Australia should establish a live, national count of women killed by violence, according to the former head of Victoria’s landmark Royal Commission into Family Violence.

Marcia Neave, the chief commissioner and a former Supreme Court Judge, said she supported measures to expose the extent of "femicide" - the killing of women or girls, in particular by a man and on account of her gender - and a national count could be a measure of the success of prevention policies, like the road toll.

Marcia Neave AO. Credit:Simon Schluter

But she also told a Monash University forum of coroner's court personnel, magistrates and academics, that better statistics were also needed on other indicators of violence against women, such as the rates of injury, strangulation, acquired brain injury and disability.

Australia does not have a national homicide count, but the new Senate recently called on the Coalition to set up an “official real-time” toll of women killed by violence.