This week, Sotheby's sold the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's painting, Warlugulong. The auctionhouse's spokesman, Tim Klingender, was enthusiastic about the high price commanded by the art work: "The painting was a really great painting and it deserved to make a really fantastic price, and it made that price."

The painting has undergone significant appreciation over the last few decades. The significant art work was bought by the Commonwealth Bank for a mere $1,200 in 1977, and spent 20 years hanging in the canteen of the bank's Mornington Peninsula training centre. In 1996, Melbourne art dealer Hank Ebes acquired the painting for $36,000. It has been revealed that the National Gallery of Australia acquired the painting at the Sotheby's auction for a princely sum of $2.4 million.

In light of Sotheby's auction of Indigenous art, it is surely time to re-open the policy debate in Australia as to whether Australian artists - especially Indigenous artists and their families - deserve a right of resale. It seems somewhat unfair that visual artists have no legal entitlement to any direct benefit from financial speculation on the value of their work.