An 11-year-old girl says she has no problem with the fact that a magazine published naked pictures of her taken by her mother when she was 6. Her father, an art critic, basically says those of us who object to this are philistines. Comments made by prime minister Kevin Rudd are, the father says, uninformed and damaging. I'm not going to labour the point, except to say that at 11 the girl is still too young to give informed consent and her parents have behaved appallingly by knowingly dragging her into this controversy. That the pictures were taken is one thing, that they allowed them to be published while the girl is still at a vulnerable age against the background of a volatile debate is inexcusable - whether the pictures are "art" or not.