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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said children could not choose for themselves if they wanted to be portrayed naked, adding: "I can't stand this stuff."

The photo is on the cover of the July issue of Art Monthly Australia.

Its editor said the cover was to protest against the closing of a recent photo exhibition of naked children.

Mr Rudd said: "A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way."

Government officials have said they will review the magazine's public funding.

Censorship debate

Editor Maurice O'Riordan wrote in the magazine that he knew the photograph would be controversial, but that he hoped to "restore some dignity to the debate... and validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art".

An exhibition of pictures of naked children by photographer Bill Henson was closed in May before it opened.

Police seized the photographs and launched an obscenity investigation which was later dropped.

The case provoked a nationwide debate over censorship.

Mr Rudd had condemned the exhibit as "revolting".

The subject of the Art Monthly Australia cover said the picture is her favourite image.

The cover shows her sitting naked in front of a painted landscape. The photograph was taken in 2003 when she was six years old.