Just going back to a post by RObert concerning Hetty Johnson.

"People should be able to make a complaint about an activity which they believe breaches the law without having their identity exposed."

I'm at odds with this, as it is bound to be abused.

So If I decide that I don't like someone or something, I can make a complaint & the police would arrest the person or seize the thing based on anonymous persons complaint? And I don't even have to front up to court to wittness for the complaint. Somethings very wrong here.

This certainly ties up a lot of police manpower with fliverous complaints made by serial complainers or people with an agenda doesn't it?

hi to all the forgotten australians

live is hard these days

i ask you all this question

would you potray your child for exploitation like this

and don't Bull sh't tell the truth

as i know i wouldn't allow my child to be displayed for some sick'o to get off on ,

and don't say their wouldn't be any out their

i wounder if any of those pedophiles that have been caught by the police the other day have ever been in the art gallerys

its wrong in my opinion and and its a total reverse of our child protection laws

do we have child protection laws anymore ??

from a forgotten australian that was raped and abused while in state care

we will no longer be forgotten

and i have read all the post in here just shows who like the nude children

are you's in it for the art or porn , or both just asking

huffnpuff

O.k., here is my take on this situation.

I love kids of all ages and have raised a couple of my own. The photos are artistic in their intention and appear to be a genuine attempt to capture the natural beauty of their subjects. That said, somehow, I cannot accept it as right for these images to be displayed in a public gallery.

There is nothing wrong with nudity in pre-adolescent kids - most people will encounter it regularly on beaches in summer and hardly give it a thought. When it is captured on film and displayed on a gallery wall it is no longer appropriate and I believe that the exhibition is inappropriate and should be closed.

However, much as I disapprove of the photographs I must also take a hard swipe at Hetty Johnston and our Prime Minister. I fear people like them much more than I do paedophiles or pornographers.

The Hetties of this world, given the power, would probably want to impose their particular set of values on everyone and we would end up like Singapore or some of those socially backward Islamic cultures with all media censored down to bland pap.

Mr Rudd simply did what politicians do best: sniffed the wind, saw an appetising news grab and hopped on board the bandwaggon. "Revolting" Kevin? Get real. Inappropriate, yes, "thoughtless", yes again. "Revolting"? no way in the world. No child, clothed or otherwise, deserves to have his or her image described in such a way.

There is a real danger here. Mr Rudd, like most socialists has a strong puritanical streak and a strong desire to regulate and control everything. Before the election he spoke of "holding internet service providors responsible" for internet content coming into this country,ie censorship of this traditionally free medium. Give him something like this ill-advised exhibition as a lever and he may well attempt to do just that.

This is the real problem with this exhibition and why it is so ill-advised; it gives ammunition to the Hetties and the Rudds in their quest for more censorship.

Hufnpuff, Ian sorry for what happened to you.

"from a forgotten australian that was raped and abused while in state care. We will no longer be forgotten."

No one will forget & I hope the people that did this to you have received their just deserved.

But you must remember that 99.9% of us were not abused. I know --- .1% is .1% too many. Then again about 250 people die on the roads every year, thats 250 too many. Do we stop driving our cars?

You have a "personal agenda" so you cannot look at this debate with an open mind.

Runner “our own liberal Prime Minister called this child porn 'revolting'.”

Krudd is no authority on anything and the last time I looked, was a socialist swill humper, not a liberal.

That said, I do not rely on the artistic critique of anyone else to form my view.

“Your self righteous rants about my ignorance does not justify taking photos of nude boys and girls despite your ranting and raving.”

Tell me which part of my criticism of your statement “These posts have confirmed how every person justifies their own perversions.” Is self righteous?

Anyone who uses the terms you use and then complains about the self-righteousness of others is bringing a double dose of hypocrisy into the debate.

“They honestly believe they are beyond corruption. If John Howard perves at a women he is a deviant. If Mr Rudd perves at a stripper he is admiring art.”

I do not know where you get the idea I voted for Krudd and his swill-humpers. I have favoured the right since before I threw my lot in with Margaret Thatcher back in the 1970’s.

Rainier “Col, So you travelled the world searching out artworks of genitalia?
How peculiar and what a waste of good money!
Perhaps you should stayed home and just looked in the mirror instead?”

Ah rainier, you are here to prove, once again that man can exist as a miniature of the real thing, a venerable bonsai of humanity.

To the arts, personally, I prefer Canaletto for pure finesse but Cellini’s “Perseus and Medusa” is just exquisite. However, in a contemporary vein, Hepworth “grabs me” more than Henry Moore and Lichenstein more than Oldberg. Maybe we could have an at length discussion of the merits and shortcomings of each of these artists whose works grace the galleries of the world one day.

After you have acquired an education, of course.

As for looking at myself in the mirror, oh these days I look and see only my father looking back at me. I wonder if you can say the same?

Agreement from CJ - unique :-)

"Despite the projections of angst by some, nobody is actually harmed in ANY way in the scenario he describes. To ascribe harm being inflicted on anybody by thoughts that malevolent people have about them is a regression into primitive thought, I would suggest." (my capitals)

I don't agree with this statement, CJ Morgan. While it's difficult to exactly pinpoint who the victims are of broad changes in community thinking, I think it's completely wrong to say there are none. If overall community standards go down, there must be some casualties somewhere - plain common sense tells you that. You'll never actually hear from a lot of the victims because they are silent on the matter as they are blocked and know they will get no sympathy or help if they try to rectify the injustice. Eventually they get an outlet that is often far removed from their original complaint/experience.

An analogy is when there is a fire in a building and only one window is open. No matter where the fire is, it will express smoke out of that one open window. That doesn't mean the fire is in the room the window is in, it could be anywhere in the building.

Another thing: thoughts are real and have a real effect. Not straight away but they tend to brew over time and attract similar thoughts. These build and then eventually precipitate out as real actions, both good and bad.

BTW, just because primitives were primitive, does not mean that there was not some merit in their thinking. They were tuned into some things that the average Westerner has completely tuned out of.