Everyone is running scared of Hetty.

We will have more on the Bill Henson kerfuffle but this story on the ABC startled us:

A series of Bill Henson photographs that were on display at the Albury Regional Art Gallery, in southern New South Wales, are being investigated by police.

[ ... ]

Albury Council’s James Jenkins says given the recent controversy, they felt it was appropriate to contact authorities about three photographs on display at their local gallery.

[ ... ]

Mr Jenkins says the council hopes police find nothing wrong with the photographs so they can go back on display.

So the police are investigating at the invitation of the Council.

So much arse-covering, like true bureaucrats.

The real concern for us is how the council appears to think the law works. IANAL but in these cases we understand the police can only act on a complaint. The referencing of the photographs to the police by the Council must be thought to be some sort of complaint. Is it?

But how ever does the Council imagine the police are the arbiters of the artisitc merits of the works, or of their legality? The police are not, in my experience, equipped either culturally or academically to make an artisitic judgment. Nor is it their job at all. The most they can do is form a “reasonable suspicion” that an offense may have occurred and to charge someone if they think they have sufficient evidence for a conviction.

The determination is not made by the police. It is not up to the police to “find something wrong” or not. That is up to a court.

So the first concern we have is that public officials believe the police have the power or even the skill to decide such matters.

The second concern is that these public officials don’t think they themselves have the moral sensibility, or even merely the sense, to decide for themselves whether something is “wrong” or not and that the police are better-equipped, morally and aesthetically, to do so.

Most – not all – of the police we know were kids who didn’t do particularly well at school, liked sport – but weren’t that talented – and cars, mostly weren’t particularly interested in that artsy fartsy stuff and were quite opinionated about various sectors of society. So why someone would put the welfare of the nation’s culture in their hands beats us.

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