17 women murdered in eight weeks. There are no shades of grey here.

Trigger warning: This post deals with issues of domestic and family violence and may be triggering for some readers.

Seventeen women have been killed so far this year in Australia due to family violence. Murdered by their boyfriends, their husbands, their de-factors, their exes. Men who professed to love them. Men they trusted. Men they became terrified of. Men who killed them in cold blood, often in front of their children. Or while they were pregnant. Sometimes, they killed these women’s children as well.

These men are monsters. There are no shades of grey here.

Yesterday, Tony Abbott, Minister For Women sent his assistant minister, Michaelia Cash to announce that the Australian Government would join with state and territory governments to deliver a $30 million jointly-funded ‘national awareness campaign’ about domestic violence.

“Raising awareness”. It’s one of those things that’s hard to fault. It garners a lot of handshakes and back slapping.

More: Mia Freedman: “I gave Tony Abbott the benefit of the doubt on women. I was wrong.”

But do we really need a campaign to explain that you shouldn’t bash women and children? Do we need to spend $30m to tell men that murdering your partner is wrong? Does anyone need a reminder that abusing or killing a woman or a child is a crime?

Tony Abbott, the Minister for Women, thinks we do. But many people believe Mr Abbott needs to increase his own awareness about family violence. Because this announcement is a money-wasting piece of grand-standing.

It’s designed to pay lip service to this very real national crisis without actually having to make any changes to policy, infrastructure or support service funding. In short, it’s a reprehensible cop-out.

Or in words Mr Abbott may understand: It’s $30 million of precious budgetary funding that’s desperately needed elsewhere.

Here is what an awareness campaign will do: It will put $30 million in the pockets of advertising agencies who will be paid handsomely to create this campaign and media organisations who will run it. They are the ones who will benefit from Tony Abbott’s meaningless and expensive awareness campaign. They money will go to the advertising and media industries.

It will not benefit the women and children who are beaten black and blue, who are abused and attacked and stalked and murdered every single day by men who claim to love them.

In the media release trumpeting the funding for this awareness campaign, we found this curious line:

“Importantly, we must also ensure that any women or child who may be suffering understands that this is not acceptable and support is available.”

So, at least in part, this awareness campaign is to make domestic violence victims aware that domestic violence is not ok. In case they were not already ‘aware’ of this fact by noticing the bruises on their bodies or the terror in their hearts. This same $30 million awareness campaign is going to tell women and children who are experiencing violence at the hands of their loved ones that “support is available”.