A new report describes New Zealand's systems for tackling domestic violence as piecemeal, ineffective and bogged down by bureaucracy.
Friday is White Ribbon Day - a campaign aiming to end men's violence towards women, and encouraging males to lead by example.
Police attend over 100,000 family violence incidents a year - one every five minutes.
In a new study, Victoria University's professor Devon Palschek says agencies are letting down victims.
"They find that they're having to deal with multiple services and government departments who often are not in communication with each other, and they have to go through telling their story a number of times," she says.
"We don't really have a system for responding to family violence, and that that's something we need to work on - and the Government has already started to recognise that in a serious way with a ministerial group currently working on this issue."
Professor Palschek says the country's appalling family violence record is due to a lack of cohesion between police, courts, NGOs and other agencies.
"Systems work well with a lot of communication," she says.
"And communication between services and agencies takes time, and time is money. One of our issues is we really need to commit more money to this area."
Statistically one in three women will experience partner violence at some point in their lives, and on average 14 women a year are killed by their partners or ex-partners.
Newshub.
