Dorinda Cox

Biography

Dorinda Rose Cox is an Australian politician and the first Indigenous woman to represent Western Australia in the Senate. She was born on May 25, 1976, in Kojonup, Western Australia, to Yamatji and Noongar parents. Her family has a history of child removal, with five generations of her matriarchal line affected. Her grandfather was taken from his family and country as an infant and raised at the New Norcia mission, where his name was changed.

Cox left school in 1994 at the age of 17 to become a police cadet with the Western Australia Police. She served as an Aboriginal Police Liaison Officer from 1996 to 2002, conducting specialized training in child abuse, sexual assault interviewing, frontline policing, and the family violence unit. After leaving the force at the age of 27, she worked for Centrelink. In 2008, she was appointed to the National Council to Reduce Violence Against Women, and she has served on various boards, including Our Watch, the WA Ombudsman’s Advisory Committee on Child Death Reviews and Family Violence Homicides, and the Indigenous working group for the Every Woman Treaty campaign. Cox has also conducted extensive research on strategies for working with First Nations survivors of sexual assault. As of 2019, she was the acting executive officer of the Noongar Family Safety and Wellbeing Council and a former non-executive director of the Kooraminning Aboriginal Corporation.

Cox’s political career began when she stood for the Greens in the seat of Jandakot in the 2017 Western Australian state election. She also ran as the party’s candidate in the 2018 Fremantle federal by-election. In October 2020, Cox won preselection as the lead candidate on the Greens’ Senate ticket in Western Australia at the 2022 federal election, following the decision of incumbent senator Rachel Siewert not to re-contest. She defeated former state MP Lynn MacLaren and incumbent state director Sophie Greer in the preselection ballot. Siewert resigned from the Senate prior to the end of her term, creating a casual vacancy to be filled by Cox in September 2021.

Cox was sworn in to the Senate on October 18, 2021, becoming the first Indigenous woman to represent Western Australia in the Senate and the fifth in federal Parliament. In her maiden speech, she highlighted First Nations issues, including cultural heritage, rates of homelessness, deaths in custody, Treaty, and family violence. Cox also called for a national inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women, and in November 2021, she secured the support of the Senate to establish a parliamentary inquiry examining the policing processes used in First Nations murder and missing persons investigations.

Cox is the Australian Greens Spokesperson on Mining and Resources, Trade, Tourism, Science, Research, and Innovation. Her political positions include advocating for treaties with Indigenous Australians, establishing a national family violence strategy, and using Indigenous Australian customary law to complement the Australian legal system. She has also spoken out against the approval of the Scarborough gas project and the provision of grants to frack the Beetaloo Basin, and she has called for a moratorium on all new coal and gas projects. Cox moved amendments on behalf of the Australian Greens to prohibit Export Finance Australia from investing in fossil fuel projects.

Cox has two daughters, Ailish and Ciara, with her ex-husband. She experiences some hearing difficulties and uses a cochlear implant. In 2022, she was named World Hearing Day Ambassador by the Ear Science Institute Australia.