Australia says sorry to blighted Aborigines

Feb 12, 2008, 23:33 GMT

Sydney - Aborigines teemed into Canberra on Wednesday to celebrate an historic apology for past wrongs and to share their hope of a fresh try at a better future for Australia's 500,000 indigenous people.

People in cities, towns and villages across the nation of 21 million gathered to hear Prime Minister Kevin Rudd rise in Parliament House to say sorry for discarded assimilation policies that some say show up today in bad health, poor schooling, joblessness and a 17-year disparity in the life expectancy of whites and blacks.

Rudd, elected in a Labor landslide in November, for the first time invited Aboriginal elders to attend Tuesday's august state opening of parliament. He also released the text of the official apology he will proclaim in Parliament House.

John Howard, whose conservative coalition was defeated in November, during 11 years in office refused to obey a call from human rights commissioners to say sorry to members of the so-called stolen generations - those Aborigines taken from their parents to be brought up in white-run institutions.

The programme, which ran up to the 1970s and blighted tens of thousands of families, was integral to a system intended to 'breed out the black' and steer Aborigines into mainstream white society.

Rudd will use the totemic word 'sorry' three times in an apology which is made on behalf of the government but which has come to be an act of atonement on behalf of all Australians.

'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,' the text reads.

Hundreds of Aborigines will file into Parliament House to hear the apology, to be broadcast on big screens outside and throughout the country. Thousands more will bear witness on the lawns outside Parliament House.

Mary Terzak, 66, journeyed the 3,000 kilometres from Perth to be in the capital to accept a personal apology for being taken from her family when she was 2-years-old.

'It's so important to me to see something so significant in our black history,' she told national broadcaster ABC. 'Finally somebody finally recognized the fact to say sorry to the first peoples of this land.'

The condign apology has the support of both the government and the opposition in parliament and has won favour with many of those who have clamoured for it over decades.

National Aboriginal Alliance spokesman Michael Mansell, who wants cash payments to back Rudd's words, was comforted by the inclusion of the word 'sorry' and the emotive term 'stolen generations.'

'I think the stolen generation members will be very relieved that that word is finally being used because, as we know, the previous prime minister refused to use the very word the victims were looking for,' Mansell said.

Howard lost his own seat as well as government and will not be in Parliament House for the occasion.

Rudd, who will describe the apology as opening a new page in Australia's history, rejects cash compensation but has promised more spending to lift Aborigines out of poverty and programmes to get them out of jail and into work.

Jackie Huggins, an Aboriginal activist noted for her work in tackling sexual abuse, is in Canberra ready to accept the apology.

'Just before, we saw five old ladies who had come down from Darwin and they were so excited, and like me they thought they'd never live to see the day this would happen. The prime minister talks about a new page in our history - well, I think it's a new book,' she said.