Kate Grenville

The Guardian

Two years ago I stood with thousands of others on the lawns outside Parliament House in Canberra and watched on a giant screen as, inside the building, our new Labor party prime minister did something his conservative predecessor had refused to do: he apologised to the Aboriginal people of Australia.

Around me in the crowd were many Aboriginal people. By the end of Kevin Rudd's speech most of them were in tears. Rudd wasn't apologising for the whole sorry mess that is the history of colonialism in Australia. His apology was specifically for the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, government policy for many years during the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of those people weeping quietly around me had suffered that most primal of dispossessions.

Rudd's speech ended on a cautious note: "We take this first step … in laying claim to a future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems …" Two years later, how does it look? Any new solutions to those old problems?

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