Australians have made a lot of mistakes, we have treated Aboriginal people very badly, and we have our share of racists and bigots.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
Yet there are thousands of Indigenous people searching for family members.
We are seeing healing among the stolen generations, and initiatives which are enabling Indigenous people to make their distinctive contribution to our national life.
What we do to our native Australians, our own indigenous people, is nothing short of horrific.
Australia's treatment of her Aboriginal people will be the thing on which the world will judge Australia and Australians - Not just now, but in the greater perspective of history.
Last year the National Sorry Day Committee consulted with stolen generations people in every State and Territory, and concluded that programmes set up in response to the Bringing Them Home Report are reaching only a small fraction of those they are intended to help.
Three years ago the Government announced the creation of Reconciliation Place, and said that it would include a memorial to those removed from their families. However, they refused to include any of those who were removed in the design of their own memorial.
I hope that I am helping to create an understanding and an awareness of what happened to the Aboriginal people.
John Howard, willing to apologise to home owners for rising interest rates, would not say sorry to Aborigines. He refused to condone what he referred to as 'a black armband version' of history, preferring a jingoistic nationalism.
Within white Australia, there was a growing movement for what was known as reconciliation - a movement that peaked with millions marching in 2000 to demand the government say sorry for past injustices.
Both 'Mabo' and 'The Sapphires' have been significant roles because it's about my people. They are celebratory stories, on top of allowing people to understand our history.
The number of those identifying as Aborigine in Tasmania rapidly rose in the late 20th century.
In 1995, the Paul Keating Labor government commissioned an inquiry into the forcible removal of Aboriginal children.
If we had, we would have realised sooner that Indigenous organisations are sometimes not the appropriate channel for programmes to help the stolen generations, because many of them play little part in Indigenous associations.
I have met Aborigines younger than me who used to hide every time anyone official came round their camp for fear of being taken away.
