"That's really not Angela's kind of thing!" IMF chief Christine LaGarde said of the German Chancellor in an interview with the Financial Times last September.  "I have never ever spoken to her about gender. It's not her." Nevertheless, just six months later Merkel's government has introduced legislation requiring Germany's largest listed companies to ensure women make up 30 per cent of their non-executive directors. The legislation comes into effect next year.

If Merkel's conversion to affirmative action was in part politically driven – in response to demands by her junior coalition partner – Germany is now in sync with Spain, the Netherlands, Norway and France in legislating to ensure women are given more than token representation on the boards of listed companies.

No signs of a similar move in Australia but then that would have been unlikely from a federal government whose cabinet contains only 10.5 per cent women and which is intending to water down legislation requiring large companies to report on the gender composition of their workforces.

But you might have expected Mike Baird, the newly re-elected premier of New South Wales, to jump on board (so to speak), at least for government appointments.

Baird is considerably more woman-friendly in his political appointments than his federal counterpart. His cabinet, announced this week, has five women, equalling 23 per cent of the total. But it seems Baird is still into tiny steps, not the bold actions of either Merkel or some other state premiers. The same day that Mike Baird was getting himself re-elected, his Victorian counterpart, Labor's Daniel Andrews, was announcing a 50/50 policy for appointing women to all paid government boards and to the judiciary.

"Of all of the appointments my Government makes between now and November 2018, at least one half of them will be women, and I'll be held accountable for it," he told the Victorian ALP conference last Saturday. "Under this Government, equity is not negotiable." It was an "assurance" not a promise, he said. No government in Australia has ever made this kind of commitment.

Andrews had already set a cracking pace by including 9 women in his 23-person cabinet, a critical-mass-approaching 39 per cent.

(He was trumped just a couple of months later by Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who appointed 8 women to her 14 person cabinet, a whopping 57 per cent.) It's a pity that Mike Baird could not have aimed higher with his female representation in cabinet. It's not as if New South Wales has not followed Victoria on comparable issues.

For instance, during the election Baird committed to having a minister for the prevention of domestic violence. This was a direct (and very welcome) appropriation of an initiative from Victoria, which last December appointed Fiona Richardson as Australia's first Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence.

Victoria also established, in February, a Royal Commission into Family Violence which has one year to report back on the practical measures needed to address the state's appalling, and rising, domestic violence crime wave. (And Andrews has already committed to accept, and implement, all its recommendations).

NSW has an equally dire record, with a further death this past week, and needs to take similarly urgent action. It may not need another Royal Commission as, presumably, the Victorian recommendations will have relevance for NSW but it does need to demonstrate that it has a serious commitment to doing whatever it takes to end this crime wave.

Unfortunately the person appointed as Baird's Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence has a disappointing track record in the area.

It was Pru Goward, the new Minister, who as Family and Community Services Minister in 2012 master-minded the Going Home Staying Home "reforms" that when put into effect last year saw 80 of the state's 100 women-run women's refuges either close their doors or, like Elsie, the first modern women's refuge in Sydney, be handed over to a religious organisation to run.

The ministerial reshuffle offered Mike Baird a chance to reverse this shocking and, to put it baldly, potentially lethal decision. Let's hope new Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard has a green light to at least review it. Last year, when he was Attorney-General, he lobbied his predecessor, Gabrielle Upton who then had the portfolio, to save Bringa, the only refuge in the northern beaches area. Hazzard described Bringa as "absolutely critical" to helping women and kids escaping violence. As Minister he now will have to deal with the repercussions of Bringa being in partnership with Mission Australia.

Goward's grasp of the history and effectiveness of women's refuges is sketchy, to put it kindly. On Thursday she mistakenly attributed to the Fraser government the funding of Elsie and other original refuges – it was the Whitlam government, specifically Social Security Minister Bill Hayden, who did this in June 1975 – and she seemed to imply that refuges were only there to "pick up the broken pieces after a tragedy". It is tragic that the Minister in charge of preventing domestic violence does not understand that the emergency assistance provided by women-run refuges over the four decades since they were established has saved countless women's lives.

They have, in other words, prevented violence.

What a shame this portfolio was not given to a proven performer like the new Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian.

How wonderful to have violence prevention attached to a top-ranking department like The Treasury and have them responsible for finding the money to save lives. Now there's a thought.

Maybe it is a bridge too far for Mike Baird. But then, so were boardroom quotas, only a few months ago, for Angela Merkel.

Twitter @SummersAnne

Anne Summers is editor and publisher of the free digital magazine Anne Summers Reports.