WARNING: Distressing content and mention of domestic violence
Western Australian police have refused to attend a Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children.
Before the public hearing began in Perth on Wednesday, Senator Paul Scarr and Senator Dorinda Cox – a former WA police officer - both detailed their disappointment.
They said senior NSW officers had answered questions at a previous hearing in Sydney.
Senator Cox said the police no-show was disrespectful to the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women and children, many of whom had shared their tragic stories with the inquiry earlier this year.
"First Nations justice can never be achieved in this country if people are not accountable, if our law enforcement agencies across this country are not transparent in their transactions in our communities," she said.
"I'm urging people to work with us in partnership so that we can ensure that we look at this issue so we can prevent deaths of First Nations women and children in this country."
Both senators asked WA police to reconsider and said they were willing to adjust the schedule to accommodate them.
Lawyer George Newhouse from the National Justice Project was scheduled to front the inquiry later on Wednesday to call for greater accountability and inclusion of First Nations people by state bodies as a way to combat institutionalised racism.
Mr Newhouse's clients include Yamatji woman Tamica Mullaley, whose baby boy Charlie was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by her former partner Mervyn Bell.
In 2013 Bell beat Ms Mullaley and left her naked and bleeding with life-threatening injuries on a Broome street.
When police arrived, instead of being treated as a victim of violence, Ms Mullaley was arrested along with her father Ted who had turned up to help.
While Ms Mullaley was in police custody in hospital, Bell kidnapped baby Charlie, then brutalised and murdered him.
The police response was criticised in a Corruption and Crime Commission review, though it ruled there was no serious misconduct and did not conduct a full investigation.
"Government institutions in WA are culturally unsafe and systemically racist," Mr Newhouse told AAP.
"If the WA government is serious about addressing this issue, they need to establish a First Nations-led organisation that has oversight of complaints regarding the WA state coroner, the Corruption and Crime Commission, the WA police and other organisations that work with the families of missing and murdered women and children."
The state's youth commissioner Jacqueline McGowan-Jones said racism had fuelled an alarming number of recent violent acts against Aboriginal children in WA.
In her submission to the inquiry, Ms McGowan-Jones wrote about the death of Cassius Turvey, a 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy allegedly chased down and attacked with a metal pole by a group of non-Indigenous adults as he walked home from school with friends in October last year.
"This is not an isolated incident of violence against First Nations children in WA," Ms McGowan-Jones said.
"In the months leading up to the death of Cassius, two Aboriginal teenage boys were critically injured by a driver who believed they had stolen her motorbike.
"Many will also be familiar with the violent death of 14-year-old Elijah Doherty in 2016, who was killed on a motorcycle by the driver of a two-tonne 4WD."
The man stood trial charged with manslaughter but was convicted of the lesser offence of dangerous driving causing death.
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