The Government on Tuesday launched its plan to tackle what it's calling two of New Zealand's biggest shames - family and sexual violence.
Police respond to a family harm incident every four minutes but the plan says it will take a generation to turn these statistics around.
It was a moment that's been a long time coming - Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the Government's first-ever national strategy to eliminate family and sexual violence.
It's a massive goal, because right now, "One million New Zealanders are affected by this sort of violence every year, including 300,000 children," Ardern said.
The statistics are sobering. One in seven children grow up in a violent home, one in three girls are sexually abused by the time they're 16, 50 percent of murders are because of family violence, and the social cost of that terrifying amount of harm is between $4-7 billion every year.
"This strategy makes it very clear that all Government systems and departments have to be accountable," said Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Minister Marama Davidson.
Deborah Mackenzie works with survivors. She hoped there'd be more action.
"It's not clear to see how the Government is really going to be accountable to victims and survivors," she told Newshub.
Davidson says the 25-year plan is about identifying what lies underneath.
"The combination of colonisation, racism and sexism in Aotearoa increases impacts associated with the intergenerational trauma for wahine Māori."
There are 40 action points, like creating a tangata whenua advisory group and training frontline staff.
"It's just a good start," says Ang Jury, chief executive of the National Collective of Women's Refuges. "But I think we need to be really clear that it is just a start."
This strategy is long overdue but also extremely 'high-level'. To ensure all these words actually become action, advocates are challenging all political parties to sign up and force meaningful change.
