Clearly an apology must be made...whatever any of us think about indigenous Australians.

The call for compo is predictable and should be dismissed.

Removing a proportion of children probably was a good thing, but the problem was having a "one size fits all" policy where a (high?) proportion would have been best left with their families.
Obviously I will get severely flamed for this reply, but I think/hope that overall, the Australian population in 2008 is a bit more sophisticated and socially aware than we were 40 odd years ago. There are still rednecks amongst us, but hopefully their numbers are on the wane.
Let the aplology be made and let us all move on....