By PETER ROWE

WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox blasted fellow parliamentarians as ‘disgraceful’ after the death of another indigenous woman on Tuesday saw her call for a debate on the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and children dismissed by the Senate on Thursday.

Senator Cox was emotional as she told the Upper House the lack of a response to the report – and that the Greens’ reccommendations were not in that report – was a disgrace.

In a fiery exchange with new Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy, Senator Cox said the death of the woman in Darwin on Tuesday had largely gone unreported.

“Just six outlets reported this issue and most were black women in the media,” Senator Cox said.

“It’s disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful. But it gets worse…

“Victoria this fortnight, they are winding back the commitment that they had about raising the age to criminal responsibility to 14.

“We’ve got senior police in this country running around saying, well, we should lower the age of criminal responsibility to five. Five years old.

“I’m talking about my future grandchildren, my nieces and nephews, that if you can sit in this place and give power to people that think that five-year-olds are criminally responsible, we have serious, serious problems.

Senator Cox told the Senate in her submission for a debate that the inquiry report didn’t count the dead black women and children and called out ministers responsible for ignoring the issue.

“It’s disgraceful,” she said. “The magnitude of this problem is not just about that. It is just the absolute lack of attention to the systemic racism. We have people in this chamber going out and talking about cultural bias.

“It is systemic and structural racism that our people are experiencing, and this report details all of those cases.

“Every person on that committee said how they were affected and how they were moved. Well, guess what? You’ve got the power in this country to make change.”

Senator Cox’s powerful speech was dismissed by Senator McCarthy as “completely disrespectful”.

“I’m disappointed, Madam deputy president, that this has been put before the Senate in a manner that I find is completely disrespectful to the process that we are trying to do in the right way, and sending a tone throughout this country that this parliament does not care is actually irresponsible and reprehensible,” Senator McCarthy said.

When Senator Cox interjected that her response was an embarrassment, Senator McCarthy fired back: There’s no embarrassment, Senator Cox. There is no embarrassment whatsoever.”

“I would just urge the Senate to vote no, to vote no, because we need the time.”