GLASGOW domestic abuse experts flew half way round the world to show how the city's hard line approach to the crime is making thugs face up to their actions.

The city's pioneering ­domestic abuse support ­service, Assist, was invited by Australian officials to ­discuss how agencies work with Police Scotland to deal with cases and use a perpetrator-focussed approach.

Mhairi McGowan, head of Assist, was contacted by the Domestic Violence ­Resource Centre in Victoria to speak at a conference ­discussing high risk cases of domestic abuse - or family violence as it is defined there.

Victoria had around 60,000 incidents of family violence last year - a similar number to Scotland - and the populations are close in size.

However, as their definition is wider, Scotland has far more reported domestic abuse reported incidents than they do.

Last year Victoria had 29 murders - including a number of high profile cases ­involving women and children - while Scotland had 11 in the same time frame.

Mhairi had meetings with women's organisations, ­police and the Department for Human Services, which is responsible for tackling ­violence against women.

She also visited two Magistrate's Courts, met with staff and heard a number of cases.

Mhairi said: "When the cops there are called to an incident, they don't automatically look for crimes as they do in Scotland.

"Instead, they try to either get the woman to go to Civil Court to ask for an Intervention Order or the police can do it on her behalf if they're investigating a crime, for ­example a bad assault.

"So the whole system is predicated on the victim.

"I was there arguing for ­systematic risk assessment and multi-agency risk assessment conferences, which they're trying to do, but my main issue was trying to persuade them to turn to targeting the perpetrator in a systematic way: that is to adopt some - or all of the practices of Police Scotland."

The former Strathclyde force - now merged to ­become part of Police Scotland - led the way with its groundbreaking Domestic Abuse Task Force, which was launched in 2008.

It was the first of its kind in the UK to tackle domestic abuse in the same way that detectives dealt with a homicide, and with a partnership approach.

Mhairi's conference theme was Trust, Safety and ­Working Together.

She said: "How could we expect the victim to trust us if we didn't trust each other as agencies?

"I used the example of ­Assist's relationship with the Police to illustrate what could be done with openness and commitment from both organisations."

Mhairi added: "We could also learn from Australia."

Councillor James Coleman, chairman of the Glasgow ­Violence Against Women Partnership, praised the trip.

He said: "To be so positively recognised by a country as far-flung as Australia is testament to the fact that our partnership approach effectively and consistently ­instils trust and safe working relationships between our partners and the women and children we support."

rachel.loxton@ eveningtimes.co.uk