sorry

Sorry.

What's in a word?

For our previous Government, under John Howard, being in power meant never having to say you were sorry.

This morning our new Prime Minister, Labor's Kevin Rudd, opened his first term leading Parliament by saying the word so many had so-long needed to hear.

In apologising to the Stolen Generations, those Indigenous Australians of mixed descent torn from their families by policies that lasted the better part of a century, Rudd kept a promise he had taken to the election.

Policies explicitly determined to culturally assimilate generations of Indigenous Australians, to 'breed out' their Aboriginality, resulted in the removal of at least 100,000 children. Not one Indigenous family has been untouched by this forcible removal. Not one.

Howard could bask in the reflected glory of the ANZAC spirit, the triumphs of his boorish yet cherished cricket team. But the petty, mean-spirited, ideologically driven and empathy-stunted man could see no link between the actions taken by Parliament through most of the 1900s and the Parliament he led - a Parliament he came into a scant five years after forcible removal programs were still in effect.

His idea of 'practical reconciliation' - a new paternalism with frightening echoes of such damaging past policies - was a cynical smokescreen perfectly in keeping with his government's insistence on blaming the victim. But now he has gone, and we can thankfully move on, regain some of the lost ground and missed opportunities of the last 12 years.

The fragmentation and sense of dislocation and isolation inflicted by this deliberate and systemic cultural genocide cannot even begin to be understood. This morning, Mr Rudd said the Parliament apologised for laws and policies which had "inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians."

"For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry."

The words themselves can of course make no difference in and of themselves. So much more must now be done if any improvements are to be made to lessen the disgraceful gaps in health, literacy, mortality rates and life expectancy that exist between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations.

But there is hope that the apology will at least be a step towards closure, a move towards redressing the atrocities of the past, stemming the pain and healing the deep emotional wounds.