If all this sounds familiar, that's because Cash and Attorney-General George Brandis have pulled this stunt before. In March 2015, the pair fronted the media and backed down from $25.5 million in planned cuts to legal aid services – 15 months after they were first announced.

Then there's the obvious point that if Cash and her fellow ministers really wanted to fund domestic violence services properly, they wouldn't have planned these cuts in the first place. The government only abandoned them in the face of massive, sustained opposition from the sector , every state and territory government , and the Senate crossbench .

For starters, this "new" funding is a lot less impressive than it sounds. Besides the $34.83 million no longer being slashed from their operating budgets, most of the services Australia's 190 CLCs provide will only receive an extra $5 million between them over three years. The $16.7 million earmarked for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services is small potatoes as well, given Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples account for more than 15 per cent of all CLC clients.

Time after time, the government has flagged debilitating cuts to legal aid, left the sector sweating – sometimes for years – before dropping them at the last minute when they prove untenable. Stacked against the government's own poor record, Cash's boasts ring disturbingly hollow.

But those hoping to see a new day in Australia's approach to combating domestic violence will be disappointed. After more than three years in office, the government has displayed little desire to address the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

Once is bad enough. Twice is inexcusable. For almost the entire lifespan of this government, the legal aid sector has operated under the constant threat of defunding – never able to plan further ahead than the next budget cycle, constantly forced to divert scarce resources to campaigning and lobbying.

This needless drama is all the more offensive given the government has known all along how desperately underfunded CLCs already are. The Productivity Commission recommended a $120 million boost in federal funding for the sector back in 2014, finding that domestic violence victims unable to afford legal services were falling into a "justice gap". Instead of acting, the Abbott government ignored the Commission's recommendations for more than a year.

Underpinning all of this are the untold stories from CLCs across the country already swamped with more cases of family violence than they can handle. The National Association of Community Legal Centres estimates 160,000 people were turned away from CLCs in 2015 alone. Queensland centres have seen a sixfold rise in the number of people seeking family violence services in the last five years, and are struggling to cope with demand. Last year, Legal Aid NSW reported its Domestic Violence Unit provided more than 1400 services to vulnerable women in six months. In that environment, playing politics with legal aid funding is more than toxic – it's very dangerous.

When paired with such an abysmal performance, the faux-concern worn by government figures whenever domestic violence is in the public eye starts to look hideously strategic. In 2015, then-Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull waxed lyrical on the need to "start a conversation" about family violence while appearing on The Project. As Turnbull and his ministers know perfectly well, "starting a conversation" is easy because it doesn't cost anything. Project hosts Waleed Aly and Gorgi Coghlan didn't buy what Turnbull was selling, repeatedly asking him: "Where's the money?" He didn't have an answer then, and his government doesn't have an adequate one now.

Faced with a national crisis that killed 71 women last year, the government has responded with little more than empty words and crocodile tears. If that mindset goes unchallenged, domestic violence runs the risk of becoming an issue we only care about when something particularly awful happens, because politicians know they can get away with the bare minimum. As Australia continues to feel its way forward on domestic violence, victims deserve more from those meant to protect them.