People in the federal government remain divided over whether genocide took place against First Peoples following colonisation.

The comments from the government's leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, in response to questions from Lidia Thorpe, came after new research released this week revealed much larger population losses among First Peoples as a result of colonisation than previously believed.

The research, led by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures (CIEHF), estimated that 93 per cent of the pre-European population was lost in less than 80 years following the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.

Sophisticated computer modelling calculated that the Indigenous population was up to seven times larger than previously estimated.

On Wednesday, Senator Thorpe asked Senator Wong whether the government agreed "that a genocide has occurred on this continent".

In response, Senator Wong noted that different senators — including those in Labor — would use a different term other than genocide.

"What I would say to you is I think the history of First Nations people in this country is a history that involves not only hardship but also brutality and death and murders and dispossession," she said.

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The CIEHF researchers calculated a median pre-colonial Indigenous population of 2.22 million, significantly higher than previous historical estimates of between 250,000 and 1 million people.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission — the country's first official truth-telling body — last year found the "decimation of the First Peoples population in Victoria ... was the result of a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups".

"This was genocide," it said.

Asked by Senator Thorpe what the government would "call wiping out up to two million people if not genocide?" Senator Wong said it is "important that we as a country know and understand what has happened in Australia, including history that has not been spoken of and history which has not been taught".

"Part of that history is the painful truths, some of which you have alluded to, that there was, as I said, brutality, killing and dispossession," she said. "I am one that does believe that we should talk about that and understand that more."

Writing in the report's foreword last year, Yoorrook Chair Professor Eleanor Bourke AM said: "Our lands were taken, and with them, something deeper: the essence of culture, and the ability to continue traditional practices and maintain identity."

"Death, violence, disease, dispossession and government control changed the landscape."

When asked whether the current or any former government had looked into whether genocide had occurred, Senator Wong said: "What I am saying to you — and this is what the government's view is — is that we should have more telling of the truth of our history. Different people will have different words to describe that, but we should have more truth-telling."

Noting that the question came in a week when far-right Senator Pauline Hanson was criticised for comments in which she said Aboriginal ancestors were a "primitive race," the South Australian senator added, "If we as a country understood better our history, as painful as it is, then it might be that there would be more respect and understanding shown to our First Nations people."

Earlier this year, former Yoorrook Commissioner Travis Lovett walked from Melbourne to Canberra to call for a national truth-telling body.

"Let this be where the country turns its face towards the truth, let this be where the delay ends," he said in May when reaching federal Parliament, where he met with the Prime Minister.

"I ask this country to walk the next part with us."