as cleaning up corruption, stamping out crime and saving the Victorian economy, Wilson wants to fill potholes.

On her Statewide tour the most poignant moment, she says, was bouncing along a central Victorian country road in a 30-year-old Country Fire Brigade truck. The volunteer firefighter driving complained the government was preoccupied with Melbourne, the centre of economic and political power in Victoria.

“We were dodging potholes on the Hume; literal craters on the road,” she says. “I was having a chat about how these people put their lives on the line for their community and volunteer their time and he said to me: ‘It just feels like if you don’t drive through a tunnel or go through a tunnel in Melbourne, this government just doesn’t care about you.’

“It was a real moment that struck for me just the neglect of regional Victoria in particular under this government.”

The pothole complaints were heard. Two months after her tour, Premier Ben Carroll promised to fill 500,000 of the road obstacles this year, up from initial plans for 250,000. Prisoners will used to beautify highways by removing graffiti, picking up rubbish and mowing lawns too.

Mothers and fathers

Wilson was born on Anzac Day, 1990, creating a perennial clash between her public responsibilities and the one day self-celebration is encouraged.

This year, she attended the dawn service at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance and then went to see her AFL team, Collingwood, play her husband’s, Essendon, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Essendon got smashed, which might have been a metaphor for the challenges of working political spouses.

There was no 36th birthday party. It is too early to celebrate in the Wilson household.

As Wilson knows, politics is tough on families. She admits experiencing pangs of guilt leaving her two-year-old son in the morning, knowing she has chosen a path that will thrust him into the public eye without him having any choice.

As for Ron Wilson, the co-creator and inspiration for this promising life, he plays with his grandson and doesn’t provide political counsel, according to Jess Wilson. That’s probably wise, at least for the Victorian Liberal Party, because she suspects her father’s message would not be what the party wants to hear.

“If he could have chosen if I went to politics, he probably would have said ‘no, go do something else’,” she says.