As police launched a series of counterterrorism raids across Sydney, Australia's crisis with 'intimate partner terrorists' continued

Picture this. A breaking news alert splashes across devices and TV screens. There's a huge operation taking place, several men have been arrested and others are being questioned by police after a series of raids investigating terror linked to domestic and family violence. The men are not known to each other.

The police hold an emergency press conference, the prime minister is there, state premiers have flown to Canberra to stand beside him and several Australian flags.

Police say they have not identified any specific plan to commit an act of violence by any of the men, but they believe their behaviour, based on close surveillance and serious complaints, puts women at an unacceptable level of risk and they must act before it is too late.

They believe these women could die if they do not act.

Police have the full backing of our political leaders — from the left to the right — who say they believe the right of women to live without fear of dying at the hands of these men is, and must be, the national priority.

We all accept that the civil liberties of these men will be curtailed to some extent — but as a community, we agree a tipping point has been reached. Too many women have died, and a dramatic response is needed.

Of course, I am being deliberately provocative comparing what is, and should continue to be, our response to religious or ideologically-motivated terrorism. The reason we respond to terrorism in this way is because as a community we have decided we will not tolerate threats from radicalised people, those who seek to destroy us. The response has bipartisan support, it requires what sometimes looks like shock and awe tactics because the message they send is unambiguous — we will not normalise the horror of this kind of terror.

But what about men who control, stalk, sexually assault and destroy the lives of women, too often women they know and have even purported to love?

A tsunami of misery

In recent days I have felt heartsick. I have had a visceral reaction to the body count, the staggering number of women killed allegedly by men, current and former ex-partners among them. It feels like a tsunami of misery.

Last week Molly Ticehurst, a 28-year-old childcare worker from Forbes, NSW, became the 25th woman to die from gender-based violence in Australia this year, according to Counting Dead Women Australia. Within a day Emma Bates died in Cobram, Victoria, after what police allege was a violent assault.

The man accused of killing Molly Ticehurst, her former partner Daniel Billings, had been in custody charged with four counts of stalking, three of rape, and one of aggravated cruelty towards an animal. Police had argued Billings made threats against Ticehurst and posed a risk, but he was bailed anyway, and banned from entering Forbes as a condition of an apprehended violence order against him.

Ticehurst's father Tony said she was scared when Billings was released. "She went away for the first week of the AVO, thinking that if he was going to do something, it would be within that week," he told Nine. "She said she was wary and nervous and couldn't sleep."

I can't stop thinking about how scared she was, and how right she was to feel that way. I can't stop thinking about her child, robbed of their mum, the legacy of violence a permanent part of their story.

The New South Wales government has since ordered a review of the decisions of the court to bail Billings. Led by one of the government's top legal advisers, David Kell SC, it will examine whether urgent bail law reform is needed.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said the government would look closely at resourcing issues that meant regional courts at times had to deal with bail applications without a magistrate because, he said registrars, "maybe without any legal training" were being asked to make very serious decisions. He said the government would also assess whether a person charged with a serious domestic violence offence should ever be released on bail.

Terror is what these women are experiencing

Former Australian of the Year Rosie Batty has for years been a strong voice on family violence prevention, and last week joined the Attorney General at the Family Violence Symposium.

Almost 10 years ago she argued the alleged perpetrators of these offences should be labelled "intimate partner terrorists".

"I think there is an unconscious minimisation of violence when we put domestic or family in front of it, and I think that … language matters," she says now. "And I think it really is a very accurate description of the terror and the terrorisation that occurs in … this dynamic and it makes you … consider something more sharply when we hear the word terrorism."

And terrorism, she adds, is "exactly what too many women and children are experiencing".

Batty says women will only truly be safe if perpetrators decide not to be abusive and violent. "And I'm really sorry, but tightening of the bail laws or adjusting that justice response doesn't necessarily mean you're safe."

Batty says she meets women across Australia who have had to change their names and move interstate to be safe. They live "anonymously in fear and always looking over their shoulder because they know he will never rest until he tracks them down", she says. "And that is the brutal reality."

Stalking, she adds, is an "extremely high-risk factor" that is still not well enough understood.

A national emergency needs an emergency response

Angela Lynch, a sexual and family violence prevention advocate, says a crucial question that must now be asked about the Ticehurst case is why the rights of the accused were apparently elevated above those of the victim.

Sexual violence and stalking, Lynch says, are "well-established" high-risk behaviours. "And they really go to a person's level of control, possessiveness and entitlement over that victim, and really point to high levels of danger. So we need to ask: what evidence is going before the court? How are they making these assessments of dangerousness?"

It's not uncommon for the legal system to continually give the accused the "benefit of the doubt", Lynch says, and when that occurs, it "pushes issues of safety back on to the individual woman".

Lynch is now calling on the prime minister to take a bigger leadership role.

"We need the prime minister to intervene strongly on this issue and provide some direction. And we need him to engage on an urgent basis with gender violence experts — to listen to what's happening … on the front line — and we need a new way [of] responding to extreme risk, and obviously, all the other levels as well," she says.

"He's the Prime Minister. The women in Australia, the community more broadly, is asking for leadership on this."

Our leaders agree that violence against women is a national crisis — an emergency.

But a national emergency requires an emergency response.

Patricia Karvelas is the presenter of Q+A, which returns Monday at 9.35pm on ABC TV, RN Breakfast and co-host of the Party Room podcast.