Wilfred George Petersen (13 May 1921 - 28 March 2000) was an Australian politician, affiliated with the Australian Labor Party and elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.
Petersen was born in Childers, Queensland, the grandchild of Scandinavian migrants. He was educated at Bundaberg High School, later working as a telephonist for the Postmaster-General's Department and as a pensions officer and special magistrate for the Department of Social Services from 1937 to 1968. In the war he served in Queensland and Borneo as a military signaller in a commando squadron from 1942 to 1946.
In 1947 he married his first wife, Elaine Tout, and had two children in 1953 and 1956. Later, they divorced and he married Mairi Gould. They had one daughter.
In 1943 Petersen joined the Communist Party of Australia. He left in 1956 after Khrushchev's Secret Speech, which denounced Stalin. He joined the Australian Labor Party in 1957, and was elected to the Legislative Assembly as member for Kembla in 1968. He represented this electorate until the 1971 election, when he moved to the seat of Illawarra, which he held until his retirement in 1988.
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