Ms Ryan, the Age Discrimination Commissioner, cites World Health Organisation figures suggesting that about one in 10 older people are abused every month. With the number of Australians aged 85 and over expected to double in the next 40 years, Ms Ryan has called for a co-ordinated national approach to countering elder abuse – one that involves the government and community sectors and which "empowers" older people through a human rights-based approach to seek help or to speak out.

Respect for the rights of the elderly (as distinct from the veneration of men of learning) has always been a mutable affair, and usually dictated by whether societies have the means to afford their senior citizens something other than a nasty, brutish and short life. Certain Indigenous tribes in Australia's harsh outback routinely banished womenfolk once they were past their child-rearing years or were no longer capable of efficient food-gathering. Supernumeraries threatened a group's very survival. Even societies adjudged as having a more highly developed sense of filial piety have, in times of drought or famine, abandoned their infirm, a high proportion of whom are usually women. In Japan, this custom even has a name: ubasute.

The industrial and agricultural revolutions of the 18th century and the rise of the prosperous nation state brought more enlightened thinking about ageing and the rights of individuals nearing their allotted biblical life span of three score years and 10 or past it. Age-based discrimination and other measures such as the age pension were introduced, although the unprecedented numbers of people living longer made such measures almost obligatory.

The industrial and post-industrial age has been the salvation and the bane of the elderly, however. The extended family that once ensured the security and status of the aged has nearly collapsed. Hostility to old age (the obverse of the commercial worship of youth and beauty) manifests itself in more obvious ways. People now see their elderly parents or grandparents not with fondness but with impatience, regarding them as obstacles to an early inheritance. If surveys of elder abuse in Japan are any guide, reverence and respect for older people in Asian cultures is on a similar trajectory.

Elderly rights laws of the sort outlined by Ms Ryan have a place in countering abuse. However, the complexity and diversity of elder abuse (and the inability of frail, or neglected individuals to seek help of their own volition) means other prevention strategies are required. Those at risk have to be identified, and mechanisms put in place to prevent or respond to instances of abuse. Successful interventions elsewhere need to be studied and emulated if practicable. And public policy needs to do more to promote the recognition and work of carers.