This Bizarre Union Ad Wants Students, Gay People And Environmentalists Kicked Out Of The Labor Party

United Voice are a major trade union representing workers from many walks of life, including hospitality, health, childcare, cleaning, security, aged care and manufacturing. It represents around 130,000 people, and styles itself as one of Australia’s pre-eminent voices for working people. Not without good reason; United Voice have made headlines recently has the spearhead behind a high-profile campaign to reverse severe wage cuts for cleaners in Parliament House, a campaign that Junkee covered glowingly.

But a bizarre new ad courtesy of the union’s South Australian branch has been heavily criticised for its attitude towards students, environmentalists, religious groups and LGBT people. The ad went up on YouTube this morning before quickly being pulled as backlash started to grow, but not before several people downloaded it. A copy is below.

WELL. That was something, wasn’t it kids. Always nice to have a sweet injection of crazy on a Friday evening. First off, big shout-out to all the Labor members out there concerned about climate change! One of the biggest unions your party’s affiliated with thinks you look like this:

SO. In this extended and extremely stretched metaphor, the house is the Labor Party, and the original couple are the people who founded it — namely, trade unionists and labourers. According to the ad’s logic (and I use that word generously), unionist’s control over “their” party has been steadily usurped by motley, self-interested groups of people who nonetheless are happy to exploit the gains the party has given them — namely, lawyers, political staffers, environmentalists, students, gay couples, and religious minorities.

This nonsense has been going on for too long, and it’s time for United Voice members — the real Labor Party — to take their party back. The ad remains mysteriously silent on its opinion of United Voice members who might also happen to be students, or LGBT, or religious, or care about the environment, but presumably that was a bit too much nuance for the VB ad voiceover bloke to process.

The crushing tone-deafness and casual bigotry of this creation aside, it’s weirdly ironic how United Voice’s objects of suspicion are people who are increasingly leaving the Labor Party anyway — young people are almost as likely to vote for the Greens as the ALP, and historically Labor-voting seats in inner Melbourne and Sydney have begun to vote Green instead. If there are young, politically aware people out there who feel like they’d be more at home with the Greens instead of Labor, United Voice in South Australia just gave them an almighty shove in that direction.

If you know United Voice, you know we defend all minorities against discrimination. United Voice WA is glad the video has been taken down.

— United Voice WA (@WAUnitedVoice) June 19, 2015

On its website, United Voice states: “We are people of diverse races, genders and ages, from all across the state. We have diverse backgrounds and a multitude of different skills, but we have the same goal—to be agents of positive social change and to continuously stand up for the type of society we believe in.”

If the attitude of the South Australian branch is to be believed, good luck with that.