Now is the moment. You can feel it - the momentum building, the light finally shining on Australia's dark epidemic of domestic violence.

Or has that feeling passed you by? Perhaps you've been caught up with outrage over knights and dames, Prince Philip's gaffes, or the Prime Minister's office politics.

In the two days since Prince Philip was made a Knight of the Order of Australia, about 16 women were admitted to hospital because their husbands, partners, boyfriends or fathers beat them so badly.

How many more were scared, bullied, hit or prevented from seeing friends and family?

Tony Abbott may have been trying to dig himself out of his latest political problem when he announced on Wednesday that Australian of the Year Rosie Batty would sit on a new Council of Australian Governments panel on family violence, but that doesn't mean he wasn't right to focus on it.

It's been almost a year since the Herald launched its Shine A Light campaign, to put domestic violence on the national agenda. We told how 24 women had died in NSW at their hands of their loved one in the year to September 2013.

One year on, and that sickening figure has increased. Last year 29 NSW women lost their lives to domestic violence, new Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures show. That number should outrage every one of us far more than a "captain's pick" for our national honours.

Australia needs reforms that will ensure women escaping domestic violence will be safe no matter what state they are in, so urgent action on the national scheme is warranted. National standards for the punishment of perpetrators and online harassment are also much needed.

But Mr Abbott is wrong if he thinks this is an issue that can be solved with policing alone or only at a state government level.

If domestic violence is going to be treated with the seriousness it deserves, it needs to be treated as a whole-of-government issue.

That way Mr Abbott might realise that uncertainly about federal funding for homelessness services will disproportionately affect women fleeing domestic violence, as the issue is the single most common reason given by people seeking accommodation help. Or perhaps how cuts to legal aid and affordable housing might remove the last lines of support just when women need it most.

Or perhaps he would see the irony in NSW strengthening policing measures at the same time as it closes the specialist women's shelters that have been helping women escaping domestic violence for decades, while advocates beg for the funding they need to to their jobs?

And without tackling deeply ingrained cultural beliefs and behaviours, from expectations about women and men's behaviour to how we consume alcohol, we cannot solve this problem.

So perhaps we should all spend a little less time worrying about knights and dames and federal political squabbles and a little more about these very real and serious threats to women's safety.

Because with 29 deaths and more than 30,000 recorded domestic assaults last year in NSW alone, we simply can't afford to wait any longer.