Full text of Kevin Rudd's speech

WHAT Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told Parliament after delivering the apology to indigenous Australians:

WHAT Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told Parliament after delivering the apology to indigenous Australians:

Mr Rudd told the story of an elderly indigenous woman, part of the stolen generation, who he visited a few days ago.

"An elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman in her 80s full of life, full of funny stories despite what has happened in her life's journey,'' the Prime Minister said.

Mr Rudd said his friend told him of the love and warmth she felt while growing up with her family in an Aboriginal community just outside Tennant Creek.

In the early 1930s, at the age of four, she remembers being taken away by "the welfare men''.

"Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide,'' Mr Rudd said.

They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman who found the hiding children and herded them into the truck.

She remembered her mother clinging onto the side of the truck, with tears flowing down her cheeks as it drove off.

She never saw her mother again.

After living in Alice Springs for a "few years'', government policy changed and the young girl was handed over to the missions.

"The kids were simply told to line up in three lines ... those on the left were told they had become Catholics, those in the middle, Methodist and those on the right, Church of England,'' Mr Rudd said.

"That's how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s.

"It was as crude as that.''

She didn't leave the island mission until she was 16 when she went to Darwin to work as a "domestic''.

When the Prime Minister asked his friend what of her story she wanted told she answered: "All mothers are important.''

"Families, keeping them together is very important, it's a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations - that's what gives you happiness.''

This was just one of tens of thousands of stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, Mr Rudd said.

There is something terribly primal about these first-hand accounts, the pain is searing, it screams from the pages, the hurt the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity,'' he said.

Mr Rudd said the stories "cry out'' to be heard and "cry out'' for an apology.

"Instead from the nation's Parliament there has been a stony and stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade.

"A view that somehow we the Parliament should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong, a view that instead we should look for any pretext to push this great wrong to one side to leave it languishing with the historians, the academics and the cultural warriors as if the stolen generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon.

"The stolen generations are not intellectual curiosities, they are human beings, human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments.

"As of today the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end.''

Mr Rudd said the stolen generation were human beings, not an intellectual curiosity - human beings deeply damaged by the decision of parliaments and governments.

"As of today the time for denial, the time for delay has at last come to an end,'' he said.

"The nation is demanding of its political leadership to take us forward. Decency, human decency, universal human decency demands that the nation now steps forward to right an historical wrong.''

Mr Rudd said should there still be doubts, the historical record showed that between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30 per cent of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers.

"As a result up to 50,000 children were forcibly taken from their families,'' he said.

"This was a product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the states, as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute,'' he said.

This policy was taken to such extremes by some in administrative authority, that the forced extractions of children of so-called mixed lineage, was seen as a part of a broader policy of dealing with, quote, the problem of the Aboriginal population, unquote.''

Mr Rudd said one of the most notorious examples of this approach came from the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, who had stated: "'Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half castes... will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white.'''

Mr Rudd said the WA Protector of Natives had expressed similar views.

While today's formal apology said "sorry'' three times, Mr Rudd's speech also offered his own apologies to the stolen generations.

"As Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry,'' he said.

"On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry.

"On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry.

"I offer you this apology without qualification.''

Mr Rudd said the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s.

"The 1970s is not exactly a point in remote antiquity,'' he said.

"There are still serving members in this Parliament who were first elected to this place in the early 1970s.

"It is well within the adult memory span of many of us.''

He said the parliaments of the nation at the time made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful, and that the parliaments are responsible for the laws themselves.

"For this reason the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology.''

He said reconciliation was in fact an expression of a "core value of our nation''.

"That value is a fair go for all,'' he said.

"There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that for the stolen generations there was no fair go at all.

"There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs.''

Mr Rudd addressed members of the stolen generation and their families, while admitting he knew the apology would not remove their suffering.

"We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering we the Parliament have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted,'' Mr Rudd said.

"We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied.

"We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.''

He added: "I know that in offering this apology on behalf of the Government and the Parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.

"Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that. Words alone are not that powerful, grief is a very personal thing.''

The Prime Minister also urged non-indigenous people who "might not fully understand'' the need for an apology, to put themselves in the shoes of the stolen generation.

"I ask those non-indigenous Australians to imagine for a moment if this had happened to you,'' he said.

"I say to honourable members here present, imagine if that had happened to us.

"Imagine the crippling effect. Imagine how hard it would be to forgive.

"My proposal is this: if the apology we extend today is expected in the spirit of reconciliation in which it is offered, we can today resolve together that there be a new beginning for Australia.

"And it is to such a new beginning that I believe the nation is now calling us.''

Mr Rudd called for the Opposition join the Government in forming the equivalent a war cabinet to tackled indigenous issues.

"I therefore propose a joint policy commission to be led by the leader of the Opposition and myself,'' he said.

The Prime Minister said the commission would first develop and implement an effective housing strategy for remote communities during the next five years.

If that was successful the commission would then work on the constitutional recognition of first Australians.

"The nation is calling on us the politicians to move beyond our infantile bickering, our point scoring, our mindlessly partisan politics and elevate this one, at least this one, area of national responsibility to a rare position beyond the partisan divide.''

Mr Rudd said unless the symbolism of the apology was accompanied by greater substance it was little more than a clanging gong.

"It's not sentiment that makes history, it's actions,'' he said.

Today's apology, however inadequate, was aimed at righting past wrongs.

"It is also aimed at building a bridge between indigenous and and non-indigenous Australians, a bridge based upon a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt,'' he said.

"Our challenge for the future is now to pass that bridge and, in so doing, embrace a new partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.''

Part of the partnership would be an expanded link-up and other services to help the stolen generation find their families.

However the core of the partnership was closing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on life expectancy, education and employment opportunities, Mr Rudd said.

This new partnership would set concrete targets - within a decade to halve the gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and to halve the appalling record in infant mortality; and within a generation to close the equally appalling 17-year life expectancy gap.

"The truth is a business as usual approach to indigenous Australians is not working,'' Mr Rudd said.

"Most old approaches are not working. We need a new beginning.''

He said new policies needed the flexibility to allow tailored local approaches to achieve commonly agreed national objective.

"However, unless we set a destination for the nation we have no clear point to guide our policies,'' Mr Rudd said.

Mr Rudd said the Parliament had come together to "right a great wrong''.

"We have come together to deal with the past so that we may fully embrace the future,'' he said.

"We have had sufficient audacity of faith to advance a pathway to that future with arms extended rather than with fists still clenched.''

"Let us seize the day.''

Mr Rudd said he hoped today would not be just a moment of sentimental reflection.

"Let us take it with both hands and allow this day...become one of those rare moments in which we may transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself.

"Where by the injustice causes all of us to reappraise the real possibility of reconciliation.''

Mr Rudd called for reconciliation that would open up "whole new possibilities for the future.''

"Reconciliation across all indigenous Australia, reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the dream time a thousand generations ago and those, who like me, came across the seas only yesterday.''

Mr Rudd said indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, Government and Opposition, Commonwealth and State needed to turn a new page and write a new chapter in our nation's story together.

"First Australians, first fleeters, and those who first took the oath of allegiance a few weeks ago, let's grasp this opportunity to craft a new future for this great land Australia,'' he said.

Mr Rudd's speech was greeted by a prolonged standing ovation from fellow Labor MPs, the opposition and those in the packed public galleries.

Mr Rudd directed his applause towards the many indigenous people in the public galleries.