Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a national apology to the country's indigenous people in Canberra in the parliament on Wednesday morning.

 

 

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd speaks during a traditional "welcome to country" ceremony held at parliament house in Canberra on February 13, 2008. 

 

"We reflect on their past mistreatment. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations, this blemished chapter in our nation's history," Rudd said.

 

"We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians," the apology says.

 

The former Howard government, which lost last year's election, refused to issue a formal apology claiming it would leave the commonwealth liable to a flood of compensation claims.

 

"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 prime minister said in an emotional speech.

 

Hundreds of indigenous Australians descended on Canberra to witness the historic apology which comes more than a decade after the Bringing Them Home report.

 

The report documented the stories of tens of thousands of Aboriginal children taken from their families by governments from 1910 to the early 1970s.

 

Rudd said a new page in Australia's history can now be written.

 

"We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians," he said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency February 13, 2008)