Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has apologised to Aboriginal Australia for past injustices carried out by Australian Parliaments.
In a moving and emotional speech, the Prime Minister firstly delivered the official apology before launching into personal accounts and detailed argument for why an apology is necessary.
Mr Rudd's speech was watched by a packed public gallery in parliament, by hundreds of people outside parliament, and by thousands at live sites with big screens around Australia.
Many of those watching had personal experience of the forcible removal of Aboriginal people, and there were emotional scenes as the apology was delivered.
Mr Rudd told the story of an elderly indigenous woman, part of the stolen generations, who he visited a few days ago.
"An elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman in her 80s full of life, full of funny stories despite what has happened in her life's journey."
Mr Rudd said his friend told him of the love and warmth she felt while growing up with her family in an Aboriginal community just outside Tennant Creek.
In the early 1930s, at the age of four, she remembers being taken away by "the welfare men".
"Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide," Mr Rudd said.
"They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman who found the hiding children and herded them into the truck."
She remembered her mother clinging onto the side of the truck, with tears flowing down her cheeks as it drove off.
She never saw her mother again.
After living in Alice Springs for a "few years", government policy changed and the young girl was handed over to the missions.
"The kids were simply told to line up in three lines ... those on the left were told they had become Catholics, those in the middle, Methodist and those on the right, Church of England," Mr Rudd said.
"That's how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s.
"It was as crude as that."
She didn't leave the island mission until she was 16 when she went to Darwin to work as a "domestic".
When the prime minister asked his friend what of her story she wanted told she answered: "All mothers are important."
"Families, keeping them together is very important, it's a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations - that's what gives you happiness."
This was just one of tens of thousands of stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, Mr Rudd said.
"There is something terribly primal about these first-hand accounts, the pain is searing, it screams from the pages, the hurt the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity," he said.
Mr Rudd said the stories "cry out" to be heard and "cry out" for an apology.
"Instead from the nation's parliament there has been a stony and stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade.
"A view that somehow we the parliament should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong, a view that instead we should look for any pretext to push this great wrong to one side to leave it languishing with the historians, the academics and the cultural warriors as if the stolen generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon.
"The stolen generations are not intellectual curiosities, they are human beings, human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments.
"As of today the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end."
"The nation is demanding of its political leadership to take us forward. Decency, human decency, universal human decency demands that the nation now steps forward to right an historical wrong."
Mr Rudd said should there still be doubts, the historical record showed that between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30 per cent of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers.
"As a result up to 50,000 children were forcibly taken from their families," he said.
"This was a product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the states, as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute," he said.
"This policy was taken to such extremes by some in administrative authority, that the forced extractions of children of so-called mixed lineage, was seen as a part of a broader policy of dealing with, quote, the problem of the Aboriginal population, unquote."
While the formal apology said "sorry" three times, Mr Rudd's speech also offered apologies to the stolen generations.
"As prime minister of Australia, I am sorry," he said.
"On behalf of the government of Australia, I am sorry.
"On behalf of the parliament of Australia, I am sorry.
"I offer you this apology without qualification."
Mr Rudd said the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s.
"The 1970s is not exactly a point in remote antiquity," he said.
"There are still serving members in this parliament who were first elected to this place in the early 1970s.
"It is well within the adult memory span of many of us."
He said the parliaments of the nation at the time made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful, and that the parliaments are responsible for the laws themselves.
"For this reason the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology."
He said reconciliation was in fact an expression of a "core value of our nation".
"That value is a fair go for all," he said.
"There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that for the stolen generations there was no fair go at all.
"There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs."
Mr Rudd addressed members of the stolen generation and their families, while admitting he knew the apology would not remove their suffering.
"We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering we the parliament have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted," Mr Rudd said.
"We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied.
"We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments."
He added:"I know that in offering this apology on behalf of the government and the parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.
"Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that. Words alone are not that powerful, grief is a very personal thing."
The prime minister also urged non-indigenous people who "might not fully understand" the need for an apology, to put themselves in the shoes of the stolen generations.
"I ask those non-indigenous Australians to imagine for a moment if this had happened to you," he said.
"I say to honourable members here present, imagine if that had happened to us.
"Imagine the crippling effect. Imagine how hard it would be to forgive.
"My proposal is this: if the apology we extend today is expected in the spirit of reconciliation in which it is offered, we can today resolve together that there be a new beginning for Australia.
"And it is to such a new beginning that I believe the nation is now calling us."
Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson supported the Prime Minister’s motion.
“We will be at our best today – and everyday - if we aim to put ourselves in the shoes of others,” he said.
Dr Nelson's speech, however, focussed more on the assertion that most Aboriginal children were taken with good intention by generations of Australians who didn't have the benefit of our perspective.
- The full national apology to the Stolen Generation:
"Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations this blemished chapter in our nations history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australias history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia."
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