Shifty values: our laws are matters of opinion

It is at best a convenient device to camouflage a persistent and increasing problem. Surely the definition of child pornography is not whether a child is harmed when it is made? The focus of the law and community concern is the abuse of children in a system where making, viewing and normalising child pornography are mutual reinforcers of the whole sinister business.

The business and its effects are much wider reaching and more insidious. Even when viewed as a lucrative (it cannot be disconnected) sideline, making and viewing child pornography is a business where supply, inevitably, is stimulated by demand.

Hugh Mackay is highly regarded by many as a psychologist, author and social commentator. An ABC TV Compass program was dedicated to him in October 2004, for Hugh is our appointed pulse-taker.

We rely on him to distil our views to their essence, and to interpret them back to us as “new values”; even before we have worked them out for ourselves. He rides the moral high ground, and this makes his comments much more significant and damaging.

Given the opportunity, will Hugh Mackay adapt and finesse his comments to duck responsibility for what he actually said? This would not equal a retraction, correction or expunging from the record.

But it is a very Howardesque world we live in, where a view can be strongly stated one day, and subject to reversal the next based on a negative public response. That's what Howard calls democracy at work. In this context, how am I to explain racial vilification laws to my children?

I just don't like it!