IN the space of 24 hours last week three women and a child died in unrelated domestic violence incidents.

The front page of Fairfax’s Brisbane Times website was filled with unassociated stories of horrible, often fatal, violence with only the news of Apple’s latest gizmo launch sneaking in to leaven the mix.

Earlier this year Annabel Crabb noted: “If a man got killed by a shark every week we’d probably arrange to have the ocean drained”.

You will no doubt be thrilled to know the ACT government has a plan.

If you were to look at the five key priorities of the ACT Prevention of Violence against Women Strategy you might be less thrilled:

• driving a whole of community and government action plan to prevent violence and create and anti-violence culture;
• understanding diverse experiences of violence;
• supporting innovative services and joined up service systems;
• improving perpetrator interventions so that men are held accountable and supported to change their behaviour; and
• continuing to build the evidence base.

All nice things to do, or in some cases just aspire to (a bit like “Vision Zero” for road fatalities or “No Waste 2010” for garbage collection) but as the bodies pile up in the morgue there’s a hideous shortage of useful action there.

It looks to my eye a lot like tokenistic box ticking. A “say you’ve done something and adjourn for tea and biscuits” kind of lethargy to the whole business.

It doesn’t help that domestic violence is diabolically complex.

Victims will actively resist getting help. Even once they’re out of a relationship they will often drift back, in no small part because their self-esteem and social networks have been systematically demolished over years by their co-dependent abusers.

Why do they put up with it? In an excellent examination of the subject titled “5 Myths About Domestic Abuse Everyone Believes” the Cracked website (don’t knock it until you’ve read the article) made a striking observation:

“It’s easy to say you’ll swim for shore when you’re not in the middle of the ocean.”

We can, however, rather than whimsically hoping for “anti-violence culture”, throw some life rafts into the ocean, we might even bestir ourselves to send a rescue helicopter every now and then, too.

I’m talking about a serious investment in emergency accommodation.

Not years-long waiting lists for housing, not token little developments that instantly fill up, not shelters that are good for a few nights (and then head back to the abuser and hope they’ve calmed down and sobered up).

It doesn’t have to be flash but it does need to have a lock on the door and room for kids and pets.

And we need a lot of it. So much of it that there’s supply sitting free and waiting for when it’s needed at an hour’s notice.

It will cost a bit, more than tea and biscuits and some leaflets.

But there will be some savings.

Police attendance, courts, emergency rooms and coroner’s inquests do not come cheap to our society either.

Or some might think it’s just the right thing to do.