Newly-elected Labor MP Jana Stewart says Australia's failure to accept its genocidal history remains one of the nation's most significant barriers to progress.

Delivering her maiden speech in the Federal Senate on Wednesday night, the Mutthi Mutthi and Wamba Wamba woman elected to represent Victoria canvassed the importance of women's rights, education, truth and Treaty in building a better nation.

Ms Stewart said Australia's inability to reconcile with its past was due to a failure to be honest about what happened to First Nations people, including her own great grandmothers.

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"I use the word genocide because it is a hard truth about the history of this country," she said.

"One of the barriers to our success as a rich multicultural nation is the weight of collective shame and guilt we cary because of our history.

"It is why this nation is in desperate need for a national truth-telling process."

Revealing Victoria's Treaty process sparked her interest in politics, Ms Stewart said her grandmother's advice to "learn the white man's way" to fight for her people drove her career spanning Aboriginal affairs, child protection and justice.

Ms Stewart said she did not care if her priorities in politics made people feel unconfortable.

"I dont care about your discomfort because it is uncomfortable to know and hear the lived experiences of women and children, and be part of a system complicit in harm and then do nothing about it," she said.

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"It is uncomfortable to read child death reports, it is unconfortable to hear one woman dies every nine days from family violence in this country, it is unconfortable to hear I, along with many other parents of colour will have to teach our children the alphabet the same time as how to deal with racism in primary school.

"It may be uncomfortable for you, but it has been heartbreaking for me to have comforted families through their trauma, grief and loss."

Ms Stewart urged governments to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, panning a society which blamed children and families for systemic failures.

"Each child who ends up in our juvenile justice system represents hundreds of missed opportunities... to get in and help," she said.

"If our answer to a problem is putting a child who is only in grade four behind bars... well then we are definitely asking the wrong questions."

On women's rights, Ms Stewart said women of colour were too often left out of data and of the national conversation.

She said she was tired of seeing pictures of "white, able-bodied" offices celebrating diversity while the pay gap between Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal men sat at 32.7 percent, and while older women faced increased risks of homelessness.

In a nod to the climate change debate, Ms Stewart said sacred sites were being destroyed and landscapes protected for thousands of years by Traditional Owners were now being charred.

She said it was important to help people in "Australia's engine room" transition to jobs in clean energy.