Independent Senator Rex Patrick has accused the Australian government of failing to call out China's treatment of Uighurs in the Xinjiang region.
The federal government and Labor blocked an attempt by Senator Patrick on Monday to push through a Senate motion that would have recognised the Chinese government's actions against the Muslim minority as "genocide".
China has strongly denied allegations of human rights abuses in the western Chinese province.
However, the United States administration has described the persecution of the Uighurs as genocide as have Canada’s Parliament and the Dutch Parliament.
“It is most regrettable that Coalition and Labor Senators combined to block a vote on a motion that recognises the incontrovertible fact that the Chinese Government is engaged in a campaign against the Uyghur people that constitutes an international crime within the scope of the 1948 Genocide Convention," Senator Patrick said.
“This grim reality has been publicly recognised by the United States Administration of President Joe Biden, by the Canadian Parliament and the Parliament of the Netherlands."
Liberal Senator Jonathan Duniam said the government did not believe the motion was a appropriate means of addressing the human rights concerns.
"Australia remains deeply concerned by reports of enforced disappearances, mass detentions, forced labour, pervasive surveillance of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang," he told the Senate.
"We will continue to work closely with our key partners to advocate on this issue in a meaningful way."
Labor Senator Katy Gallagher also said the party strongly condemned the "human rights violations" against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities.
The Greens, Senator Jacqui Lambie and Senator Stirling Griff had supported Senator Patrick's motion.
A recent report by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy - a US-based foreign policy think tank - found China's actions in Xinjiang violate every provision of the United Nations Genocide Convention
The report cited examples of the torture of Uighurs, internment and forced labour, widespread rape and sexual abuse as well as systematic forced abortions and sterilizations.
Uighurs chanting "China stop lying" and "China stop genocide" had earlier rallied in front of federal parliament calling for the government to save their children, cousins and parents.
"If they don't listen now a whole community, the whole Uighur nation, is going to disappear," Uighur leader Ramila Chanisheff told AAP on Monday.
"This is the 21st century. How does genocide occur in the 21st century?"
Ms Chanisheff, president of the Australian Uighur Tangritagh Women's Association, who has cousins she hasn't seen for 10 years, said she believed the Australian government would be "on the right side of history".
"Everyone standing here and more across Australia have close family members and relatives and friends who have disappeared. They don't know where they are."
Foreign Minister Marise Payne has called out reports - disputed by China - of systematic torture and abuse of women in Xinjiang as "deeply disturbing".
But Australia is yet to notch up the war of words to the "genocide" level.
Ms Chanisheff disputed figures of more than a million Uighurs locked up in Xinjiang as Chinese "propaganda", saying satellite imagery and credible independent researchers show it is many more.
"There's over 380 concentration camps in the region. Over 500,000 children have been taken away from parents into state-run orphanages to be raised as Chinese," she said.
"But it's not just the camps, the whole state is militarised. There's no going in, there's no going out. There's checkpoints, there's guns, there's soldiers, and the Chinese government asks people to spy on each other."
Senator Patrick, representing Adelaide's Uighur community at the rally, said the Morrison government must stop "tiptoeing sideways".
"It's unacceptable conduct and we have to call it out," Senator Patrick said.
"It is the mass repression of a group of people on a mass scale, an unprecedented scale."
