( dpa ) - It's not enough for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to stand up in Australia's federal Parliament this week and apologize to Aborigines taken from their parents in a misguided assimilation programme that ended in the 1970s, native leaders said Sunday.
The official apology has to be backed by cash payments to members of what have become known as the stolen generations and their descendants, National Aboriginal Alliance spokesman Les Malezer said.
"We are also concerned that the apology is not being accompanied by reparations, which is part of forgiveness, as part of admitting that the wrong thing was done," he said in advance of Wednesday's apology in Canberra.
"Once the apology has been issued, and providing the apology isn't qualified, we'll then go on to ask the government to now consider how it will pay compensation," Malezer said.
Rudd, who has yet to release the wording of the apology that previous prime minister John Howard refused to give during his 11 years in office, has insisted there will be no payout to the stolen generations.
Around 500,000 of the 21 million Australians declare themselves to be Aborigines and an unknown number had children taken away to be brought up in orphanages or foster homes.
Aborigines are among the poorest, least healthy, most troubled members of the body politic. They are unemployed, uneducated and imprisoned at vastly disproportionate rates.
Rudd, elected in a Labor Party landslide in November, has denied that an apology at the start of the new parliamentary term would unleash an avalanche of legal cases and a massive grab for cash compensation.
Rejecting Howard's view that the current generation should not be asked to apologize for the policies of a previous generation, Rudd said the apology would remove a "blight on the nation's soul." He also admitted that the issue was divisive and that opposition Liberal Party leader Brendan Nelson had been grudging in his support for a formal apology.
"A whole lot of people out there have raised objections and concerns," Rudd said. "But I think this is a blight on the nation's soul. I think we need to act."
Opposition indigenous affairs' spokesman Tony Abbott said the Liberal Party would support the apology "but we'll be getting behind it in a way which acknowledges our true history, that's to say the good things that happened as well as unfortunate things that happened."
Abbott added: "Yes, some kids were stolen, and this is shameful, but many were helped and some were rescued, and I think we need to be honest about that."
Historian Keith Windschuttle defended a programme of removal that he insists was mostly applied to teenagers rather than babies and saw boys being trained for farm work and girls for domestic service.
"It provided real jobs and skills and gave young Aborigines a way out of the alcohol-soaked, handout-dominated camps and reserves of their parents," Windschuttle said. "Indeed, it's a policy that could well be revived today to rescue children from the sexual assault and substance abuse prevalent in the remote communities."
Australia is gearing up to make the delivery of the apology a national celebration. Thousands will gather outside Parliament House in Canberra and in city centres there will be large video screens set up so those at work can witness the historic moment.
