A Political Attack on a Female Premier — and Why It's Ringing Alarm Bells

A group of business owners in Melbourne spent $105,000 on billboards and a mobile advertising truck with the slogan "Ditch the Witch" targeting Victoria's Premier Jacinta Allan. When The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that Franco Puleo — owner of a brothel called Gotham City — was one of the people funding the campaign, both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard publicly condemned it.

Until that disclosure, no one knew who was behind the ads. Puleo confirmed he and other local business owners had pooled money to run the campaign. The business owners say they have grievances with how the Victorian government regulates their industries, though they haven't spelled out the details publicly.

A Shadowy Campaign With Legal Questions

The fact that private business owners — rather than a political party or registered lobby group — funded this campaign raises a key question: Is it legal?

In Victoria, political advertising above certain spending levels has to be registered and reported to the public. It's meant to work like a rule requiring financial disclosures: if you're spending serious money to influence an election, voters deserve to know who's behind it. Whether this $105,000 campaign meets that threshold, and whether it was properly reported, will likely be investigated by the Victorian Electoral Commission.

The broader context here is that advertising focused on criticising government policies sits in a grey area — different from ads that directly attack a sitting politician. This campaign names Allan as the target, which puts it in contested legal territory.

A Slogan From a Darker Political Moment

The phrase "Ditch the Witch" is not new to Australian politics. It was used against Julia Gillard when she was Prime Minister. Most infamously, Tony Abbott — then the Opposition Leader — stood in front of signs with that slogan at a 2011 rally in Canberra. At the time, the slogan drew criticism as sexist language, and Gillard's 2012 speech in Parliament about political misogyny became internationally known.

When the campaign against Allan surfaced, Gillard issued a statement saying she was "disgusted" by the reuse of the slogan. Albanese also spoke out. Both made their opposition clear without any qualifier — they put themselves on record.

Allan has faced gendered abuse before. In 2025, a fire truck at a rally carried the phrase "ditch the b*tch" aimed at her. That incident drew criticism at the time but didn't draw a response from national political leaders the way this campaign has.

The pattern here deserves to be named plainly. A slogan gets tested against one female leader. It sticks around. Then it gets recycled against the next one. The phrase functions less as a criticism of policy and more as a signal: it tells the target and the audience that the attack is personal and about her gender, not about what she's done as a leader. When Gillard faced it years ago, it took time for political leaders across parties to agree that the language itself was the problem. The fact that both Albanese and Gillard have condemned this campaign so quickly suggests that consensus has shifted.

The Mood Behind the Money

This campaign didn't happen in isolation. Victoria is heading toward a state election while the Labor government in Canberra is facing serious political headwinds.

Recent polling shows voters are frustrated with the federal government. One survey from April 2026 found One Nation at 31% and Labor at 28%, with two-thirds of voters saying Australia is heading in the wrong direction. These are federal numbers — state elections work differently — but they reflect a broader public mood: dissatisfaction with how Labor is running things.

That mood creates an opening. When voters feel a government isn't working, they become more receptive to anti-government campaigns, including unusual ones like this private coalition spending $105,000 on billboards. Puleo and his fellow business owners saw an opportunity when they decided to fund this campaign.

What Happens Now

Several things are likely to unfold in parallel.

The Victorian Electoral Commission will probably investigate whether Puleo and the other business owners followed the law when they funded this campaign. Political expenditure at this scale usually has to be registered and reported.

For Allan, the situation cuts both ways. On one hand, she faces the real political challenge that the campaign is tapping into — voter frustration with her government. On the other hand, the fact that a female premier is being attacked with gendered language has brought sympathetic statements from the highest levels of federal politics. Whether that helps her politically in the longer term depends on whether she can actually address the dissatisfaction her government faces.

For Gillard, speaking out on this issue is deliberate. Since leaving office, she has worked internationally on gender equity in education. Re-entering the domestic political conversation over gendered political attacks is a choice she's making consciously.

The campaign itself — $105,000, a truck circling Melbourne, a slogan with a loaded history — is an unusual example of how private citizens can run political advertising outside the traditional party system. As the funding sources become public, it will serve as a test case for how regulatory authorities handle these kinds of campaigns, and whether the legal rules governing political spending actually work the way they're meant to.

The legal, political, and cultural questions it raises will take longer to sort out than the news stories it's generating.