Yes, and how would all YOU feel if you were the offsping of a "gin rooter" (a while male whose drunken hobby was raping aboriginal women)?

What is NOT said (in polite society) is that quite a few of these "half-castes" of the "stolen generation" were the product of such atrocities. The unspoken agenda was to get rid of this unwanted evidence of the white european invaders' cruelty and debauchery. They couldn't have the evidence of their crimes turning up at the wrong time could they?

The "stolen generation" was a very sad episode in our history. We needed to apologise and start to heal the pain.....

It was because of the rejection by the tribes of these unfortunate children, the products of misalliances between over sexed white males and aboriginal girls, that they were taken away. Let there be no arguments about that.

The stolen children belong to another group who were taken for entirely different reasons, most of which would be rejected by us today. They are the ones to whom an apology is due, although significantly enough, not by the Commonwealth as such, because the laws under which they were taken had been enacted by the states, to which claims of compensation should rightly be directed.

However, the apology given by the Prime Minister encompasses all these acts so it should be applauded as should the reply by the leader of the opposition, who seems to have somehow been mistaken for our ex Prime Minister by the miscreants who turned their backs on him without even listening to the substance of what he had to say.

David

Regarding letter from Lucifer

you said: "Why don't you spit it out instead of being snide in your racist stereotyping?"
"What have Indigenous Australians done to you that you feel the need to malign and slander them?"

Like i said before, I also have aboriginal friends, and i dont see how relating my personal experiences growing up; having my money, my push bike, my smokes, my wallet, etc. stolen from me, is slander.
Beating up a kid who is on his own, simply for being a
"white c u next tuesday" is gutless bullying. If anything is racist, that is racist.

i wasn't greatly impressed by rudd's speech but no doubt lawyers had been at it. for what it's worth, parliament has apologized. for many people, it's worth a lot.

better yet, rudd has co-opted nelson into acknowledging the need to do something together. getting the matter out of the 'point-scoring' mode may prove to be the most significant progress yet. if the result is education and jobs for 'old ozzies', i might even say something nice about a pollie. but let's see some action first.

i find without it hard to believe that removing someone from their parent without a legal process before a judge, establishing risk to the child, is not actionable. but the law here is vague and primitive.

Demos,
'I find it hard to believe that a child can be taken from its parents without a legal process before a judge'

Even today there are situations where a child is in imminent danger of being harmed and DOCS has to act to remove the child.

I know a lady who takes babies in as a foster mum for DOCS and she tells me some babies come to her in a shocking state. She has had some with cigarette burns, for example.

We most likely would be shocked if we saw some of the situations that DOCS encounters daily.

Hi rehtcub here.
To all those to whom I have hit a nerve all I would say to you is that I am not a racist and as a matter a fact I have an employee who is coloured and in fact very good at his job.
The point I am trying to get across is that the sorry cerimony should have been a reconcilliation between both parties, not just us saying sorry.
My grandad died as a result of WW1 injuries, should the government say sorry to me for a decision made at the time, in good faith, to send young men to war? No!
I would say sorry every day if my son was able to walk safely from the train station or leave his new bike at the shopping centre or not be expossed to chromming by these youg misfits.
Very few people are free from something that happened in thier past, it's just that some of them choose to hide behind it for ever.