Startling family violence figures

The Director of Family First says the latest statistics on family violence are hard to stomach.

Between 2004 and September last year, 101 people died from family violence

Bob McCoskrie says it's startling that most of the 33 children killed were killed by their mothers.

He says it shows our focus so far, has been all wrong.

"Statistics just show that we really haven't tackled the root causes of family violence in our community and unfortunately I think the gender focus has meant that we've missed some of the real causes."

"We've been given the message that only women and children are victims and we just need to protect them from men - but what we've found in this report is that the gender focus is actually misleading."

National crime manager Detective Superintendent Rod Drew says there's an issue around incapable parenting.

"It's very clear that in some of these cases, although there was a lot of support wrapped around the families, they still failed to cope with parenting and the tragic result was the death of the child."

He says the stats paint a bleak picture.

"It becomes clear that for these particular family violence death reviews over that period of time since 2004, that mothers have killed more of children than any other category of offender if you like."

Over 80 percent of women and 29 percent of men were killed by their partner.

The majority of suspects or offenders were aged in their 20s.