Action is needed to prevent a repeat of the Hannah Clarke tragedy

Sadly, the murders of Hannah, six-year-old Aaliyah, four-year-old Laianah and three-year-old Trey were one of many tragic outcomes of family violence, with separation a particularly dangerous period for women and children.

In Australia, on average one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner. There were 55 women killed in 2020. Already this year, three women have been allegedly murdered by men intimately known to them.

Violence against women doesn’t happen in a vacuum or as one-off incidents. In fact, in more than 80 per cent of cases of intimate partner homicides in Australia, the killers had a history of abusing their victims.

When a man kills his partner, it is not because he is simply “driven too far”, as was…