When columnists try to whip up outrage about welfare while taking swipes at advocates in the "domestic violence industry", it's best to tune out. Because blaming welfare dependency for this crisis will only lead to poor policy, writes Michael Bradley.

Here's a handy rule for keeping your blood pressure in check: when a columnist is confecting outrage at what they call the confected outrage of others, it's time to stop reading.

Miranda Devine is particularly expert at this, and she's flying high this week on the subject of domestic violence, a handy platform for her perpetual crusade against "femi-fascists".

Having brewed up the storm with the piercing observation that "if you want to break the cycle of violence, end the welfare incentive for unsuitable women to keep having children to a string of feckless men" and a side-swipe at Rosie Batty "the untouchable expert on domestic violence", Devine sat back to collate the outraged reaction on social media and in her next column happily recounted all the nasty names she'd been called as "evidence of a concerted attempt to cover up the truth".

See what she did there? Smart play.

So now the topic of discussion is not domestic violence, but the politics of domestic violence. I don't know why anyone would want to use the awful reality of constant violence and risk of death, which is what very many Australian women and children are enduring each day, as a prop for pursuing their personal ideological agenda. We don't have to follow them down that path, however.

The argument is entirely false anyway. Cutting away all the posturing and deliberate provocation, Devine ultimately made an undeniable point: "Boys brought up in an environment of chaos, dysfunction and violence, who are neglected and abused, are more likely to become abusive, violent men with poor impulse control."

That is so obviously correct, it doesn't qualify as an insight, and Devine followed it with one last grenade: "These are not the facts the man-bashing femi-fascists who control the domestic violence industry want to hear."

The domestic violence industry, God love her.

So yes, it's probably not much of a stretch to suggest that high rates of poverty, poor education, teenage pregnancy, welfare dependency, drug and alcohol abuse, gambling, obesity and violence have a correlative relationship; that is, you will tend to find them existing together more often than in isolation. It is no big revelation to identify that poor people don't eat so well or are less likely to finish school. The general crime statistics indicate that domestic violence has a higher reported incidence in low socio-economic areas.

The point that our social commentators at the lower end of the empathy scale tend to miss is that any attempt to draw a linear cause-effect equation out of this will be necessarily wrong-headed and lead to poor policy. The Howard government's Northern Territory intervention amply evidenced how such a shallow analysis will inevitably go wrong. A well-meaning but paternalistic assumption was drawn that children were being abused because substance abuse was at epidemic levels, so it was figured that taking away people's ability to access those substances (by controlling their spending money) would address the problem at its root. It didn't work.

Welfare dependency does not cause domestic violence; you could as easily reverse these two terms, and the statement would be equally valid. They, along with many other factors, are symptoms of something much larger: intergenerational trauma, which repeats and re-entrenches itself through the conditions and experiences that each successive generation endures. It is compounded and sustained by both internal and external conditions. It is the most complex and impenetrable social organism, and it's hardly a surprise that we all scratch our heads when confronting it.

Watching the SBS documentary "Struggle Street" earlier this year, I was struck not so much by the human drama playing out as entertainment, as I was by the underlying human dignity with which so many of the players irrepressibly carried themselves through the often quite awful circumstances in which they are forced to live. These are just people, like any of us, who struggle to survive and find meaning like all of us do, except that they've been given a hand to play that would defeat most of us.

It's an important recognition, that these are just people. I suspect that this is why commentators like Devine and Andrew Bolt don't like Rosie Batty, as they didn't like Adam Goodes: they're uncomfortable when their generalised stereotypes are replaced by real people, especially if those people are articulate and unbowed. Rosie's son was murdered by her ex-husband; that does not make her an expert, but that is not what she claims to be. She claims to be a victim of domestic violence, who wants to use her experience to initiate change. If you can't applaud and encourage her quest, I'm not sure what could ever reach your heart.

Note I said that the incidence of reported domestic violence is apparently higher in low socio-economic areas. That tells us nothing useful for the purpose of combating the problem, including how much of it is hidden from view. We do know that there's no evidentiary basis for asserting a direct causal link between poverty, welfare and domestic violence. We also know that domestic violence is present in all sectors of society, as it was before welfare (and, as Devine describes it, the emasculation of men it has brought about) was even a thing.

It was unhelpful of Malcolm Turnbull to say that "real men don't hit women" - I'm sure it feels real to the victims. However, his shift of language to focus on the question of respect was an important positive step. To address violence against women, we have to expose all of the conditions that make it possible.

The embedded, stuck elements of cultural sexism represent one of those conditions. Barnaby Joyce's prescription that we go back to opening the door for ladies is kind of sweet but, nuh. Respect isn't a one way street, it's purely a question of equality. Violence against anyone is the worst possible response to stress; respect for everyone, regardless of gender, is a necessary precondition for violence to be held socially and personally unacceptable.

Domestic violence is finally getting some of the attention it deserves. Frontline services remain starved of funding and families consequently remain at risk; this requires urgent redress. Beyond that, the work is long term and extremely complex, just like the problem. Meanwhile, I should take my own advice and sometimes just stop reading.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Marque Lawyers, a Sydney law firm, and writes a weekly column for The Drum. Follow him on Twitter @marquelawyers.