If Kevin Rudd was serious about addressing child abuse in Australia, why hasn’t he appointed a Children’s Commissioner and called for a royal commission into this insidious exploitation of innocence in our society? With so many incidences of abuse to children having occurred in state sanctioned care, Rudd and his government bear moral responsibility to first and foremost for redressing these iniquities. In choosing instead to deflect his outrage about abuse onto Bill Henson’s art, the Prime Minister has shown political cowardice and his own determination to avoid taking responsibility for a system which has and continues to fail to protect Australia’s children.

Jane Rankin-Reid

The debate has certainly been strong and polarised around the Henson images. I personally don't think the images are pornographic or that they should be censored. I do think though that maybe the art community could put some informal protections in for themselves and the models.

I don't think it would be a huge ask for the photographic artists using underage models to store the images taken, until the model is of adult age to sign off on release. I don't think a 13 year old could have their heads around the consequences. This would mean if the models were uncomfortable about what happened back then, a degree of control could be given back to them. They wouldn't always be faced with the image which in the case of Henson's models become famous.

There have been legal questions raised about the rights of parents to consent to their child being used as a model and that the child might be able to sue the artist if they claimed harm from being used as a model as an adult. Holding off on releasing the images until they had adult consent would offer some protection to the artist.

Some might see this as a infringement on artistic rights but the reality is, it's vulnerable humans that are being used as models here not puppies. The teenage years can be turbulent anyway so why turn up the heat on the kids when if it's really good art, it will still be good when the child is an adult to fully consent to the images release.

As an artists adult nude model I know that the job is hard work. Nude modelling for photography makes the role more difficult because an individual is recognizable and the very nature of photography. It is because of person identification that “many professional artists models prefer not to pose for photographic artists” Anon the Symposium discussion, Bay Area Models Guild, California 24th June 2004. Photographic artist’s childmodels are not mere props but are working accomplices in the creative process.

Children have‘laboured’ for Bill Henson’s art in an area of work that adult nude models generally choose not to do. So why would child nude models work in an area that professional artist models shy away from?

How much were the child/children paid for their work and who negotiated their pay conditions? What were their working conditions and were they properly informed of the work required?

The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of
the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is
likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the
child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

And whilst one young woman in her thirties believes that it had no damaging affect upon her can she really speak for herself as a child in the past? does she speak for all of the child nude models?

History is awash with examples of so called ‘high art’ exploiting children, we need only look at the barbaric practice of castration for the purposes of the castrati aesthetic which in one year alone mutilated 4,000 boys for the purposes of a musical fashion. Profit by the castrati singing for the elite through the sexual mutilation of young boys is much the same as profit through the fashion of exploiting children through employment as nude photographic models in that it is a fashion of the time. The elitist high art card ignores the very real issue of exploitation of child labour where professional artist nude models generally steer well clear of

think, you are using equivocation. Look it up, because it's extremely disingenuous to try to suggest nude modelling is "child labour".

Also, I want a link to this document as I believe the context is very important (you are leaving it out of course). In fact, your highly discrete reference to it without any provision or attentiveness to the context is extremely suspicious. it begs so many questions:
-the guild 'rules and codes'?
-what artists/type of work do/do not pose for?
-ratio of guild models who said this?
-what do models not part of the guild do (far more numerous and not so flawed statistically)?
-who are the clients? for example, are they religious (America is extremely puritanical compared with other countries)?
-were the models religious?

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, indicates that religion should not be taught to children as it by definition it constitutes much of that harm. I hope you are not religious, otherwise you are abusing your child. :)

think>"can she really speak for herself...? does she speak for all of the child nude models?"

How do you exactly presume to speak for her and her parents? Don't you find that an outrageuos presumption? I certainly do. Would you let me speak for you and the models in that guild?

think>"History is awash with examples of so called ‘high art’ exploiting children"

This is misleading. History is awash with SOCIETY exploiting children. This includes parents, teachers, religious, capitalists etc...In fact no sector of society at all did not exploit children.

think>" The elitist high art card ignores the very real issue of exploitation of child labour where professional"

So a parent and child who consent to modelling for art is "child labour" that is "exploitative"? This premise more than anything shows you are a hardcore christian/socialist/fascist.

Try again, when you engage in less sophistry to make your points.

A handy argument, steely: leave thin argumentation with some loaded name-calling for a critical commentator ;)

The "Pandora's Box" here is Liberalism or, at least, what passes for it today (perhaps termed more accurately "Neo-Liberalism").

As I understand it, the cult pushes the idea that some mythical stuff called "market forces" ultimately determine what is good and bad. By such measures, poor and deluded people can sell body parts to pay for study, sell the service of their artificially impregnated wombs as a kind of job, enter prostitution as a legitimized "industry", or even - in that publicized case in Germany - arrange to transact their corpse for cannibal consumption. As recent news has shown, incest too can be rendered a legitimate activity in the minds of some adults used to the ideology of "anything goes, so long as you can pay".

Any average intellect can see that underpinning all such bizarre notions of "freedom" is an artificial order or authority of monetarist value, where the arithmetic of currency becomes God. Abstracted out of the equation is human potential and its interaction with our physical world. Human life thereby lose so much of its value, but also much sense of its true potential.

I think Pasolini's film "Salo" is a useful pointer here. "Salo" (after de Sade's text) depicts how truly "Fascist" values and aesthetics impose their will on subjects by the currency of their class power or currency. The film illustrates the implications of earlier Nietzschean rants i.e., "If it's new, different morality you want, here's how easy it is to do, and here's what can happen!" But "Salo" has been banned and re-banned for Australian adults, because (I guess) of its depictions of exploitative treatment of minors - and despite the film's strong, non-gratuitous and actually moralistic message.

To attempt some balance, maybe a raid is due on Turnbull's collection?

I have only seen the photographs taken by Mr Hensen incidentally, whilst looking through such news sites as The Age, News and ABC News. I found the ones that I saw to be disturbing, and the poses were very similar to those used by such mainstream 'soft' porn magazines as Man Magazine back in the late 1960s early 1970s, to the extent that I wonder how much Mr Henson was affected by those magazines. He is of the right age to have been exposed to them.

If Man Magazine was soft core porn, meant to titillate back in the 1960s, what is the difference now? If an adult woman posing naked (even when 'demour') in a black and white photo was porn back in the 1960s, why isn't an underage girl in a similar pose in 2008 considered as porn? Or was Playboy in the 1960s really an art magazine?

But I will ask a question.

I have not curb crawled the internet to find these images, but those of you who have may be able to answer this.

Mr Henson's pinup model-like photos are images of very slim pubescence girls, with some similarly aged boys. The figures are very slim, almost as anorexic as the models so beloved of fashionistas who use their models are canvasses for their so-called art, but which could never be worn by a mature woman.

Is Mr Henson contributing to the 'anorexic' as beauty ideal or not?

Is this encouragement of an unrealistic shape also a form of child abuse?