Compensation claims follow Aborigine apology

Australia’s long-awaited apology to Aborigines for policies that devastated them for decades has been met with demands for compensation to victims.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ruled out payments, and lawyers say the apology passed by Parliament does not add anything to the Aborigines’ chances of successful legal claims.

However, Aboriginal leaders say the hurt caused to thousands under policies now thoroughly discredited can never be fully repaired until the victims receive reparations for being taken as children from Aboriginal mothers.

From 1910 until the 1970s, an estimated 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were dying out.

A government inquiry into these policies found in 1997 that most of those taken were deeply scarred by the experience.

Lowitja O’Donoghue, a 75-year-old member of the so-called Stolen Generations who has campaigned for almost a decade for the government to say sorry to Aborigines like her, said the apology did not end her struggle for justice.

“The job’s not done; it’s only the beginning,” she said, adding that the 1997 inquiry recommended government compensation as well as an apology.

Hundreds waited for hours to enter Parliament House to hear the apology, many travelling thousands of miles from remote Outback camps to get there.

Millions more witnessed its national broadcast in living rooms throughout Australia, on giant screens erected in city parks and on televisions in schools and workplaces.

“For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry,” Mr Rudd said, triggering tears and applause throughout Australia.

An authority on uniting black and white Australia, Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson, who has become known as the Father of Reconciliation in Australia, agreed that the Stolen Generations deserved compensation for their mistreatment.

“Any group of people who have been treated badly under laws ... deserve to pursue compensation judicially, legally or politically and they deserve our support,” he said.

Several members of the Stolen Generations have attempted to sue governments in the courts for taking them from their families but have achieved limited success, largely because of the difficulty of proving cases.

Mr Rudd’s predecessor, John Howard, had refused to apologise for past Aboriginal policies, arguing that contemporary Australians should not be held responsible for mistakes of the past.

While Mr Rudd’s apology without compensation had been criticised as a hollow gesture, the government has responded by promising to inject far more spending into improving Aborigines’ standard of living.

There are about 450,000 Aborigines in Australia’s population of 21 million. They are the country’s poorest group, with the highest rates of prison, unemployment and illiteracy. Their life expectancy is 17 years shorter than that of other Australians.