Just when you thought the outrage had died down – albeit without a proper resolution – the controversy around Bill Henson has re-ignited. On Saturday, when I sat down to read the cover story of the Good Weekend – an extract from the new book about the Henson controversy, I wasn’t angry anymore. By the end of the story, I still wasn’t angry. But I did feel extremely uncomfortable and a bit sick. The parts that jumped out at me?

The way it was revealed Henson finds his models…..in the case of "N’, the young girl on the invitation, Henson knew her sister S (who was older) and when he met "N". According to the girl’s own mother (who thought – and still thinks the whole thing was a fabulous experience for her daughter):

She went on to speak about how her daughter had been going through a difficult time and has low self esteem. Bizarrely, she felt that posing nude for a famous photographer might help boost her child’s confidence.

This argument about kids being ’empowered’ to make big decisions? Doesn’t wash with me. My eleven year old son would like to drive my car. He would like to stay up until midnight. He would like to eat chocolate for breakfast. Do I empower him with those decisions? I do not. My job as a parent is to protect him from making decisions I don’t feel are appropriate or which I feel he might regret in the future because he does not yet fully comprehend the long and short term consequences of every action.

In her email to the book’s author, the mother continues:

Really??? The mother is clearly a big fan of Henson and is flattered by his interest in her daughter. Is that why she and other parents seem to suspend their protective instincts? Henson himself says that some parents whose children model for him "kick them out of the car saying, ‘You ring us when you’re ready, we’re down at the cafe, here you go, get on with it.’" Others "want to be there, sit down in the garden, read a book."

Is that what you do when your child is posing nude for a strange – albeit – famous, man? Drop them off and go read a book?

Elsewhere in the extract, it was revealed quite casually that Henson recruited models from Melbourne’s St Kilda primary school. Friends of his knew the principal and she accompanied Henson on a tour of the school so he could identify children he might like to photograph. He then told the principal and she contacted the parents of the boy and the girl Henson wanted to photograph.

When I read this, I was appalled. Take his famous name away and what you have is this: a man walking around a primary school looking at children and choosing the ones he’d like to photograph naked. Yes, yes, for ART. But it’s still children naked. I’m sorry, as a parent I just cannot reconcile myself with that, can you?

I put down the article thinking "Is it just me or is this whole thing creepy?"

Going online later in the day, I saw that it wasn’t just me. The Prime Minister, The Opposition Leader and many others have spoken out over the weekend of being "horrified and disgusted" by the fact Henson was recruiting at schools. The book’s author, David Marr, has come out and defended the practice, claiming that such a visit is quite routine, insisting that no identifying details were given to Henson and comparing it to model scouts or film casting agents doing the same thing. Would we care so much if it was a scout looking for kids to star in a k-mart catalogue or a movie?

Well frankly, I’m not happy about that either. As a parent, I would want to decide whether or not to expose my child to such a visit. The thought that random people are walking around – with teachers or not – looking at my children for their own purposes makes me uncomfortable.

And I’m tired of the defense that "115,00 people went to see the giant retrospective of Henson’s work in 2005 and not one complaint was received". Of course it wasn’t. The people who would go to see a Henson exhibition are not a general sample of the population. They would be people who are familiar with Henson’s work. His fans. Or at the very least, people receptive to art. It’s hardly an accurate sample of public opinion.

It’s like saying that 115,000 people attended a death metal concert and not one complaint was received about the violent lyrics!!! The arts world can be so very insulated and parochial. Surely, what this whole debate has been about is the rest of society taking a glimpse into that world and saying ‘we think this is inappropriate’.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know if banning or censoring art is going to work. But clearly, the art world needs to wake up and try to understand that in some areas, it is out of step with what the rest of society now knows and feels about protecting children…..

UPDATE: I find myself in the unfamiliar position of agreeing with Miranda Devine on this issue while disagreeing with David Marr, the book’s author and a terrific journalist I’m usually in step with…..

They face off in today’s SMH.