To read that an estimated 5000 people over 65 in this state this year will suffer some form of abuse is alarming, and to further know that children and other family members are the chief perpetrators is intolerable.

Misuse of power-of-attorney and guardianship powers, we are told, frequently occurs.

So what to do about this?

Firstly, recognise that children will gradually exercise more control over your life when you are an old person.

Hopefully they do this lovingly and in co-operation with your wishes.

It is important to be wary of handing financial power to children, who often are experiencing their own financial pressures.

Always ensure there is a neutral outside person involved – this is a role for a lawyer.

Powers given to children can always be rescinded if being abused.

Finally, remember your retirement income is for your own comfort.

THE energy crisis has eased for the moment. I could not care less whether Matthew Groom was in Coles Bay or the Bahamas when everything happened.

What we all want to know is who will be held to account and what will happen to stop this happening again?

THANK you for posting Jeff McKinnon's opinion piece. 

He covered a wide range, and my reply is more specific and personal.

I arrived in Australia in 1952 at age 12 on board the SS Largs Bay, which makes me a boat person.

 Like many other migrants I eventually went to university.

I studied medicine and spent nearly all my career in under-serviced areas, places where it was very difficult to attract real Australians.

So most of my medical colleagues were foreigners like me.

There is abundant solid evidence that places which take in migrants and asylum seekers experience real, solid, economic benefits.

FROM Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff (The Examiner, June 9), “Teachers have been asked to give their feedback at any time with regards to the Education Act and any issues, and that feedback will be treated with the utmost respect”.

Really? At the conclusion of stakeholder meetings in December 2014 no support for lowering the school age by six months was forthcoming yet two weeks into term one of this year the premier announced it is going to happen.

The views of teachers are not wanted by this government and they are never sought.

THE state government and the AFL are working on an agenda that will see them ruin AFL football in Tasmania forever if they keep on their one-track minded ploy of making North Melbourne their preferred team for Tasmania and shutting the door in the face of the state’s most popular and successful team, Hawthorn.

The government has misled the population and all the state’s Hawthorn football fans, supporters and followers by telling them what they want to hear and then working on something else behind their backs for the south of the state and the North Melbourne Football Club.

It’s time they come clean. Football followers in the state deserve better treatment, whatever club they support.