Stolen Generations survivors and leaders to mark 18 years since national apology

Stolen Generations survivors, community leaders, and the Prime Minister will gather in Canberra next week for the 18th Anniversary National Apology Breakfast, a reminder that the trauma of forced removals is still being lived every day by First Nations families.

The breakfast will be held in the Great Hall at Parliament House on Friday 13 February, convened by Ngarrindjeri Monaro man and Stolen Generations survivor Michael McLeod, founder and chair of Message Stick Communications. The event is designed to reflect on the historic 2008 National Apology while renewing commitments to a better future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will deliver the keynote address, reaffirming the Federal Government’s support for reconciliation and for closing the gap in outcomes for Indigenous peoples. He will be joined on the program by former prime minister Kevin Rudd (who delivered the original apology in 2008) along with ACT Supreme Court Justice Louise Taylor, the first Aboriginal woman appointed to a superior court in Australia, and Patricia Thompson AM, a Kuku Yalanji and Wakka Wakka woman and Stolen Generations advocate who leads Link-Up (Qld) Aboriginal Corporation.

Journalist and human rights campaigner Jeff McMullen will MC the breakfast, which will also feature a Welcome to Country by Aunty Violet Sheridan, a didgeridoo performance by David Williams and a performance of Yorta Yorta soprano and composer Professor Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s Bungaree (Movement 2) by a Canberra Symphony Orchestra quartet. The organisers say the program is intended to honour the courage of survivors, as well as the resilience of communities who continue to fight for truth, justice, and healing.

On 13 February 2008, then prime minister Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of the nation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, particularly the Stolen Generations whose lives had been “blighted” by policies of forced child removal and assimilation. The Bringing Them Home report, tabled in 1997, estimated that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were removed from their families between about 1910 and 1970, with devastating intergenerational impacts that continue today.

Research by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, commissioned by the Healing Foundation, estimates there are more than 27,000 Stolen Generations survivors aged 50 and over, who face worse health, housing and economic outcomes than other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of the same age. Advocates warn that as survivors grow older, governments are yet to implement most of the recommendations of Bringing Them Home, including comprehensive reparations and community-controlled healing services. A 2025 Healing Foundation report found only 6 per cent of the 54 recommendations have been clearly implemented.

Despite the apology, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children remain dramatically over-represented in Australia’s child protection systems. AIHW data show that at 30 June 2023 around 19,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were in out-of-home care and that First Nations children are more than ten times more likely to be on care and protection orders than non-Indigenous children. Human rights organisations and Aboriginal peak bodies have repeatedly warned that unless governments shift power and resources to community-controlled services, Australia risks repeating the mistakes that created the Stolen Generations.

For many survivors and their families, gatherings like the National Apology Breakfast are about more than ceremony. They provide a space to speak honestly about the ongoing impacts of past policies, to demand accountability for promises that remain unfulfilled, and to imagine a future in which First Nations children grow up safe, supported, and connected to their families, cultures and Countries.

*This article was updated on 3/2/2025 to correct the attribution of AIHW research on Stolen Generations survivor numbers and to add a reference to the Healing Foundation’s 2025 report on Bringing Them Home recommendations.