“We are primed to wait for the next murder; one that will shake the public and create sufficient media noise for politicians to respond.”

When journalist Jess Hill and criminologist Michael Salter published these words in April in a paper on domestic violence, they cited the murder of Luke Batty by his father on a cricket pitch in Tyabb in 2014, public reaction to which drove the push for the 2015 Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. Reforms worth $3.7 billion were to follow, and in January 2023, the Victorian government announced that all 227 of the royal commission’s recommendations had been implemented.

Isla Bell had dreams of being a marine biologist.

The cruel death of Isla Bell, details of which emerged this week, is very different in its particulars. But as the lives of women and children are claimed again and again by male violence, it is impossible to view the case of the 19-year-old from Brunswick in isolation. It is now commonplace to talk about this situation as a “national crisis”. But has our response been commensurate with this sort........

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