Is there any real hope for our sisters in suffering?

He was a brute and a coward, a sadly inadequate sorry pile of pent-up frustrations who took it out on his wife. We all know men like him but what can we really do, asks Terry Sweetman.

She was in her 20s, I guess, and looked a bit rugged and careworn.

I saw her getting off a suburban train with two kids in tow, and all of them laden with pillows, blankets, doonas and shopping bags. They might have been going to the football or a fireworks show, except they weren’t because it was only about 2pm and a weekday.

My antenna went up. I might have been jumping to conclusions but I reckoned I was seeing the debris of some marital calamity. This was a family taking to the lifeboat. There was just that vibe.

Where they came from, where they were going, was not known to me and, in the manner of a passing witness to an accident, I didn’t ask. It was none of my business, I told myself, but it was. It was everybody’s business.

I thought of her a couple of days later when I received news of a death of a woman I had known all my life.

She was in her 90s and she, too, had it tough for many of those years. She had been a victim of domestic violence and humiliation at least from when I was in my very early teens until I was well into my 40s.

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I have no idea when it stopped or if it ever did entirely stop. Maybe the physical violence waned with her husband’s fading strength but I fear the memories lasted until her last breath.

He was a brute and a coward, a sadly inadequate man, a failure, a sorry pile of pent-up frustrations who took it out on his wife.

He was confronted in his rages at least once by my father and once by myself as an adult.

However, we could do no more than call a momentary halt to his assaults, give her temporary refuge and offer gratuitous counsel to get out while she could.

People are dying at the hands of violent men at horrific rates. Picture: AAP Image/Glenn Hunt

She didn’t, of course, and he was free to keep up a facade of good humour that made him a great-fun companion to those who had never seen his dark side.

Until the next time.

There must have been the best part of 70 years between her and my woman on the train but I suspect they were sisters in suffering.

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The horrible truth is that we really haven’t achieved much in the face of this scourge of violence and family dispossession. The slogan and the poster campaigns may have increased our awareness but I doubt they have deterred one man from raising his voice or fist.

Our responses should be to give succour and support to women rather than vainly hoping to tame the beast that lurks in some men.

A good step the other day was Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s promise to spend $78 million to protect women and kids against domestic violence, including $60 million — over three years — in grants for organisations to provide emergency accommodation for those escaping family violence.

The other $18 million was to provide security upgrades and safety planning for women and children who need protection.

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Whether that actually makes up for cuts in other programs in previous Budgets is a debate for another time. But it looks generous stacked up against the miserable $18 million allocated

in the last Budget for frontline family violence services and to increasing national awareness of the issue.

However, with due respect, even this latest program is like peeing on a bushfire.

The Government says the program will build up to 450 places and help up to 6500 a year.

The sad facts:

— The ABC did the rounds recently and found 264,028 reports of family violence had been made to police in a year.

— Australia Institute of Health and Welfare data found nearly 4000 women and girls are admitted to hospital each year after being assaulted by their partners.

— And 69 women were killed last year, most by partners or former partners.

The sorry truth is that criminals under witness protection get a better deal than women and children who are victims of domestic violence.

Here’s another fact: That $78 million would buy just one F-35 fighter jet on the latest figures and we’ve ordered 72 of them with maybe more to come.

The announcement was made as part of the Government’s “Keeping Australians safe and secure” election schtick but apparently some Australians will always be less safe than others.

But we can’t in good conscience condemn another generation of women and children to violence and humiliation.

Terry Sweetman is a columnist for The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Mail.

@Terrytoo69