Sydney - An official apology delivered in Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday for past wrongs done to Aborigines ignited fresh hope of a better future for Australia's 500,000 indigenous people. Across the nation of 21 million, people cheered and wept as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said 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, said the nation's contrition would help expunge a "great stain from the soul of Australia" and bring a resolve that the "injustices of the past must never, never happen again."
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 was intended to "breed out the black" and steer Aborigines into mainstream white society.
Rudd said up to 50,000 children had been taken from their families from 1910 to the 1970s.
To applause and weeping from the packed gallery and thousands gathered outside Parliament House, he admitted that "laws our parliaments enacted made possible the stolen generations."
Rudd used the totemic word "sorry" three times in a solemn apology on behalf of the government but which was effectively 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," Rudd said.
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 motion of apology was passed unanimously and accepted by many of those who had clamoured for it over decades.
National Aboriginal Alliance spokesman Michael Mansell, who is still insisting cash payments 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 was not in Parliament House for the occasion.
His successor as leader of the Liberal Party, Brendan Nelson, gave bipartisan support for the apology he said signified much more than a "moment of mere sentimental reflection."
He accepted Rudd's offer of joining a bipartisan working party to thrash out programmes to address inequalities.
Rudd, who described the event as opening a new page in Australia's history, rejected cash compensation but promised more spending to lift Aborigines out of poverty and programmes to get them out of jail and into work.
He pledged that within a decade he would halve the gap in educational attainment, infant mortality and employment.
Jackie Huggins, an Aboriginal activist noted for her work in tackling sexual abuse, was in Canberra 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.
