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Dozens of women have been killed in 2024 and Australians are demanding action.
As the gendered violence crisis enters the forefront of the national consciousness, the federal government's response has been to stick to the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children, 2022-2032.
The decade-long plan has the ambitious aim to end gendered violence "within a generation".
"To achieve that goal, it requires considerable investment and that is what we're yet to see," Chay Brown, one of the plan's co-authors, told ABC News Breakfast.
Dr Brown is a domestic, family and sexual violence expert based in Alice Springs who has been researching violence against women since 2012. She is also a survivor-advocate herself.
"The problem is not necessarily the plan, it's the fact its ambition has not been backed up with investment," Dr Brown said.
"That [goal to end gendered violence in a generation] has been costed at around billion dollars a year. That's actually nothing when you consider that the cost of violence against women and children in this country is $26 billion a year."
As part of the 2024 budget, the federal government announced nearly $1 billion would go towards permanently establishing a program that victim-survivors of violence could access when fleeing a violent partner.
One of the six key targets of the first part of the action plan is to reduce the number of women killed by intimate partner violence by 25 per cent each year.
To achieve that goal, she said the federal government needed to make a considerable investment in the plan.
"Once again, we see a government that I think enjoys a photo op but doesn't want to back up anything with anything meaningful, particularly no investment."
"They have been told very loudly and very clearly by a systematically under-resourced and underfunded domestic and family violence and sexual sector that the investment is critical," Dr Brown said.
"They're screaming out and they're desperate. They're unable to meet the needs of women and children experiencing violence in this country."
Vincent Hurley, a criminologist and former detective with New South Wales police, said alleged perpetrators who were arrested should be held in custody for a period of time instead of being released after questioning.
"When you think about it, it's a bit of an anomaly," he told ABC News Breakfast.
"People who buy a house are able to go on a cooling-off period for five days. People who buy something through telemarketing have a cooling-off period of 10 days."
"So why is it that offenders who are arrested, in most cases, are released straight back into their family home?"
"If those people are arrested, and rightly so, I think that a good idea would be to hold them in custody for seven days."
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Mr Hurley gained national recognition when he appeared on Q+A at the start of the month and criticised politicians for not doing enough to protect women in cases of gender-based violence.
He said a week's custody could prevent alleged perpetrators from re-offending upon release.
"In that interim period, an NGO [could] come in and just sit and listen to that individual vent. I was a police hostage negotiator for eight years so I know the importance of letting people vent to getting it off their chest."
"So, that safety relief valve before they went back out into the community might prevent one or two individuals being assaulted.
"But it's more than just the deaths of these women. There are thousands — probably tens of thousands over the decades — who have spent their time in casualty with fractured jaws, eye sockets, ribs, and punctured lungs who, in a way, have been overlooked in this process."
Ultimately, both Dr Brown and Mr Hurley said authorities could and should do more to protect victim-survivors.
"I think the budget is predictably disappointing," Dr Brown said.
"What we have been calling very loudly and clearly for is investment across a range of measures … shifting the narrative away from victim-survivors and all of the things they have to do to keep themselves and their children safe, and on to users of violence."
"We see no investment in additional programs for people using violence. We see no reform of the legal systems, of the judicial system."
"The bail laws need to be tightened, for sure," Mr Hurley said.
"But I also think that it needs to be brought forward to the front end of this whole issue about men's anger management, and how best to help women through the process."
Watch "Not Just a Number": News Breakfast's special coverage on gendered violence this week from 6am-9am each weekday on ABC News and ABC iview.