Jorge Jorquera

My name is Jorge Andres Jorquera and I have lived in Melbourne's west for over 25 years. I'm proud to be running as a Victorian Socialists candidate for the Western Metro upper house region alongside lead candidate Anneke Demanuele.

I have been a socialist and community activist since arriving in Australia with my family, who, like so many left-wing Chileans, were persecuted and exiled by the Pinochet dictatorship. I began my political activism at age 14, in the Carina branch of the Labor Party in Brisbane. Like thousands of others, I left the Labor Party in protest at the Hawke government’s Accord, which spearheaded the neoliberal policies that have shaped politics in Australia ever since.

In my early years as an activist, I was elected secretary of the University of Queensland Student Union and coordinator of the National Free Education Coalition, which led the national campaign against the reintroduction of university fees. In the early 1990s I helped establish one of the first Greens Party branches in NSW.

I have spent four decades as part of numerous campaigns and communities of resistance, fighting the pro-market policies that have turned governments into guarantors of profits for big business and forced competition into every aspect of our lives.

From 2020 to 2024 I served as a councillor in the City of Maribyrnong. I call both Santiago, Chile, and Footscray home, and have raised two boys with my partner here in the western suburbs.

I am a socialist, a unionist, an anti-racist and an advocate for migrant communities, working class families and young people. As an educator and former School Council president at Footscray Primary, I am also passionate about education and the potential it has to empower children and young people to make the world a better place.

I hope our state election campaign helps reinvigorate the spirit of community solidarity that runs deep in the west, and helps make our community a beacon of justice, equality, solidarity and friendship.