At first position of the Socialist Alliance’s NSW Senate ticket, the former Chilean nursing professor renounced the nationality of her native country to run for parliament.
A former refugee who has been working as a nurse in Australia, Ms Sánchez says she needs at least 150,000 votes to be elected to a federal parliament.
If this feat is achieved, Ms Sánchez will also become the first Latin American woman to enter the Australian federal parliament.
To date, there have been two Latin Americans to sit in Parliament; retired, Uruguayan-Australian politician, Telmo Languiller, the former Speaker of the Victorian state Parliament and John Christian Watson who was born in Chile from a German Chilean seaman and served briefly as the third primer minister of Australia from 27 April to 18 August 1904.
Watson was the inaugural federal leader of the Australia Labor Party from 1901 to 1907 and was the first member of the party to serve as prime minister.
Ms Sánchez, who arrived in Australia with her family in 1988, said the Socialist Alliance party’s principles aligned with her own values
I know how hard life is when people live in extreme poverty.
"We need universal, public, quality health care, where the workers and patients are looked after, as well as quality housing for all.
"I’m also in favour of free universal, high quality education, accessible to all, especially migrant communities."
Ms Sánchez said she became involved in political activism with her sister at age 13 in a bid to fight against the Pinochet dictatorship.
“I was a political prisoner (at 19 years of age), which further strengthened my desire for justice and for improving the situation for impoverished people,” she said.
The Socialist Alliance party has proposed construction of good quality public housing, in a way that is different from the typical social housing that exists today, she said.
Ms Sanchez said that if she were to be elected, she would lobby for an increase in the minimum wage to $25 an hour, and the creation of long-term employment through the development of low-cost public housing projects, similar to those proposed by the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Ms Sánchez wants to see the minimum wage lifted to $25 an hour. Source: Getty Images/Asadanz
“The idea is to create long-term, sustainable jobs, such as in the area of nursing, where currently there is a lot of insecure, casual work,” Ms Sánchez said.
