The Bringing Them Home report exposes the Stolen Generations, and Rudd apologises, 1997-2008
Fifty-four recommendations, most still unmet decades later
Quick facts
- Report tabled
- 26 May 1997
- Testimonies gathered
- 535 Indigenous people
- Recommendations
- 54
- National Apology delivered
- 13 February 2008, by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
What happened
Tabled in Parliament on 26 May 1997, the Bringing Them Home report was the result of a national inquiry by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission into the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, a practice carried out under state and territory laws for much of the twentieth century. The inquiry heard evidence from 535 Indigenous people describing removals and their lasting effects, and it produced 54 recommendations, including a formal parliamentary apology. On 13 February 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered that apology to the Stolen Generations on behalf of the Australian Parliament, in the first item of business when the new Parliament opened, broadcast nationally. Two decades on, according to the Healing Foundation's own 2025 assessment, only about 6 percent of the report's 54 recommendations had been implemented.
Why it matters
The report was the first official government document to systematically document the scale and human cost of child removal policies that separated Aboriginal families for generations, and the 2008 apology gave that history formal national acknowledgment, but the slow pace of implementing the report's practical recommendations shows how far symbolic recognition has outpaced material redress.
How we know
The Bringing Them Home report itself, its 54 recommendations, and its evidentiary basis are documented in the Victorian Government's own summary of the report and the Healing Foundation's ongoing tracking of recommendation implementation.
Sources
- Western Australian Museum. National Apology to the Stolen Generations · Primary source (author-declared)museum.wa.gov.au · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The Healing Foundation. Bringing Them Home · Reputable sourcehealingfoundation.org.au · The domain "healingfoundation.org.au" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Australia33 events · 65,000 years of the world's oldest living cultures, a penal colony's dispossession of them, and the reckoning still underwayView all →