A coalition of legal, medical and human rights groups have written to Attorney-General Michaelia Cash in a renewed push to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14.
In Australia, children as young as 10 can be arrested by police, remanded in custody, convicted by the courts and jailed.
Some 499 children aged between 10 and 13 were detained in the youth justice system in 2019/20, with more than two-thirds identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
Federal, state and territory attorneys-general met on July 27, 2020, to discuss raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, which would bring the nation in line with international standards.
But they deferred a decision by at least one year to allow a working group, led by the WA justice department, to examine alternatives to imprisonment for youth offenders.